Cooling Is Half The BattleImprove Data Center Cooling To Save Energy & Money
Written By Rod Cher, Processor - Vol. 32 Issue 22
Ubiquitous connectivity, an explosion of online apps, and an increased emphasis on data mining are driving a major expansion of data center capacity, meaning your data center’s server capacity is now several times what it was a few years ago, and it’s still increasing.
Yet, the physical size of the data center usually remains unchanged, which means that more--and more powerful--servers are being crammed into the same space. In an “always-on” environment, this means increased heat and decreased airflow, which in turn means an inefficient HVAC system that’s costing you money and using more energy than it should.
How much money? According to an Info-Tech Research Group report, “Top 10 Energy-Saving Tips for a Greener Data Center,” you’re spending about 20% of your data center budget on power and cooling. In fact, according to some analysts, annual cooling and energy costs now outstrip the cost of powering the servers themselves. And it’s getting worse: According to The Uptime Institute, the heat density of data centers is increasing at a rate of 15% or more per year. Meanwhile, the portion of your data center’s energy consumption attributable to cooling is 50%; yes, finding a way to cool your data center more efficiently is literally half the battle.
Solutions To Your Data Center’s Energy Crisis
It would be wonderful to address the cooling problem by rebuilding the data center. New materials, new architectural strategies, and the “plug-and-play” modular approach that is now being utilized by such giant data center pioneers as Google and IBM would certainly result in a more efficient, greener operation. However, we don’t all have that luxury. We can--and must--revamp, but most of us can’t afford to start from scratch. So what’s left? Here are some cooling-related recommendations:
Effective Server Utilization - According to Info-Tech, the average server utilization ranges from 10 to 20% of capacity. Reducing the number of servers lowers cooling costs by as much as 50%, and it also reduces your fixed asset investment. Info-Tech notes: “Significant energy savings can be achieved by ruthlessly prioritizing and only providing redundancy where it is really needed.” This can include--but need not be limited to--server consolidation and virtualization.
Help IT And Facilities Communicate More Effectively - Energy costs are often invisible to IT, thus providing little incentive to economize. “IT needs to understand how purchasing decisions affect facilities and what the baseline is in order to track improvement. Similarly, facilities must know ahead of time what’s coming down the pipeline in terms of power, space, and cooling requirements,” the report says.
Upgrade Legacy Equipment - Older equipment is simply less efficient. Have migration plans in place for all IT equipment, and look into blade servers as a way to reduce and monitor your ener-gy consumption.
Revisit Those TCO Numbers - Your TCO calculations may have omitted power and cooling costs when they were derived. That’s bad. These days, energy costs can easily rival the cost of maintaining hardware.
Target Your Cooling - Room-level air conditioning is not nearly as efficient as solutions at the rack level. And a study from the Rocky Mountain Institute shows that liquid cooling can reduce cooling costs by 30 to 50%.
Work toward better airflow. Efficient air distribution can reduce heat-related malfunctions and lower operating costs, while Info-Tech notes that bad airflow can cost you 60% of the cold air that you deliver to the data center.
It would be wonderful to address the cooling problem by rebuilding the data center. New materials, new architectural strategies, and the “plug-and-play” modular approach that is now being utilized by such giant data center pioneers as Google and IBM would certainly result in a more efficient, greener operation. However, we don’t all have that luxury. We can--and must--revamp, but most of us can’t afford to start from scratch. So what’s left? Here are some cooling-related recommendations:
888.220.6700
Sales@AVTECH.com
AVTECH Software, Inc.