Datacentre managers face a growing dilemma as businesses
put pressure on them to deliver more computing power while also
asking them toreduce rising IT energy costs,
theBritish Computer
Societyhas said.
Zahl Limbuwala, chairman of the BCS's datacentre division, said
that IT managers are increasingly being caught 'between a rock and
a hard place' as the power consumption of servers rise along with
businesses demand for processing.
"At the same time, datacentre managers are working against
constraints such as the need to offset carbon emissions as a result
of green IT strategies, rising power costs and the local
availability of grid power," he said.
A worldwide survey of 3,300 datacentre managers revealed at this
week's
Datacentre Dynamics Conference confirmed the dilemma. Managers
ranked keeping datacentres running as their number one priority,
but this was followed by reducing costs through energy efficency as
their next objective.
Approximately 80% of managers said they could not forecast if
their datacentre would be able to deliver the required electricity
to servers in line with the business demand for more processing
power.
To better negotiate with managers, Limbuwala said datacentre
staff had to begin measuring energy efficency in datacentres. This
would allow datacentre managers to forecast how a likely rise in
transactions from the business would be met by the datacentre. This
in turn could allow datacentre managers to better explain rises in
energy costs during budget reviews and planning.
"Datacentre managers must begin measuring the IT energy costs of
delivering business services. You can't manage what you can't
measure," he said.