Businesses can make massive savings in the operating costs of
their datacentres by takingrelatively inexpensive steps, such as removing
servers.
How to cut your datacentre
costs
- Rationalise hardware
- Consolidate datacentre sites
- Manage energy and facilities costs
- Renegotiate IT contracts
- Manage the staff costs
- Sweat the assets
- Virtualisation
Given decreasing IT budgets, Rakesh Kumar, research
vice-president at Gartner, says, "Removing a single x86 server will
result in savings of more than $400 a year in energy costs
alone."
CIOs that start a consolidation and virtualisation project can
expect it to pay off in 12 to 18 months. CIOs should also extend
the life of x86 servers beyond the three to five-year timeframe,
which Gartner says will lead to savings of up to 32%.
According to Gartner, hardware rationalisation projects usually
yield savings of 5% to 10% of the overall hardware costs, when
measured post project. Hardware rationalisation also improves
inventory management and should lower maintenance and support
charges.
Next, Gartner recommends that CIOs consolidate multiple
datacentre sites into a few larger sites, which it says will result
in financial savings of between 5% and 15% of the overall
datacentre budget.
As well as reducing the number of buildings, Gartner expects
CIOs will be able to get rid of redundant IT assets, software,
maintenance and support, and disaster recovery contracts. Gartner
urges users not just to get rid of people but to retrain them to
fill skill gaps in other parts of the datacentre or wider IT
organisation.
By running datacentres at 24°C, CIOs can reduce their cooling
requirements, which will help lower electricity bills, according to
Gartner. Users should also use outside/free air as an alternative
to air conditioning and run hot aisle/cold aisle configurations,
blanking panels and economisers to improve the efficiency of
cooling.
Businesses should use server-based energy management software to
run workloads in the most energy efficient way, such as taking
advantage of lower energy tariffs.
Gartner urges IT directors to work with finance and procurement
teams to revisit all hardware, lease, software, maintenance and
support contracts. In some cases, it may be appropriate to
terminate a contract because it is too expensive, while in others,
new terms and conditions may secure a lower payment schedule.
Suppliers are used to reviewing contracts during downturns, Gartner
says.
The next area of cost reduction is in staffing. Gartner advises
users to review staffing levels and the types of skills needed for
the next 24 months and to make maximum use of labour arbitrage
benefits by using skills in regions with cheaper labour rates, such
as India, Brazil, Poland and Romania.
Delaying the procurement of new assets should be considered a
necessary step for all datacentre managers, according to Gartner.
Putting off upgrades may result in a performance disadvantage and
possibly an energy use increase but will defer the capital expense
of a new acquisition.
Finally, Gartner recommends users run virtualisation to improve
operational efficiency, as well as to support consolidation,
decommissioning and cost management programmes. Gartner estimates
that users can expect to see net savings within 24 months, and the
effective use of virtualisation can reduce server energy
consumption by as much as 82% and floor space by as much as
86%.