logo
We can all agree: server sprawl is a very real issue; energy requirements are skyrocketing; there's a continual move towards faster processors, memory, diskdrives; global warming in playing a major factor and it's only getting hotter (remember last August when the Empire State Building actually had to shut of the lights to save power?). Interesting fact, did you know that IDC says that for every $1 spent on hardware, $0.50 is spent on energy to power and cool it? With all that's changing in technology, how does anyone actually accurately budget for power and cooling anymore?
So what does a green data center really mean for you in a practical sense? First a definition: a green data center is constructed to run as economically as possible. All computer, electrical, cooling and lighting systems, as well as building materials and facilities must be rated for maximum efficiency.
Knowing what we know about complexity and change in an enterprise data center, how does a company actually go green without going blue in the face?
- Make "going green" an IT priority or expect to play catch-up to your competitors
- Start investing in technologies that reduce the amount of power you need. Consider how solar power can augment your peak demands during critical spikes in utilization
- Start investing in technologies that reduce the amount of watts you need for individual server racks. There are some very cool (and usable) inert gas chiller technologies out there (including the one from Egenera and Liebert we call CoolFrame) that can reduce the amount of cooling power needed for a server rack by 80%
- Reduce the amount of idle or poorly utilized servers by investing in virtualization, utility computing technologies, "scaling horizontal" applications and databases, and hypervisors
