Signposts on the Road to Data Center Energy Savings
The EPA's report to Congress recommends standard guidelines for energy efficiency at the nation's electricity-hungry data centers.
1) R&D priorities need to include energy efficiency. Chip, hardware and storage manufacturers need to refocus road maps to make sure the rate of improvement in energy efficiency exceeds the rate of increase in computational performance. Facilities manufacturers need to look at design alternatives that will reduce the power requirement of site infrastructures. Brill says the fact that companies have been so wasteful of resources up to this point isn’t such a bad thing because it means there is lots of room for immediate improvement. “We have a cushion while R&D gets reacquainted with what they need to do.”
2) Companies should benchmark their current energy consumption. IT managers and data center operators have to measure and benchmark power use. The Institute is developing a set of metrics and analysis tools that will provide a standard way for IT to understand its data center energy efficiency and look for areas of improvement.
3) Corporate leaders need to adopt new IT governance policies for data center management. C-suite execs, primarily CIOs and CFOs, must drive new enterprise-wide approaches to data center management.
4) Technology makers must identify performance factors that define a green data center and strive to meet them. Examples include maximum IT hardware productivity, maximum computational performance per unit of internal power, and efficient site infrastructure.
At Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., TCO is measured in terms of hardware, software, power, cooling and administrative overhead. Richard Siedzick, director of computer and telecommunications services at Bryant, turned to American Power Conversion (APC) and IBM to not only improve the efficiency of Bryant’s data center operation, but also to consolidate three separate facilities into one. At the time, Bryant operated in a decentralized environment: Organizations around campus provisioned their own servers, 75 in all, in three data centers scattered around campus. “It was our goal to consolidate, virtualize and improve efficiencies,” says Siedzick.
Bryant implemented a pre-engineered data center from IBM, which is based on APC’s InfraStruXure data center architecture. It features IBM blade servers that run on Linux and IBM virtualization software—technologies that are part of Project Big Green, IBM’s plan to help customers reduce their data center energy use. Consolidating from 75 to 40 servers and moving from 1,100 square feet of space to 500, in addition to following APC and IBM’s prescription for energy efficiency, which includes paying attention to the air conditioners and placement of IT equipment, has helped Bryant reach close to 80 percent efficiency. TCO reductions have been seen across the board: “In our research and related hardware budget, we’ve had a 35 percent reduction in expense and we’ve seen a 40 percent reduction in subscription and support costs,” says Siedzick. Bryant has also realized a 50 percent reduction in maintenance costs as a direct result of server consolidation.
green IT
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