Expression GreenExpressing the need for a healthy green lifestyle

IT depart­ments are under increas­ing scrutiny and pres­sure to deliver environmentally-sound solu­tions. Large data cen­tres are one of the most sig­nif­i­cant energy con­sumers in an organisation’s IT infra­struc­ture, so any mea­sures that you can take to reduce this con­sump­tion (and there­fore also car­bon diox­ide emis­sions) will have a pos­i­tive impact on your organisation’s envi­ron­men­tal footprint.

The con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of a green data cen­tre involve advanced tech­nolo­gies and strate­gies, for example

- Reduc­ing the power con­sump­tion of the data cen­tre

- Min­imis­ing the foot­prints of the build­ings

- Max­imis­ing cool­ing effi­ciency

- Using low-emission build­ing mate­ri­als, car­pets and paints

- Installing cat­alytic con­vert­ers on backup gen­er­a­tors

- Using alter­na­tive energy tech­nolo­gies such as pho­to­voltaic elec­tri­cal heat pumps and evap­o­ra­tive cooling 

The con­sump­tion of energy is con­sid­ered the dom­i­nant — and often the only — fac­tor in defin­ing whether or not a facil­ity is green. IT exec­u­tives there­fore need to start inves­ti­gat­ing alter­na­tive ways of build­ing energy-efficient data centres. 

By fol­low­ing these seven sim­ple steps, IT exec­u­tives can come closer to achiev­ing their vision of a green data centre: 

Seven Sim­ple Steps

1. Think green

Envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns are front of mind through­out soci­ety today, and you can also take a ‘green’ atti­tude towards your data cen­tre, both in terms of cur­rent state and also future plan­ning. Also, many data cen­tre ven­dors and ser­vice providers are pro­vid­ing green alter­na­tives — fac­tor these options in when nego­ti­at­ing new con­tracts and plan­ning upgrades. 

Incor­po­rate the green vision in your plan­ning — your future will be impacted by leg­is­la­tion, stan­dards and mar­ket demands in this area.

2. Vir­tu­alise and con­sol­i­date

A vir­tu­al­i­sa­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion project is often a step in the right direc­tion towards green com­put­ing. Research indi­cates that a server often only utilises between 5 and 15% of its capac­ity to ser­vice one appli­ca­tion. With appro­pri­ate analy­sis and con­sol­i­da­tion, many of these low util­i­sa­tion devices can be com­bined into a sin­gle phys­i­cal server, con­sum­ing only a frac­tion of the power of the orig­i­nal devices and sav­ing on costs, as well as tak­ing a step towards a more environmentally-friendly data cen­tre environment.

3. Design a best prac­tice floor plan

Adopt­ing an alter­nat­ing hot aisle/cold aisle lay­out is opti­mal and can cor­rect many cool­ing prob­lems in a typ­i­cal data cen­tre. By imple­ment­ing a hot/cold aisle lay­out, equip­ment is spared from hav­ing hot air recir­cu­lated and thereby elim­i­nat­ing risk of an out­age through device fail­ure. Also, by hav­ing a com­mon hot aisle, you have the abil­ity to con­tain areas where heat den­sity is high, such as racks with blade servers, and deal with the heat in a spe­cific man­ner. This allows for mul­ti­ple heat rejec­tion meth­ods to be in use within one data centre.

4. Use appro­pri­ate tech­nol­ogy

In tak­ing a green approach to your data cen­tre, your eval­u­a­tion of prod­ucts is no longer just a price ver­sus per­for­mance com­par­i­son. It is impor­tant to incor­po­rate the total costs of the envi­ron­ment into the cal­cu­la­tion, which then also includes costs for energy consumption. 

5. Take a green per­spec­tive on ILM

Infor­ma­tion Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment (ILM) is the opti­mum allo­ca­tion of stor­age resources that sup­port a busi­ness. Every ele­ment of infor­ma­tion in an organ­i­sa­tion has a use­ful lifes­pan, and this can range from a voice con­ver­sa­tion to cer­tain legal and med­ical records. By imple­ment­ing an ILM strat­egy, you have the abil­ity to cre­ate greater effi­cien­cies in data stor­age, which in turn lead to greater effi­cien­cies in ele­ments such as power consumption.

6. Inves­ti­gate liq­uid cool­ing

To meet the chal­lenges of blade servers and high-density com­put­ing, more organ­i­sa­tions are real­is­ing the need for effec­tive cool­ing and heat man­age­ment solu­tions. Many are wel­com­ing liq­uid cool­ing sys­tems into their infra­struc­tures to achieve bet­ter cool­ing effi­ciency, while oth­ers may find it dif­fi­cult to fathom pipes of run­ning water snaking through the plenums of their data centres. 

7. Uti­lize greener energy sources

Many energy util­i­ties are now offer­ing greener options for cus­tomers, with power from sus­tain­able sources. For exam­ple, in the United States, the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has formed the Green Power Part­ner­ship, which encour­ages and assists orga­ni­za­tions to buy green power and reduce their impact on the envi­ron­ment. Major economies in Asia have accepted the Kyoto Pro­to­col to con­trol car­bon emis­sion how­ever only Japan has com­mit­ted to a reduc­tion by 2012. The aware­ness on social respon­si­bil­ity and oppor­tu­nity to save oper­a­tional cost has raised the bar on aware­ness and will­ing­ness to adopt a more green approach towards utilities.