Top Gear has a post on their fuel economy test comparing a BMW M3 vs. a Toyota Prius.

Jeremy's miles per gallon test between the BMW M3 and Toyota Prius might have been a little, er, biased. But should your commute be, er, speedy, and you're looking for an excuse to buy the RWD, V8-powered M3 instead of a FWD 4-cyl hybrid...

Simple rules drive the Prius as fast as possible, and have the BMW keep up.

The Prius did 17.2 MPG, M3 did 19.4 MPG.

The full M3 vs Prius Video is here.

The message in the story. It’s how you drive it that matters. And, you can get better mileage by simply driving your existing car more efficiently.

Don’t change the car, change your driving style.

What’s this got to do with data centers. Shouldn’t I relocate my IT resources to green data center space. Someone may think I just built a green data center that is LEED certified with all the latest energy efficiency power and cooling systems. But, I bet you many don’t know how to operate this unique configuration of data center equipment in the most energy efficient manner? Have you thought about how you will drive your data center?

If you don’t know how to operate your data center in the most energy efficient manner one company you should look at to run your data center operations is Lee Technologies managed maintenance and facilities operations.

Data Center & Mission-Critical Managed Maintenance
Over 86% of all Data Center Outages are Preventable
Infrastructure failure and human error are the two leading causes of downtime in mission-critical facilities. The leading cause of infrastructure failure is poor maintenance. Our experienced staff has been providing infrastructure solutions for mission-critical facilities since 1983. Lee Technologies provides operations, managed maintenance and facility operations services supporting over 3 Million square feet of data center and mission-critical facility space across the United States.
Maintenance-Crucial
In mission-critical facilities, failure is not an option. That's why, night or day you can depend on Lee Technologies' Managed Maintenance Programs for comprehensive service and support. Our Managed Maintenance services are customized to the specific needs of each client and facility. Whether it's 24/7/365 monitoring, preventative maintenance, or comprehensive facility operations, Lee Technologies has the technology, capability and experience to meet your needs… and exceed your expectations.

Data Center & Mission-Critical Infrastructure Facility Operations
Mission-critical facilities utilize the latest technologies to keep the world's information flowing. However, even the most advanced technology is only as good as the people that maintain and operate it. With so much at stake, you don’t want to trust your mission-critical operation to just anyone. You want the right people, in the right place, at the right time... with the right tools, talent and training.
Many studies show that the #1 cause of data center downtime is human error. In an expanding market for high-availability services, finding, keeping and training qualified personnel has become more challenging than ever. That's why a growing number of organizations count on Lee Technologies data center infrastructure facility operations specialists at their mission-critical facilities.

Thanks to a fortunate introduction at Data Center Dynamics London I met Lee Technologies, Lee Kirby who set up a meeting at my beach house last week to discuss data center modeling and maintenance with Bob Woolley, VP of Facilities Operations and Quality Systems & David Gentry, Sr VP of Service while they were in town for their employee holiday party.

I’ve been spending a lot of time investigating modeling ideas and I wanted to see what Lee Technologies executives see as current and future issues to run a Greener Data Center. We were in agreement on many points, and we discussed ideas on what I could blog in future posts on this site or other areas a boring topic “how to operate and maintain your data center.”

The M3 vs. the Prius is an interesting point for data centers, in that many have built for performance (M3), and the new way is for efficiency (Prius). But, how you drive has the biggest influence on your energy use.

Also, another company who has embraced this idea is Skanska’s Robert Bellantoni. Here is his article in DatacenterDynamics Focus.

The “Fix First” concept is based on the needs of current legacy data centers to make immediate and necessary improvements in their operational efficiency without costly retrofit, redesign or timely rebuilding options.

“The fastest way to needed improvement is often apparent and can usually be fixed with minimum cost,” says Bellantoni. “We conduct a physical audit of the as built state of their current cabinets and rack installation. Most legacy data centers are in a ‘mid-life crisis’ mode as a result of an aging design that may have been the bestof- breed at the time, but did not take critical efficiency and rising operating costs into consideration when creating the original design model.”