Raising the Temperature Bar
On the heels of the Earth Hour campaign that occurred this past Sunday, I’d like to give a shout out to the Green IT website. The website was launched last week and is in preparation for International Green IT Awareness Week, scheduled for June 1-7. Check out the site for some great tips for making data centers, and IT in general, more energy efficient. Almost all of the 100 ideas will end up saving a company some money, some require an initial investment in more efficient equipment, but some are just simple changes in behavior and require little more than a shift in thinking to make a sizable dent in energy costs.
The number one tip is raising the acceptable temperature in your server room. Old school IT wisdom says to keep server rooms between 55°-60°F, however more recent research has stated that equipment can operate without any risk of damage at much higher temperature thresholds, more in the 70°-79°F range. Given that a conservative estimate of energy savings due to lower cooling costs is 4% savings in energy cost per degree Fahrenheit that the thermostat is raised, dollars saved can add up fast.
If you are currently using a Ravica Sensor Probe to monitor and control the temperature in your server room or data center, you can easily adjust the warning thresholds in your web-interface. Within your online Ravica control panel, click on the Sensors Tab and adjust the High and Low thresholds to reflect the new temperature norms.
So go ahead, raise the temperature bar in your server rooms, and then keep track of the energy bills to find out how much money is staying in your pocket. You never know, it may be enough to reinvest in some new equipment, update your network monitoring software, or hire a new employee to get those business development ideas off the shelf and making some profits.
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Related posts:
- Simple Ways To Make Your Server Room Green
- Temperature Monitoring in the Office
- Recommended Server Room Temperature and your Ravica SensorProbes
- Should we Recycle Server Room Heat?
- Is an environmentally sustainable data center possible?