links for 2008-12-18

Someone once asked Rogers Hornsby what he did in the off-season and he famously said “I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

i believe it

i got asked that question while speaking at TechMaine last week, and while i don't have any more data on the subject than Tom, i suspect the answer is: considerably more green. why? because the incentives are so much greater. when deploying machines in the dozens or even hundreds, the economies of scale that green operations present are dramatically less apparent than they would be if you're implementing datacenters of thousands of machines. the incentive to be green, therefore, is much greater for cloud providers because the potential cost savings in power, cooling, etc are that much greater. for example, consider Microsoft's recent datacenter build out, which uses Blackbox-like cargo container units that are highly efficient in their power usage and cooling factor.