Green Notes

These unprecedented tough economic times have affected the best of businesses and data centers are no exceptions. Many of them have had to put a hasty stop to facility renovation and infrastructure improvement projects. In this crunching environment, co-location services are proving to be an effective, practical alternative especially for small businesses. It gives modest startups an opportunity to take advantage of state of the art technology while holding down capital expenses. For delving deeper into how our Solar Powered co-location service can save you a big chunk, contact us at sales@GreenRackSystems.com/1-408-727-7990 .

Another way of approaching the crippling economy is to conserve and maximize the resources that the data center already possesses. The consultants at Green Rack system provide complete facility assessment services to not only maintain what you have got but also prevent any future problems that could prove to be expensive. The minimum cost that might be incurred for maintenance would make a lot of sense when huge potential savings can be gained due to purchasing and installing new infrastructure equipment. Our team will lend an experienced eye to point out repairs and necessary component replacements that could trigger huge problems like clogged air filters that lead to decreased cooling efficiency, debris filled evaporator coils or test checking circuit boards for on-chip mal-functions.

With all the high tech , innovative and inherently complicated solutions we strive for to perfect our sophisticated network of systems, who would have thought that all we need to do sometimes is sit back and chill- yes literally! In recent years air cooling has been brought up again and again as a viable, sustainable and cost effective method of cooling our over heated data centers. It certainly cannot get greener than this!
In many data centers, cooling alone is responsible for a 30-70% overhead in energy usage, according to Google’s Green Initiatives. Google claims to have reduced the energy-weighted average overhead across all Google-built data centers to 19% versus the average of 96% reported by the EPA, thereby reducing the overhead by more than fourfold compared to standard datacenters thanks to their cooling towers that take advantage of the natural phenomenon of evaporation.

We have spoken previously in our blogs about a group called The Green Grid that is involved in developing standards to measure data center efficiency. It recently released an online tool for data centers and operations managers to assess how much free evaporative cooling is available for their facilities. You can punch in your zip code and other specific variables like local energy costs, IT load, and facility load, if you are located in United States or Canada, to calculate your potential energy and money savings due to air cooling. According to EcoGeek, a 1 MW data center in San Jose where power costs 12.78 cents per kWh would save $66,000 a year by using outside cooling. Pretty incredible! Based on the results obtained from the tool, the data centers can determine if air cooling is a viable option for their individual case. There are several ways that you can take advantage of this free resource to alleviate your power bills, including having a more open floor plan, using air pipes, building air towers etc. For more greener , cost effective cooling options , and solutions that can be customized to your data center , please contact Green Rack Systems consultants at sales@GreenRackSystems.com/ 408-213-8144

In December 2008, a survey of Emerson Network Power and Liebert data center users found that respondents planned to double the power densities in their data centers.The Data Center Users Group (The DCUG is a group of approximately 2,000 influential data centers, IT and facility managers founded by Emerson Network Power in 2003. ) surveyed about 150 data center managers focusing on data center efficiency. Energy efficiency was one of the top three concerns for nearly half (47%) of survey respondents, showing a remarkable increase compared to previous years.

Some of the other findings were:
• 61% were cutting their budget due to economic conditions, and 35% were delaying capital projects. Even so more than 75 percent of survey respondents are still planning for changes to take place within their facilities.
• 46% said adequate monitoring was a top three concern.
• The average kW per rack has increased from 6 to 7.4 over the past three years, a more than 20% jump.
• Data center managers have improved efficiency through airflow improvements such as blanking panels and hot-aisle cold-aisle containment and by using variable cooling that responds to need rather than going full blast all the time.
• The top concern of data center managers was heat density.
• Data center managers were unwilling to compromise availability for efficiency. Data center managers will be taking into account corporate initiatives to improve energy usage throughout the data center; yet, this initiative is challenged by the understanding that availability remains the top priority.
• When budgets permit, more than half (52 percent) of respondents indicated future facilities would be designed to support densities of between 10 kW and 20 kW per rack – significantly higher than the 7.4 kW average supported by current facilities. Some of the reasons they cited for moving to higher density data centers was to save facility space, support blade servers and reduce energy costs.
• Energy usage strategy was still missing. Even though one in four respondents had completed an analysis of the efficiency of their data center equipment thereby exhibiting high awareness, only 28 percent of survey respondents had a documented strategy to reduce energy usage.
• Amid the deployment of new technologies and subsequent maintenance of the data center infrastructure, almost half of the respondents indicated that the complexity of their cooling, monitoring and power systems is increasing.
• More than half (55 percent) of the survey respondents turned to power and cooling assessments to help with complexities in the data center. Through these assessments, 74 percent evaluated cooling reliability, 54 percent energy consumption and 51 percent expansion plans.

The results of the survey are extremely encouraging in terms of the awareness and knowledge exhibited by IT managers to adopt energy efficient strategies, identify problem areas and show promising initiative to increase efficiency. But the results also clearly indicate that majority of the facilities are found lacking in terms of having a methodical, clear cut plan to implement changes. The problem might of course be budget cuts. It might also be lack of enough personnel to manage and monitor the renovations. As the results show, data centers might need a little extra help to grasp the mounting complexities due to increasingly sophisticated computing to attack cooling and power problems. That is precisely why a professional consultation and a little outside help will come in handy to help assess, plan and execute precise measures to maximize energy efficiency. Contact us at Green Rack Systems for improving data center control, analysis and overall efficient management, especially in the area of energy management, and expert guidance tailored to your Data center’s functionality, goal and budget.