1. The most comprehensive virtualization possible of the IT infrastructure – i. e. all of the servers, storage units and network components. This may lead to increased energy consumption in isolated cases, especially when high-compact blade systems are in use, but this can potentially be compensated by the ­reduction in number of machines. Intelligently administrated virtualization landscapes such as vmWare Enterprise Management Console or IBM’s Tivoli Dynamic Infrastructure Management Environment enable administrators in this way to optimize the environment as a whole so that substantial savings of 20% are possible.

2. This naturally presumes the appropriate tools for an end-to-end automation so that seamless monitoring and automated control of the GEDC from the application level to middleware, infrastructure, and systems are possible. The electric power and air conditioning components are also incorporated into and steered by this automation.

3. IT service management processes based on the ITIL standard enable the computer center team to re-engineer service processes to such an extent that energy savings are possible here as well and can be implemented with the aid of automated components.

4. Compact IT and information structures form another building block for the GEDC. It includes compact servers and storage and network systems as well as software components for databases, for example.

5. The GEDC is further refined by extensive safety components for a computer center such as modern methods for reduction of the oxygen in the room air to prevent fires or holistic control center safety systems.

6. Moreover, the GEDC must be integrated into a holistic strategy and business continuity so that disasters and emergencies (according to BSI 100/4) and availabilities can be covered with the aid of redundancies. Not only the individual center plays a role here; entire computer center networks must prove their worth when applying GreenICT principles.

7. In this way, as described in this entire article, the energy savings in the computer center are realized holistically in a GreenICT approach.

But this list clearly shows that a future green enterprise data center offers more than just an energy-saving side; it covers the future and trends in the computer center world as a whole.