Today our colleagues at Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services, which manages the company’s data centers across the globe, published a new blog post and accompanying whitepaper that summarize the top 10 business practices for environmentally sustainable data centers. At Microsoft we’ve found that being “lean and green” is not only good for the environment but for our business too. Every kilowatt of energy not used in the data center reduces the company’s impact on the environment and saves money.
Microsoft’s top ten best practices are based on the principles that effective resource utilization matters—from making servers the right size for their intended use to employing virtualization. We’ve also found that other practices, like standardizing the platform and taking a holistic approach to the total cost of ownership have helped our data center teams manage Microsoft’s footprint more effectively.
Taken together, these practices improve the overall efficiency of our data centers, reducing our energy needs and helping Microsoft achieve a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.6, one of the best rates of efficiency in the industry. As cloud computing continues to grow, making our data centers more sustainable is an important part of our effort at Microsoft to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. You can read more about the top 10 practices for sustainable data centers at the Global Foundation Services blog and in the accompanying whitepaper.