Data Center Power Consumption Grows Less
Filed under: Data Center, Notifications, power monitoring, SecurityProbes
Yesterday I stumbled upon an article that lifted my green-thumb environmental-loving spirit. It stated that the amount of power consumed by data centers around the world continues to grow…but not as much? I was intrigued so I continued reading.
According to a study in 2007 by Professor Jonathan Koomey of Stanford University found that due to the virtualization of servers power consumption should still increase. In his report in 2010 all data center power was consuming 1.7 to 2.2 percent of total electricity used in America as opposed to 1.1 to 1.5 worldwide. These numbers were far less than his original predictions in 2007. With these numbers I can believe we are going in the right direction but how do we keep this up? Read more
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Simple Ways To Make Your Server Room Green
Did you know that there are simple ways to make your current server room green?
“There are hundreds of areas identified as server rooms or data centers – from small server closets to large enterprise data centers, each with unique needs. Despite differing specifications, one key important conservation practice is to keep servers out of undesignated spaces; they should be housed in a server closet, server room, or data center that adheres to the energy-saving best practices.” – UMICH.edu
The University of Michigan has pointed out simple ways to adjust how your current setup can be adjusted to help you save energy and your environment. They list options for data centers the size of a closet (1 to 2 servers) to Enterprise size (100′s of servers)
Corria Nucci from Informationweek’s Green Computing Webblog points out that one of the best ways to save energy is to consolidate your servers. This option has become popular in recent years due to the power of the recent processors and the ease of “Virtual” environments like VMWare.
Analysts, however, are skeptical about all the new marketing over greener IT. “Many of the answers are things that don’t generate publicity, such as rightsizing the facility and supporting green design principles,” says Steve Wallage, a managing consultant at BroadGroup.
The end result is that companies are not buying into the hype due to cost or lack of supporting data. They just can’t see it helping.
The best answer? IT analysts and vendors both agree it is in metrics: studying power consumption, reallocating server loads, refocusing airflows—and even in simple measures such as shutting off a server that’s not in use.
This can all be done with simple equipment that will help you monitor your server rooms environmental conditions, such as Ravica’s “Used Power Monitor Sensor” and the “Temperature” and “Air Flow” sensors. In the end, these small steps will not only help the world be a little greener and possibly cut down your energy and equipment costs.
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Jim Dougherty aka “Jimmy D”
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!
Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/jimmydnet
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