How to improve data center efficiency and reduce wastage

By Khoo Boo Leong | Oct 21, 2009

0 comments

 

 

 

Digg

 Email

Print

Basic data center design fault is the greatest contributor to energy wastage. Correcting these basic faults can improve data center efficiency and reduce energy wastage by up to two-thirds, according to Dr. Hsu Ching-I, chairman and CEO of Raritan Inc, a data center infrastructure and power management solutions company.

For example, current data center designs lack consideration for hot and cold aisles, and basic air flow structures. “You’d want to confine the hot air in one space and cold air in another space connected to the heat sink output,” said Hsu. “But now, you have hot air and cold air mixing together so you waste a lot of the power used for cooling. This situation is made worse with high-density blade servers which demand more power than traditional servers.”

Blade servers offering high performance/cost ratio and compact size benefits, run hotter than traditional servers and reside in higher-density racks. This places greater demands on data center cooling capacity.

Therefore, data center managers have to understand the difference between the rate of heat generation and the rate of heat sinking, anticipate the rate of heat generation, and adjust power for cooling accordingly.

Action needed

Fortunately, there are basic measures that can be taken to improve power efficiency and heat dissipation.

Start by correcting the basic data center design faults. “That’s within your control and you do not have to spend too much on new technology,” said Hsu. “Once you’ve implemented the basics, then you go on to measure how power is being utilized in the data center, and which equipment is using how much energy and when.”

Another practice that contributes to higher energy cost is provisioning power with a high safety factor to ensure reliable and steady power supply. “You need to look at the actual operations picture over time to identify peak usage and apply overcapacity to other areas,” said Hsu. “It’s much more than ensuring uninterrupted operations. And you have to measure exactly how much is consumed instead of relying upon nameplate power capacity specifications.”

This requires detailed insight of IT assets and power consumption as well as the capability to deliver secure control of IT assets from any location. Tools to accomplish this include Raritan's PowerIQ energy management software, intelligent power distribution units (PDUs) that measure power usage at the IT device level, environmental sensors, and the dcTrack IT asset and infrastructure management software as well as the CommandCenter Secure Gateway remote access and control management software.