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With energy costs rising and information technology (IT) equipment stressing the power and cooling infrastructure—which, in turn, threatens operating resiliency—many see an economic and operational crisis looming. CIOs today are being challenged to rethink their data center strategies, adding energy efficiency to a list of critical operating parameters that already includes serviceability, reliability and performance. A green initiative can help a company regain power and cooling capacity, recapture resiliency and help meet business needs—while, at the same time, dramatically reducing energy costs and the total cost of ownership. To further reward companies for energy-conscious behavior, many local utility and state energy funds are offering economic incentives or rebates for measures that reduce energy consumption.
Transitioning to a green data center and optimizing operating efficiency can be a complex undertaking. There are multiple components to factor into the equation—and best results can often be achieved by integrating improvements from multiple fronts. The good news is that there are many solutions and techniques available to support such a transition. Furthermore, the process can occur in a step-wise manner, reducing risks and helping to realize benefits along the way. Going green is becoming more than an altruistic aspiration to save the planet. It’s now clear that going green is a necessity that companies will need to embrace—sooner rather than later—to survive economically.
Challenges facing CIOs
Responding to customer demand for better performance at lower prices, the information technology industry has delivered faster servers, lower-cost storage and more flexible networking equipment. While these new components can often deliver ever-greater performance per unit of power, they can also be increasingly power hungry. In addition, the evolution of high-density, rack-mounted servers has typically increased heat density, creating hot spots and taxing cooling systems. The excessive heat can also threaten operating stability, resiliency and staff productivity.Many of the data centers housing this “hot” new technology are now 10 to 15 years old. As a result, their critical infrastructure equipment is likely to be growing inefficient and reaching the end of its useful life.
These aging data centers are having a hard time keeping up with today’s demands. Typical data centers draw approximately two to three times the amount of power required for the IT equipment because conventional data center designs are oversized for maximum capacity and older infrastructure components can be very inefficient. The cost associated with this level of power consumption can significantly impact the total cost of ownership for data center facilities and IT systems. The rising cost of a kilowatt of electricity has further compounded the problem. Cooling and electrical costs currently represent up to 44 percent of a data center’s total cost of ownership. According to The Uptime Institute, the three-year cost of powering and cooling servers is currently one-and-a-half times the cost of purchasing server hardware.
As a high-level university administrator recently discovered, “With the growing demand for cheaper and ever-more-powerful high-performance computer clusters, the problem is not just paying for the computers, but determining whether we have the budget to pay for power and cooling.”Meanwhile, some companies can’t even deploy more servers because extra electricity isn’t available at any price. Many utilities, especially those in crowded urban areas, are telling customers that power feeds are at capacity and they simply have no more power to sell.
A study by Jonathan Koomey, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University, has indicated that server energy demand has doubled from 2000 to 2005. The study estimates that power used by servers, cooling and ancillary infrastructure in 2005 accounted for about 1.2 percent of the United States’ electrical usage—the equivalent in capacity terms of about five 1,000 MW power plants. This issue hasn’t escaped the attention of power companies or government organizations. In the U.S., over 80 local utility and state energy efficiency programs are offering rebates for increasing energy efficiency. One of the first utilities to offer such a program is Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) of California. The company has approved a plan to reimburse part of the costs of server and storage consolidation projects, including software, hardware and consulting, up to a maximum of US$4 million per customer.
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