The latest addition to the exotic new-wave data centers we wrote about recently-including an ice-cooled former NATO command center in Iceland and a new tourist attraction at Disney World-is Hewlett-Packard's 360,000-square-foot UK facility cooled by the bracing winds from the nearby North Sea.Here are some of the highlights of the new facility, which was originally the brainchild of EDS, the global IT services provider that HP acquired in 2008. For more details, be sure to check out the complete story in Web Host Industry Review.

*The new facility, located in the northern England town of Wynyard, is HP's most energy-efficient data center.

*Eight large fans pull in the cool air-the North Sea is only 8 miles away-which is filtered and then passed across the server racks.

*Instead of being the standard black, the racks are light-colored, which allows HP to use 40% less lighting.

*"The data center also harvests and filters rainwater, storing it in 80,000-liter tanks," the Web Host Industry Review article says. "In the event that the outside air is too dry, the filtered water is sprayed in a mist to increase the humidity before the air flows into the data halls."

In taking maximum advantage of the cooling capabilities of its natural environment, the new HP facility is similar to the data-center complex built within a former Iceland NATO command center noted above. To read about that and other compelling new data-center developments-both business-related and technological-please check out our recent column: Global CIO: Data Centers Behaving Boldly: Meet Tech's New Rock Stars.