Your data center is complex. It's critical to your business. And you might be asking yourself how you can improve cooling, make it more energy efficient. But you have to make those improvements without degrading business performance. You need to understand available energy management and cooling technologies and how you might use them. You really need to see the latest green technology in action. How?

You take a trip to a demonstration data center.

You walk up to a locked door. You push a button. A system identifies you and grants you access. As you pass through the secure entrance, you enter the most energy-efficient data center you can imagine. You see high-performance servers and storage—and the power monitors showing how little energy they're using. You can examine the cooling technology on the systems and see temperature sensors. And you can look at console screens to see how systems management software monitors all of this technology in real time.

You can scan the room and see the latest tools, middleware and systems integrated into an efficient system. A system designed to demonstrate how an energy-efficient data center can really work. If you want more details, you can watch a video or open a server rack. If you have a question, you can ask a data center attendant.

And you do it all without leaving your desk.

The IBM Virtual Green Data Center in Second Life affords you the opportunity to explore all of the energy-efficient technologies of IBM Project Green from the comfort of your office. Some features of the VGDC include:

• System energy-efficiency demonstrations
  See all of the IBM server and storage systems in action and explore key energy-efficient technologies available from IBM on IBM BladeCenter systems, IBM System x servers, IBM Power Systems and IBM System z10 mainframes. See the map of the data center for more details.
• IBM energy-efficiency services and case studies
  On the second floor, learn about services available from IBM to help you assess current status and design solutions for energy and cooling challenges in the data center. Services can help assess, manage and improve air flow, cabling, system density and more.