In a move toward controlling datacenter energy consumption, Microsoft is deploying sensors that will trace work distribution to help plot for optimization. To better control energy consumption in its datacenters, Microsoft has deployed 2,000 internally built temperature and humidity sensors in several of its facilities.

The sensors use ZigBee wireless technology to transmit the data to databases that analyze the information. Data-center administrators can look at a graphical image of the datacenter that is color-coded based on temperature and at a glance see areas that are getting hot.

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