Google (GOOG) has begun operating a data center in Belgium that has no chillers to support its cooling systems, a strategy that will improve its energy efficiency while making local weather forecasting a larger factor in its data center management. Chillers, which are used to refrigerate water, are widely used in data center cooling systems [...]

When a data center loses power, the goal is to get the servers back online as quickly as possible. But you can’t restart all the servers until the cooling is working again. While servers can restart quickly, it often takes much longer to restart chillers, which provide refrigerated water for cooling systems. Chiller vendors and [...]