Expert tips on implementing green data centers
Thursday, July 02, 2009 12:06 PM
Data center managers weighing in on how to make facilities more green, or building a case to convince executive management to do so, may find this guide handy.
If you're still researching whether to green your organization's data center or you're building a case to present to executive management to sell them on the idea, a guide entitled "Cashing the check on Green IT" will be useful to you.
These are the topics covered in the report:
- Understanding how Green IT can save your organization money
- Rethinking e-waste
- Understanding the link between the green data center and energy consumption
- Using power management techniques
- Deploying shared storage with the right features
- Consolidating your servers
- Reaping Green IT benefits of thin client computing
- Investing in virtualization has Green IT payoffs
Need some data points to help sell senior management on the idea? Here are a few that you might find interesting (these points are featured in the download and in Toni Bowers' IT leadership post):
- The data center sector consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption) for a total electricity cost of about US$4.5 billion. This level of usage is equal to the energy usage of 5.8 million average U.S. households, or 5 percent of the U.S. population
- The level of data center energy use will, according to a projection by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by 2011 double to 100 Billion KwH and US$7.4 billion, requiring the construction of 10 additional power plants nationwide.
If you decide to green your data center, you might be interested to know the EPA recently released its Energy Star specifications for servers.
ZDNet blogger Heather Clancy noted: "As many of you realize, there's much more to a data center than the servers inside, so this is clearly just the first step toward creating a more uniform way for companies to keep tabs on what hardware might be the best option for their particular infrastructure."
For specific tips on how to green your data center, check out "Cashing the check on Green IT".
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