Green data centres have been on the
increase over the past few years, and there are a number of
ways to make your data centres more environmentally friendly,
through the use of
energy efficient technology and servers and systems that
require less power.
What are the benefits of green data centres?
Green data centres that are more energy efficient will, first of
all, benefit the environment, because they draw
less power and require less energy to be produced.
As a result, data centre components are able to run more
efficiently and require less cooling, and this in turn draws
less power overall.
From an IT director’s perspective, energy efficient data centres
can
lead to lower cost data centres, as fuel bills fall and
machines fail less frequently, and even take up less space.
Can you tell how green your data centre is?
It is difficult to calculate how green your data centre is, and
for
many IT managers, it just
isn’t a priority.
Added to this, data centre operations are complex and varied.
The fluctuating demand on individual server components can change
the energy efficiency of that machine, from the power supply to the
processor or the memory.
As a result, it is hard to create a truly
green data centre environment. Everything requires power and
some degree of cooling, and as such, creates a significant carbon
footprint.
Research has also shown that few data centre managers know how
much power their data centres are using.
This makes it difficult for them to come up with a
well-constructed plan to optimise power consumption and enhance
their "green" credentials.
Even those who have access to the power bill do not seem to have
any granular breakdown of how that power is being used. With data
centres representing the greatest energy spend for most large
organisations, such a
lack of visibility does need to be tackled.
What parts of a data centre can be greened?
Many
PCs, screens and power supplies have already had the
green treatment.
But it is also possible to procure and use a range of data
centre equipment that is considered to be
energy efficient.
These days, more and more servers, storage, power supply and
networking products are designed with the environment in mind. Even
the separate components in a server can be built to high standards
of energy efficiency.
What about the Energy Star rating system?
Manufacturers use the
Energy Star rating system
to indicate the energy efficiency of monitors, PCs and consumer
appliances.
In December 2006, the US government, which manages the rating,
turned its attention to data centres. It calculated that US
businesses could save up to $4 billion annually in electricity
costs if they used more energy-efficient data centre equipment.
As a result, the rating has recently been extended to cover data
centre equipment including servers, and eventually storage and
networking products.
As well as the Energy Star rating system, servers and other data
centre equipment adhere to are other certified standards that
indicate how eco-friendly they are.
What sorts of green technologies can be used in the data
centre?
Green data centres can make use of more efficient storage,
better power facilities, and
alternative power sources.
They can even make more use of multi-core processors and
virtualisation to
maximise their use of existing hardware.
The latter two technologies can reduce the number of systems
requiring separate power supplies while making operations more
efficient by dividing tasks among and within multiple processors in
each server computer.
How about outsourcing your data centre?
Many companies, that have previously hosted their own data
centres, have chosen to
outsource their data centre. As such, they have come to rely on
a facility managed off-site by a service provider, or located in a
collocation centre.
As a result, companies can require that their outsourcing
providers create green data centres, which conserve energy and use
efficient hardware – not least to help to lower the customer’s
costs.
One hosting company that has built a green data centre is
Rackspace.
The data centre is powered by renewable energy sources, and
draws power from a local combined heat and power plant that uses
wood chips, waste paper and fibre fuel to generate electricity, hot
water and steam.