Data Center Energy Trends and Opportunities

Data centers use a lot of energy. On top of this, many existing data centers contain older or oversized equipment, or outdated designs that end up needlessly wasting a lot of that energy.

Philip Fischer, Global Data Center Segment Manager at Eaton, has identified issues with older or vintage data centers that illustrates the remaining untapped potential for energy reduction:

1. Aging equipment. Components often nearing the end of their recommended service life.
2. Low efficiency power and cooling equipment. Not fully loaded. According to the NRDC, “the average server operates at no more than 12% to 18% of its capacity while still drawing 30% to 60% of maximum power.”
3. Insufficient cooling capacity or ineffective cooling. They often struggle to cope with the intense heat generated by today’s dense, power-hungry IT equipment.
4. Crisis response and disaster recovery. Update crisis response plans. Develop a new one if none exists.
5. Speed to deploy. Some data centers have a requirement for avoiding hot electrical or mechanical work during peak operating time, but often the site may not have the same level of discipline or structure with respect to the wiring.
6. Security. In many vintage data centers, the infrastructure was not developed to account for today’s strictest data security and increased privacy needs.
7. Inappropriate sizing. The existing equipment may be over-provisioned or under capacity.
8. Lack of flexibility and scalability. Vendors, data centers and utilities will need to work together to find viable solutions for supporting increasingly dense IT environments and fluctuating data processing conditions more sustainably.

Teaching old data centers new tricks

These energy-saving measures can reduce your operating costs and improve data center performance:

• Combine. Consolidate inventory servers to track the number of applications running on each. Identify unused servers or units with low utilization. Consolidate, reassign or switch off servers to optimize usage.
• Go virtual. Server virtualization uses software to convert one server into a virtual machine that can perform multiple tasks. Virtualization combines processing power into fewer units operating at a higher capacity. You’ll reduce energy consumption and waste, and save space as well.
• Switch to hot aisle/cold aisle. Arrange servers in parallel rows so that the front of the servers are facing each other. This will improve air flow and reduce the need for cooling.
• Raise temperatures. ASHRAE recommends a server inlet temperature setting of 65°F to 80°F, yet many server room operators set temperatures as low as 55°F. Raising the temperature to within the recommended range can produce significant energy savings.
• Upgrade servers. Purchase ENERGY STAR®-certified units, which are 30% more energy efficient than standard models and deliver more processing power.

As you can see, there are still plenty of opportunities to save energy and money in your data center.