6 Practices to Implement Highly Efficient Data Centers
The world has become more cautious about saving the planet in the recent years and this has shown its impact on the data center operators who are now targeting on projects that boost the energy efficiency while taking in consideration its environmental impacts. Though these changes can be attributed to several attempts from organizations all around the globe defending the terminal impacts on the planet, such measures are being seen as a welcome change among the industry.
With Facebook announcing its environment friendly OpenCompute Project several other companies are now coming out of the dark and sharing information related to their data centers, the latest in this line being Google.
Research company 451 groups published a report on Highly Energy-Efficient Data Centers in Practice that shares six practices that are being adopted by organizations all across the globe to increase the efficiency of their data centers and reducing the operational costs while reducing the harmful effects that it may cause the planet to the minimum.
1. Holistic Approach:
While implementing improvements in the data centers the organizations need to take into consideration various technologies available and handle the project from various angles by taking note of different approaches. The green Grid has been implementing the same approach since the time it was founded.
This approach can be refined by encouraging collaborative approach between various departments and making sure that all the concerned people are on the same page regarding the processes involved in the data center improvements.
With Facebook’s Open Compute Project coming up, the collaboration will need to be extended outside of the organization as well.
2. Smarter Cooling:
The older ways of cooling that made the data center resemble a meat locker have changed now. The organizations have understood that deploying these cooling methods is simply throwing away money. Thus adopting other cost saving methods does make sense. One among them is liquid cooling that comes from Green Revolution Cooling that employs a low cost dielectric fluid that has 1200 times heat retention capacity than air.
3. Generating Self-Power:
The major dent is caused to the maintenance bills by the power bills. And the companies have realized it. Microsoft, Google, Facebook , Yahoo etc have started generating their own energy from the renewable sources. Solar panel comes as a natural contender but Fujitsu’s latest technology using Hydrogen to generate power is also finding wide popularity.
4. Using DC Power:
The data center power conversion methodology is a long process spanned across various sections. The AC power is first converted into DC and then back to AC after which the UPSes distribute that power to respective servers. In this entire process, as much as 50-70 percent of electricity is lost during conversion. The only way to overcome this loss is by setting up DC based power distribution system. It reduces power bills and conversion losses but the only reason organizations have been hesitant in implementing a DC based environment is the huge initial investment. But this investment represents big returns in a longer run.
5. Using IT Equipments Smartly:
There are various trends in the IT industry that have significantly affected the operations of the data centers. On the software’s side there is virtualization that has reduced the number of servers; also organizations these days are using data center infrastructure management software that helps them in positioning the physical and logical assets in a more efficient manner.
On the hardware front, organizations such as Google and Facebook have instigated new trends that have proved significant in the field of data center implementation. They have not only helped in reducing costs but have also declined the power wastage.
6. Adopting a Modular Approach:
The process of deploying a new data center takes a lot of efforts and the most critical aspect of any such successful deployment is proper collaboration between different teams working on the project. Not following these aspects will only lead to wastage of efforts in terms of size, density and redundancy. An approach that includes an improper collaborative environment often leads to such troubles. To overcome these problems the organizations are now implementing a modular approach that divides the project in different modules and proceeds accordingly. This also helps them to add or deduct a module according to the current needs of the project.
Tags: Google, Data center, Facebook, Microsoft, Efficient energy use, Direct current, Holism, Green Grid
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