As global warming and the economy rule the collective consciousness, IT companies have turned their thoughts toward how to reduce spending and energy consumption. This trend is inextricably tied in with information management and storage, since a disproportionate amount of energy costs are spent in maintaining data centers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projects that the energy consumption of the nation's data centers will exceed 100 billion kilowatt hours by 2011, for an annual electricity cost of $7.4 billion. Amazingly, that number is nearly double what was reported in 2006, when data centers already drew more electricity than 5.8 million U.S. households.
Factor into this the number of computers an average workplace has running. Blogger Scott Hayes bought a Kill-A-Watts power meter to figure out how much power his laptop burned. At idle with his screen powered
off, his laptop burned 46 watts. When the LCD monitor turned on, the power consumption jumped to 68 watts -- a 22-watt increase. "Think about how many monitors you have in your company and the potential savings from just turning these off at night," Hayes writes.
Hayes is quick to point out that while a laptop isn't a database server, research has been done to get specifics on exactly how much juice a data center burns. He found an IBM-authored paper, The Case for Power Management in Web Servers, that describes how IBM researchers measured power consumption of various components inside a Linux white box computer. Hayes points out these stats: "An idle CPU consumed about five watts of power, and the same fully saturated, 100 percent busy CPU consumed about 26.9 watts of power - there is a [more than] 500 percent increase in CPU power consumption between idle and 100 percent busy."
According to IDC's latest global Green IT survey, executives are prioritizing green-based initiatives as pressures mount to cut costs and as government mandates begin targeting carbon emissions and the disposal of all IT equipment. Of the 1,500 C-level executives polled in 10 industrial countries, 77 percent of U.S. executives said that energy costs were a number one concern. We already know that concern about access to information is another priority, as I mentioned here a few weeks ago. The good news: It's entirely possible to reduce the costs of maintaining information centers without getting rid of the information.
IT hardware and service providers are mobilizing to help verticals go green while managing their information. IBM recently helped a financial services company in India reduce its annual power costs by 30 percent to 35 percent by developing a highly scalable data center. IBM's scalable modular data center (SMDC) design, which leverages high-density computing and precision air conditioning, ensures a saving of more than 3,600 units (kWh) per day in power consumption alone, as compared to an 8,000 sq. ft. conventional data center. In a year, this saves the company $250,000.
UPS took a strictly hardware approach to reducing its data center energy consumption by redistributing the air flow through the storage units and turning off 24 air handlers. The move saved UPS 1.6 million kilowatt hours and about $124,160 per year. And that's not all-- UPS also benchmarked its mechanical cooling system and was able to reduce its energy use, saving an additional $100,000 annually. The mechanical plant of these UPS data centers consumes about half of what a typical data center's mechanical plant consumes, according to a UPS benchmarking study.
Not convinced yet that there is a pot of gold near your bottom line? Even the U.S. Dept. of Energy is on board with a stimulus incentive to make your data center more energy efficient.
Going green has its advantages.
Factor into this the number of computers an average workplace has running. Blogger Scott Hayes bought a Kill-A-Watts power meter to figure out how much power his laptop burned. At idle with his screen powered
off, his laptop burned 46 watts. When the LCD monitor turned on, the power consumption jumped to 68 watts -- a 22-watt increase. "Think about how many monitors you have in your company and the potential savings from just turning these off at night," Hayes writes.
Hayes is quick to point out that while a laptop isn't a database server, research has been done to get specifics on exactly how much juice a data center burns. He found an IBM-authored paper, The Case for Power Management in Web Servers, that describes how IBM researchers measured power consumption of various components inside a Linux white box computer. Hayes points out these stats: "An idle CPU consumed about five watts of power, and the same fully saturated, 100 percent busy CPU consumed about 26.9 watts of power - there is a [more than] 500 percent increase in CPU power consumption between idle and 100 percent busy."
According to IDC's latest global Green IT survey, executives are prioritizing green-based initiatives as pressures mount to cut costs and as government mandates begin targeting carbon emissions and the disposal of all IT equipment. Of the 1,500 C-level executives polled in 10 industrial countries, 77 percent of U.S. executives said that energy costs were a number one concern. We already know that concern about access to information is another priority, as I mentioned here a few weeks ago. The good news: It's entirely possible to reduce the costs of maintaining information centers without getting rid of the information.
IT hardware and service providers are mobilizing to help verticals go green while managing their information. IBM recently helped a financial services company in India reduce its annual power costs by 30 percent to 35 percent by developing a highly scalable data center. IBM's scalable modular data center (SMDC) design, which leverages high-density computing and precision air conditioning, ensures a saving of more than 3,600 units (kWh) per day in power consumption alone, as compared to an 8,000 sq. ft. conventional data center. In a year, this saves the company $250,000.
UPS took a strictly hardware approach to reducing its data center energy consumption by redistributing the air flow through the storage units and turning off 24 air handlers. The move saved UPS 1.6 million kilowatt hours and about $124,160 per year. And that's not all-- UPS also benchmarked its mechanical cooling system and was able to reduce its energy use, saving an additional $100,000 annually. The mechanical plant of these UPS data centers consumes about half of what a typical data center's mechanical plant consumes, according to a UPS benchmarking study.
Not convinced yet that there is a pot of gold near your bottom line? Even the U.S. Dept. of Energy is on board with a stimulus incentive to make your data center more energy efficient.
Going green has its advantages.
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