IT’S NOT EASY
GOING GREEN
IT MUST KEEP COSTS AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION DOWN,
WHILE SUPPORTING THE DEMANDS OF THE BUSINESS.
BY EILEEN FERETIC
WHEN IT COMES TO CREATING ENVIRON-
mentally friendly data centers, there’s a lot
of talk, but not much action. Surveys show
that IT managers would like to “green up”
their data centers, but not many are actually
doing it.
What’s going on? It’s not often that companies get the chance to save money and the
planet at the same time, so why isn’t everyone
jumping on the green bandwagon?
Well, as with most things in life, it’s not
that simple.
IT management has to meet the business’
ever-increasing technology demands, while
simultaneously trying to keep costs and
energy consumption down. Not an enviable position
to be in.
Our “Going Green: Hype or Trend?” article (see
page 20) mentions an April 2008 “Lean & Green”
report from the Business Performance Management
Forum that underscores the disparity between what
managers would like to do and what they are actually
doing: Nearly 75 percent of the survey respondents
said green computing was “at least somewhat of
a priority,” but only 44 percent said they had any
specific plans in place.
In an even more disheartening finding, Symantec’s 2007
Green Data Center Report found that only one in seven
data center managers either implemented or had begun to
implement a green data center. Yet, the enterprises surveyed
in that study, which was conducted for Symantec by Ziff
Davis Enterprise, spent an average of $1.4 million per year
on electricity for their data centers. And, as we all are painfully aware, the cost of electricity continues to skyrocket
along with its consumption.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency,
electricity consumption for servers, cooling and auxiliary
infrastructures doubled in the United States between 2000
and 2005. The EPA forecasts continued growth in the
server population as enterprises expand their data center
capabilities.
Adding to the dismal forecast is a report by the Data
Center Institute of AFCOM, an association for data center
management professionals. The institute, a think tank that
includes data center managers and industry leaders, estimates that over the next five years, power failures and limits
on power availability will interrupt data center operations at
more than 90 percent of all companies.
Faced with these frightening scenarios,
how are companies responding? Many are
increasing their energy efficiency through
server consolidation and/or virtualization. In
fact, in Symantec’s survey, about 32 percent of
respondents chose consolidation/virtualiza-tion as the top technology for reducing power
consumption in their data centers.
Other enterprises are replacing energy-hogging computers with IT products with
low energy consumption. Power management
is also important here. In April, the EPA
launched an Energy Star Low Carbon IT cam-
paign, stating that if all office
computers and monitors in the
country were set to sleep mode
when not being used, we could
save $4 billion worth of electricity and avoid greenhouse gas
emissions equivalent to about
5 million cars each year.
Going even further, some IT
managers are redesigning their
data centers to take advantage of a hot aisle/cold aisle
approach, as opposed to having
all the racks facing in one direction. This layout, which the
Symantec study says has now become the most common
way to design a data center, allows companies to focus their
cooling and heat-removal efforts on the hot aisles.
At the extreme end of the spectrum, companies are
constructing completely green facilities for their data centers—facilities that offer state-of-the-art airflow, cooling and
heat-removal systems. Some pioneering firms are even moving
their data centers to remote areas near a water source.
There are obviously different levels of greenness in the
data center, and companies will move at their own pace. But
if that pace is too slow, energy costs will continually rise,
adversely affecting the competitiveness of the business. And
as environmental concerns become even more widespread,
the refusal to decrease power consumption may even cause
a customer or community backlash.
Clearly, it won’t be easy to go green, but just as clearly, it
has to be done—sooner rather than later.
So, tell me, where does your company stand? 3
It’s not often that
companies get the
chance to save
money and the planet
at the same time, so
why isn’t everyone
jumping on the green
bandwagon?
EILEEN FERETIC IS THE EDITOR OF BASELINE. SHARE
YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE GREENING OF THE DATA CENTER
WITH HER AT EILEEN.FERETIC@ZIFFDAVISENTERPRISE.COM.
