Keeping masses of data is terrible for the planet. There’s another way.

The people in Bluffdale, Utah were experiencing a severe water shortage and power outages. Perhaps not surprising for a hot desert climate. But this wasn't just any seasonal shortage – the nearby Utah Data Centre was slurping up 1.7 million gallons of water each day. That was 1.7 million gallons of water bypassing citizens in need to instead cool data centre hardware.

Data centres generate many headaches for the environment. Let's stick with cooling for a moment. Data centres generate a lot of heat, and that heat needs to be dispelled with cooling, which often happens using water and electrical cooling systems. Cooling can account for about 40% of a data centre's energy use. Much of the electricity used by data centres come from "dirty" electrical grids that throw carbon into the atmosphere. And it's been estimated that data centres will be responsible for 4.5% of global energy use by 2025.

What's called "hot" data is one of the problems. Hot data is data that's accessed regularly, like training data for AI models or other data frequently called up from where it's being kept. Cold data, on the other hand, is data that's kept deep in the archive, harder and slower to access but less power-hungry. Hot data can be accessed easily, again and again. It’s also energy-intensive to do so. Cold data is a bit more energy-friendly, but at the expense of convenience.

Minimizing the masses of data that are driving these incredible energy numbers and hardware needs would be a big win for the environment. We’d save directly on energy costs, and indirectly on lowered demand for the rare earth materials that are needed for the chips that deliver compute processing power. But how can we cut back the strain on our data systems, when demand for more speed and more space only seems to only be growing?

Stepping up data compression is an important step toward bringing down the environmental costs of data centres. Compressed data takes less storage space, requires less hardware, and uses less energy overall. A study by SNIA found that compressing data that's being stored can shrink storage use by up to 49%...and that's not even taking into account efficiencies in compression that are emerging only now.

CompressionX is keenly aware of the environmental crisis we’re facing today, and we’re committed to helping lessen the impact of energy use by helping make our data smaller. Imagine a more sustainable, smarter way to archive your files - all while saving computer space and data centre energy. That’s what CompressionX is about. By storing data smaller, you shrink its footprint into the future. Storing it takes less space, and less power to maintain that space in the cloud (or less hardware to hold it, if you’re storing it on a hard drive). Calling it back up from the archives and sending it across a network takes less energy. We've got so much to save. Including the planet. Try CompressionX today for free and see how your data footprint can make a difference, one compressed file at a time.

References

• https://netzero-events.com/the-impact-of-data-compression-on-storage-and-energy-efficiency/
• https://granica.ai/blog/how-data-lake-compression-reduces-carbon-emissions
• https://blog.huawei.com/2023/08/03/advice-for-cios-green-data-storage-net-zero-data-centres
• https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/
• https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/experiences/utah/nsa-data-centre-ut