In a co-location environment, the data center operator manages the facility infrastructure—power, cooling, space, security—but does not directly control how customers operate their IT equipment. However, sustainability programs aim to reduce total energy consumption, which includes IT loads. Since the operator cannot mandate hardware usage or impose arbitrary power reductions, the appropriate method ispromoting awareness and issuing recommendationsthat help customers optimize their systems.

These recommendations may include best practices such as consolidating workloads, improving server utilization, removing unused equipment (“zombie servers”), adopting more efficient storage architectures, using virtualization, and refreshing legacy hardware. This aligns with EPI’s sustainability principles, where collaboration and customer education play a key role in reducing energy consumption in shared environments.

Option A is incorrect because, although customers control IT loads, the operatorcaninfluence them through guidance and programs. Option B is unsafe and violates contractual power allocations. Option D imposes limitations not covered by typical co-location contracts and could disrupt customer operations.

Thus,providing optimization recommendationsis the best and most realistic approach.