Savvy and forward-thinking CIOs have recognised that ecological concerns aren't just for tree-huggers. Large enterprises, and to a lesser extent midrange companies, are starting to deploy products, and better yet, long-range green IT strategies, to reduce the carbon footprints of data centres. A number of factors are propelling this trend -- one of the biggest is the energy crisis.
On August 2, the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Program released to Congress a report assessing opportunities for energy efficiency improvements for government and commercial computer servers and data centres in the United States.
According to the report, data centres accounted for roughly 1.5% of the country's electricity consumption in 2006. The energy consumption of servers and data centres has doubled in the past five years and is expected to almost double again in the next five years, to more than 100 billion kWh, costing about US$7.4 billion annually.
Existing green IT technologies and strategies could reduce typical server energy use by an estimated 25%, with even greater energy savings possible with advanced technologies.
All this has led CIOs to search for that killer technology with which they can lower their company's carbon footprint and at the same time realise a hefty ROI.
Essential green IT technologies that save money
In that regard, virtualisation is a no-brainer, according to Rakesh Kumar, an analyst at Gartner.
Virtualisation enables IT managers to divide a single server, or multiple servers, into separate environments, each of which can run a different operating system and serve different applications. Virtual machine (VM) "images" can be ported from one physical server to another. Central administrative software can then balance processing loads and allocate storage capacity on an as-needed basis, across multiple virtual machines and physical servers. One or more VMs can take up the slack during a planned or unplanned outage.
"Most machines use 5% to 10% of available computing power," Kumar said. By utilising server capacity more efficiently through virtualisations, companies can do the same job with 50% to 60% of their existing server population, Kumar said. This translates into major savings in hardware, electricity and cooling.
A gradual consolidation as servers become obsolete can reduce the physical footprint of servers and storage devices by 25% to 30% over a two-year period, Kumar said.
Space considerations are becoming increasingly critical, particularly in large cities where data centre facilities are at a premium. In some cities, like New York and London, finding space for new data centres is virtually impossible.
Currently, only about 12% of Intel x86-based corporate servers are virtualised, according to Gartner. However, AFCOM's Data Centre Institute predicted that by 2010, nearly 70% of all data centres will utilise some form of grid computing or other type of virtual processing.
Cutting energy and cooling bills
Another piece of good news: CIOs don't need to rip out existing servers or purchase expensive or complex products in order to make a dent in their data centre energy and cooling bills. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit, according to Richard Hodges, a principal at consulting company GreenIT.
"Look under the data centre floor to make sure the airflow isn't clogged by trash and cables." And in perennially cool places, "You can just use outside air instead of AC for most of the day," Hodges added. "The starting point isn't sexy stuff, it's basic blocking and tackling. The equivalent of turning the lights out when you're not in the room." How much savings that brings in, "depends on how wasteful you've been."
Still, the most effective approach is a holistic one, Hodges said. "You need to start by finding out what you have, and how much power it consumes. You can't manage what you can't measure."
Green IT products on the rise
The good news is that products like the ones described above are appearing on the market in growing numbers.
Modius's OpenData software, for example, enables data centre managers to monitor, track and centrally manage the efficiency, power consumption and performance of power systems, generators, uninterruptible power supplies and air conditioning units, according to Craig Compiano, CEO at the company. They can identify and address problems, such as "An AC unit overcompensating for demand from a server farm which may have been set up inefficiently."
A number of leading computer and storage vendors have formed The Green Grid, a consortium dedicated to coming up with technologies, products and strategies to boost energy efficiency in the data centre.