IT departments could make substantial savings in
electricity costs by paying greater attention to datacentre cooling
requirements, according to a report from Forrester
Research.
The analyst firm said datacentres require 0.5 to 1 watt of
cooling power for each watt of server power used. In a 1,000-server
computer room, this becomes a significant cost.
"Optimising your cooling systems will improve the energy
efficiency of your datacentre considerably," said Richard Fichera,
vice-president at Forrester Research. Using energy efficient
servers was another way to bring down costs, he added.
Fichera expected IT suppliers to target users looking at greater
energy efficiency over the next 24 months. "There is money in
efficiency," he said.
Making datacentres more power efficient will require radical
improvements by suppliers of semiconductors, systems and software.
But these changes could limit users' control over systems, Fichera
warned.
Along with energy efficient hardware, Forrester Research
recommended that users look to maximise the usage of their existing
server infrastructure.
Fichera said, "Because a typical x86 server consumes between 30%
and 40% of its maximum power when it is idle, running systems with
very light workloads wastes power." Increasing the average
utilisation of the servers can yield significant benefits in
overall operational efficiency.
Since datacentres are designed to last many years, users have
generally chosen large facilities to accommodate current and future
computing requirements. However, Forrester Research recommended
that users select a dense datacentre. This is likely to cost more
per square foot, but because it would be smaller, it could
potentially be cooled more efficiently, the analyst firm said.
"A modular approach to provisioning and cooling the incremental
space as it is needed can pay off with major gains in efficiency,"
Fichera said.
Read article:
Rising costs in the datacentre