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8 Considerations for an Energy-efficient Data Centre

Traditional data centres are renowned for being among the most

power-hungry ICT assets a business can own.

The good news is that next-generation data centre approaches and technologies provide a means to rein in spiralling energy costs.

Follow these simple steps and an energy-efficient data centre – and impressive cost

savings – will be within your reach.

Step

1

Consideralternative locations, and delivery and management models

The first critical step to achieving an energy-efficient data centre is to evaluate the various delivery and management options that have become available in recent years. Cloud computing opens new avenues of opportunity for data centre managers striving to improve energy efficiency. Today, there’s a strong move away from on-premise, enterprise-owned ICT infrastructure and data centres to cloud or hosted data centre models as businesses look to capitalise on the cost and efficiency benefits that this ‘as-a-service’ approach offers.

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Step 2

Virtualisation and consolidation are steps in the right direction towards an energy-efficient data centre. Many servers today still utilise between only 5 and 15% of their capacity, and service one application. With appropriate analysis and consolidation, many of these devices can be combined into a single physical server that consumes only a fraction of the power of the original devices – resulting in cost savings as well as creating a more environmentally sustainable data centre environment.

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Virtualiseconsolidate&

3

The Uptime Institute produced a white paper based on a survey of 19 data centres and reported that, on average, only 40% of cold air went directly towards cooling the servers in the room, wasting yet more power in the data centre. So, whether you’re designing a new data centre or upgrading your existing environment, make use of existing best practices in data centre floor plan designs.

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Designa best-practice

floor plan

4Step

accelerate your ambition 12

Technology, architectures, and approaches for data centre networks have evolved significantly as organisations and the industry have put more focus on ensuring that the network is the platform for the modern data centre. Networking can contribute significantly to energy savings: the deployment of specialist data centre network hardware offers significant benefits over general-purpose network hardware.

network

Redesignthe data centre

5Step

In your quest for an energy-efficient data centre, your evaluation of products can no longer be just a price-versus-performance comparison. It’s important to incorporate the total cost of the data centre environment into the calculation, which also includes costs for energy consumption.

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appropriateuse

technology

6

ILM is the optimum allocation of storage resources that support a business. From a voice conversation to legal and medical records, every item of information in an organisation has a useful lifespan. By implementing an ILM strategy, you can create greater efficiencies in data storage, which in turn lead to greater efficiencies in power consumption.

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Take a

new perspectiveon information life cycle management (ILM)

7Step

To meet the challenges of blade servers and high-density computing, more organisations are realising the need for effective cooling and heat management solutions. Many are welcoming liquid cooling systems into their infrastructures to achieve better cooling efficiency; however, others still find it difficult to fathom pipes of running water snaking through the plenums of their data centres.

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Investi ateliquid coolingg

8

 There are a number of power-saving technologies available. For example, direct current (DC)-compatible equipment can have a significant impact on power consumption; however, it’s costly to configure, is not widely available, and is also more expensive than equivalent alternating current options.

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Usepower-saving technologies