Sir, – There has been much negative comment in recent times about data centres and the resources they consume, the tone of which has influenced local officials in some instances to refuse planning permission for new developments. The truth is that data centres are actually good for the environment, and that people who campaign against them are campaigning for decreased efficiency and increased energy consumption.
In a world which is increasingly online, electronic, paper-less, and cash-less, data centres consolidate the provision of an essential service – data storage and processing. For the security and privacy of critical national infrastructure, such as health, banking, welfare, tax collection, and so on, and for the confidentiality of data belonging to Irish individuals, Irish data should be stored and processed on Irish territory. Every nation feels the same way about their own data, and rightly so.
Without data centres, the services they provide would need to be delivered locally by individual organisations and consumers in piecemeal fashion, as they were in the recent past. Assuming the amount of data being stored or processed by organisations and individuals is the same whether they use shared data centres or privately maintain their own servers, which is more energy efficient?
Data centres allow for economies of scales by making it possible for different organisations to share capacity on common infrastructure, significantly reducing the overall requirements for energy. The total energy required for cooling, fire-prevention, security, and other essential aspects of data storage can be similarly reduced when addressed collectively.
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These facts are simple and obvious, and it defies logic to claim data centres are a “bad thing”, per se. Rational environmentalists should encourage all Irish organisations to use shared data centres to reduce energy consumption and protect our environment, rather than demonising them.
However, we should also encourage efficiency in the processing and storage of data. We live in an era of “data explosion”, when organisations and individuals are generating and storing more and more data, often carelessly and needlessly.
Commercial storage devices employ “Raid” technology, with multiple copies of each data item stored on different hard-drives to protect against data loss in the event a single drive fails. Commercial providers also routinely backup data to one or more secondary locations, to ensure continuity of service in the event of a catastrophic event, such as fire or a network outage. Every time we store something to the cloud, many copies are generated, and all are maintained on servers that are running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Keeping servers running 24/7 on the off-chance that some wants to view a photo, text message, phone bill, or other transaction record created years ago requires a constant supply of energy. People should be aware that there is a significant environmental cost to maintaining data in a constantly available state, and that it is up to all of us to minimise this through good practice.
Our own poor housekeeping of data is a significant factor in the pressing need for greater data storage capacity, of which data centres are merely the most visible symptom.
Organisations and individuals can save on energy consumption by powering down servers when not in use (overnight or on weekends, for example), by cleaning up ROTT (redundant, obsolete, trivial, or temporary) data, and by archiving old or non-active data to energy-efficient passive storage formats, like USB keys, DVDs, or magnetic tapes, instead of to always-online cloud services.
Service providers, including public sector bodies, should develop common codes of practice to ensure they are permitted to archive old records offline without fear of official censure, and software designers should ensure that applications they create include mechanisms for identifying and removing obsolete data as a matter of course.
Finally, small nations like Ireland, with limited energy generating capacity, should be wary of taking on the burden of storing and processing data on behalf of other nations. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.