August 4, 2008

Small Steps to Make Data Centers Green And Cost Effective

High energy prices are making the cost of running data centers in many companies the second-largest expense after people. With the cost of powering data centers worldwide to possibly grow from $18.5 billion in 2005 to $250 billion by 2012, Bob Worral, chief information officer at Sun Microsystems says in a Forbes piece that there is no better time than now to focus investment on more energy-efficient data centers.

Worral offers small steps all decision makers can take to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of their data centers:

1.    Check the server racks and replace old systems with modern ones, which often allow for consolidation ratios ranging from 2:1 to 10:1.
2.    Look at virtualization and container technologies, this could allow greater compression in both servers and storage.
3.    Turn on the meter at the rack level, this enables power consumption reduction by focusing on certain areas in a data center instead of the traditional, scattershot approach which cools the whole area when only a particular area in the data center starts to run hot.
4.    IT and facilities organizations need to collaborate to make sure both understand the benefits of energy-efficient computing.

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