California Center for Sustainable Energy

Data centers get environmental & economic benefits

There’s an area of business that’s never down regardless of economic conditions (short of bankruptcy) – information technology (IT). For businesses that own and manage their own data centers, the need to process, store, retrieve and share an ever-increasing amount of data places great demands on company resources, but with the right strategies, IT managers can successfully bridge the gaps between information needs, limited resources and environmental issues, according to Greg Schulz, an IT industry analyst and author.

Speaking at a workshop titled “The Green and Virtual Data Center” held at the Energy Resource Center in January, Schulz outlined the latest IT industry trends for nearly 100 information managers, computer consultants, business owners and others, addressing IT efficiency, optimization, productivity and green issues. The workshop was made possible through collaboration between CCSE’s education staff and CompuCom Systems, Inc., a leading IT outsourcing company headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

According to Schulz, gaps stem from beliefs that greening IT is all about environmental issues and primarily focus on reducing carbon footprints by avoiding electricity use and consolidating computer capacities. In reality, he points out, by addressing green issues, it is also possible to do more work faster with less energy, improve performance and reduce costs while accounting for sustained information-handling growth.

Assessing your data center’s green potential begins with an analysis of its power, cooling, floor space and environmental requirements. Compared to typical office space, data centers, on average, consume 15 to 25 times the amount of electrical power per square foot, with about half consumed by cooling and the balance for servers, storage, networking and other aspects. With the growth in use, demand and storage, the natural response is to expand space, but that is not always possible or economically feasible and certainly will add to energy consumption.

Schulz recommends the following steps to boost data center energy efficiency.

• Do more work using the same or less amount of power and cooling
• Leverage faster processors and controllers that use the same or less power
• Apply the appropriate RAID level for application and data QoS requirements
• Consolidate slower storage or servers to faster, more energy-efficient solutions, particularly ENERGY STAR-rated hardware
• Use faster disk drives with a capacity boost and that draw less power
• Look beyond capacity utilization; keep response time and availability in mind
• Leverage intelligent power management (IPM), adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) and other modes to vary performance and energy usage
• Manage data both locally and remotely; use virtual and cloud storage solutions
• Utilize multiple data footprint techniques to reduce impacts, including archive, compression and deduplication (elimination of redundant data)

Making the connection between environmental and economical greening is largely a matter of perception, Schulz said.

When he asks IT pros if they are under direction to implement green initiatives, the usual response is below 20 percent. Yet, when he asks who has or foresees growing problems with power, cooling, floor space and environmental issues, the average is 80–90 percent. The ironic twist of greening an IT data center, Schulz points out, is that by optimizing power, cooling, floor space and environmental requirements, the byproduct is improved economics, more efficient energy use and potential reduction in carbon footprint. Most IT managers simply do not make the link between green as efficiency and effectiveness including boosting productivity and other IT issues.

“To power IT equipment in the future, you may not be able to assume that your energy provider will be able to supply you with adequate and reliable power in a cost-effective manner,” Schulz said. “Addressing IT efficiency, optimization, productivity and green issues is a process; there is no one single solution or magic formula. Rather, a combination of technologies, techniques and best practices to address the issues and requirements is needed.”

In addition to Schulz’s presentation, the workshop included a panel discussion and Q&A session with representatives of Compucom, APC, HP, Intel and VMware.

Greg Schulz is founder of the Server and StorageIO Group, an IT consultancy firm headquartered in Stillwater, Minn. He is the author of Resilient Storage Network (Elsevier) and The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC). His blog is at www.storageioblog.com and he is on twitter.

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