How do I measure gains from my green data center initiative?
Power is a limited resource and data centers have become increasingly responsible with it is managed. The mandate to reduce the carbon footprint is reaching all areas of corporations as they seek to become more environmentally friendly. As one of the largest consumers of resources within the corporation, the data center community is driven to find ways to operate more efficiently and contribute to sustainability efforts.
The first step to launching a green data center efficiency project is to get a baseline on your environment so that you can measure your progress and report your results. Whether you are focused on virtualization and consolidation or on improving your PUE, you need to understand which equipment is using power and how much it is consuming.
Viridity EnergyCenter discovers your networked IT equipment and reports back power consumption data down to the device level within a few hours of launching a discovery. EnergyCenter is software-only and installs within seven minutes. It does not rely on obstrusive sensors or agents to collect utilization and power consumption information.
Because power consumption is dynamic, when you baseline your data center’s power consumption, it is best to take measurements over a period of several weeks or months to get a true reading. EnergyCenter automates this process and provides the information you need on power and utilization down to the device level for your baseline.
Once your measurements are in place, you need to decide how you will increase your data center efficiency. There are three primary ways to reduce the power consumption of your servers: retire, consolidation, or refresh.
Server Retirement – According to the Uptime Institute, up to 30% of servers on the data center floor are contributing little or no useful work for the business. Viridity recommends that you identify all servers with less then 2% utilization and flag them as potential candidates for retirement or redeployment. Removing servers that are not contributing to the business is the fastest way to increase efficiency as you are removing the power needed to run the server as well as the power used for cooling, without negatively impacting the business.
Consolidation – When done right, consolidating or virtualizing servers offers a tremendous increase in efficiency and space. To truly benefit from consolidation, it is necessary to remove servers that are not contributing to the business. Once you have removed the underutilized servers, Viridity recommends you identify and flag all remaining servers with less than 10% utilization for consolidation. This optimizes the quantity of servers you can consolidate to a single server. By consolidating 10, 20, or even 30 servers into a single server, you can drive up the utilization and run your data center more efficiently. Be sure to measure the power consumption after the consolidation to compare to your baseline consumption and cooling.
Tech Refresh – As the cost of power rises, it is often more efficient and economical to replace old servers with newer equipment. In situations where the extra cost of powering the old equipment costs more than the expense of purchasing the new equipment, this becomes a quick win. Viridity recommends identifying the top power consumers in your data center and evaluating their efficiency. By upgrading the biggest, most inefficient power hogs first, you maximize your return on investment. With EnergyCenter, you can can automatically generate a report with actionable information. By monitoring your equipment over time, you can select the best candidates for refresh.