Seven steps to a green data center

Computerworld - Editor's note: We inadvertently omitted the full name and title of Bogomil Balkansky, senior director of product marketing at VMware Inc. This information was added on Tuesday, April 24, around 5:45 PM. Computerworld regrets the error.


How green is your data center? If you don't care now, you will soon. Most data center managers haven't noticed the steady rise in electricity costs, since they don't usually see those bills. But they do see the symptoms of surging power demands.

High-density servers are creating hot spots in data centers that have surpassed 30 kilowatts per rack for some high-end systems. As a result, some data center managers are finding that they can't get enough power distributed out to those racks on the floor. Still others are finding that they can't get more power to the building: they've maxed out the power utility's ability to deliver additional capacity to that location.

The problem already has Mallory Forbes' attention. "Every year, as we revise our standards, the power requirements seem to go up," says Forbes, senior vice president and manager of mainframe technology at Regions Financial Corp. in Birmingham, Ala. "It creates a big challenge in managing the data center because you continually have to add power."

Energy efficiency savings can add up. A watt saved in data center power consumption saves at least a watt in cooling. IT managers who take the long view are already paying attention to the return on investment associated with acquiring more energy-efficient equipment. "Energy becomes important in making a business case that goes out five years," says Robert Yale, principal of technical operations at The Vanguard Group Inc. in Valley Forge, Pa. His 60,000-square-foot data center caters mostly to Web-based transactions. While security and availability come first, he says Vanguard is "focusing more on the energy issue than we have in the past."

Green data centers don't just save energy, they also reduce the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades to deal with increased power and cooling demands. Some organizations are also starting to take the next step and are looking at the entire data center from an environmental perspective. (See "Greening up is about more than just energy.")

Following these steps will keep astute data center managers ahead of the game.

Consolidate your servers, and consolidate some more

Existing data centers can achieve substantial savings by making just a few basic changes, and consolidating servers is a good place to start, says Ken Brill, founder and executive director of The Uptime Institute, a consultancy in Santa Fe, N.M., that has studied this issue for several years. In many data centers, he says, "between 10% and 30% of servers are dead and could be turned off."