Revised government guidelines and high energy prices
make the careful consideration of datacentre design and location a
business imperative.
There is a worrying trend in IT departments to invest in
space-saving infrastructure advances such as blade servers in a bid
to maximise the computational power available within the
datacentre.
But such cutting-edge designs are power-hungry and require a
significant investment in cooling technology to be efficient. At
the same time, datacentres have increased their power consumption,
with more storage installed to keep larger volumes of data for
longer in line with regulatory compliance.
What all this amounts to is a power-hungry datacentre design.
With electricity and gas prices still trading at all-time highs,
power is becoming a significant cost in running a datacentre.
Datacentres are making such a significant contribution to an
organisation's overall power consumption and electricity bill that
the time is right for businesses to look at adopting better energy
management policies in the datacentre. They need to keep a tighter
control of their power consumption, minimise waste and meet the
ever more stringent requirements of new government legislation.
The problem lies in the fact that the technologies designed to
save space and store large volumes of data do not sit within
environments designed with better energy management in mind.
With office buildings being primarily designed to accommodate
people, the conflicting demands of "people space" versus "IT space"
are becoming increasingly incompatible.
Enterprises continue to expand their IT systems, but office
buildings simply cannot supply the necessary power, cooling and
security to minimise the risk of costly downtime, meet business
continuity requirements and reduce power consumption.
By being inefficient and wasting energy, office buildings do
nothing to alleviate the problem of rising energy bills for
businesses.
Moreover, with UK electricity prices continuing to rise,
businesses need to focus on better energy management planning.
Their readiness to do so will be hastened by revised government
guidelines. PPS22 and Part L of the Building Regulations 2006 lay
down that both new and refurbished buildings have to comply with
comprehensive minimum energy standards and are required to improve
their energy performance by 23%-28% compared with previous
guidelines.
The revised government legislation will affect all new
datacentre designs. Datacentre equipment manufacturers, IT hardware
manufacturers and designers must help datacentre managers reduce
their energy use by specifying efficient designs that take the new
legislation into account and reduce a building's carbon
footprint.
With the Carbon Trust establishing carbon savings as an
organisational imperative, it is only a matter of time before
datacentres come under scrutiny for the significant role they can
play in reducing energy consumption.
Power consumption continues to rise, energy costs show no sign
of slowing and the revised government guidelines affect all new
datacentre designs. In this context it is time for businesses to
think twice about locating mission-critical IT systems in the same
office building as their staff.
As companies grow and require more space to house their staff,
it makes sense to consider locating IT equipment in purpose-built
environments.
In switching to a fit-for-purpose datacentre, businesses can use
space and power more efficiently and comply with the revised
government guidelines in reducing the carbon footprint of their
office buildings.
● Mick Dalton is chairman of the British Institute of Facilities
Management and group operations director at Global Switch