Six steps to halting data center energy waste

Electrical

Wednesday, 31 October 2007 10:34

Written by Bill Coleman

A recent report to Congress by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disclosed that each year, data centers devour more electricity than the 250 million televisions in the United States. The energy used to power and cool them has doubled in the past five years, and is expected to nearly double again in the next five, to more than 100 billion kilowatt-hours, costing about $7.4 billion annually.
 
That’s way too much, and the majority of that power is being wasted.  It’s time for the companies that run power-hungry data centers and the tech firms that supply them to take responsibility for solving the problem.
 
Data centers have been growing in number and size because the Internet keeps pumping out more volumes of data to be crunched.  When you buy the new Bruce Springsteen CD online, for example, a data center somewhere processes the order, checks inventory, validates and charges your credit card, and transmits shipping information.  As many as a dozen servers and at least that many applications may be involved in that single transaction and the total process can generate gigabytes of data and require yet more servers to store that data. 
 
Data centers are the engine rooms of the Internet and, in that respect, they’re a good thing.  The problem lies in how data centers are designed and operated today. Data centers are stocked with servers, the computers that share information with other computers on a network.  In many data centers, each server is tasked to do just one job – say, verify your account information on an insurance form.  This one-job-per-machine mentality is meant to make sure a data center can handle the highest imaginable demand by computer users, but it also leaves servers severely underused most of the time.
 
When profiled for utilization, most companies find that they’re running their servers at an average of only 5 to 10 percent of capacity.  Technologies like virtualization can more than double those numbers.  But most servers are always powered on and just sit idle in the hopes of being needed at some point in time, all the while burning energy.  Studies have shown that the average server burns up more than half of its rated power even when it is doing nothing and that it requires on average about 200 percent additional power to handle distribution and cooling.  Even worse, it’s customary in data centers to leave servers on 24x7, whether or not they’re in use.    It’s the equivalent of leaving all the lights powered on in your home – all day and all night. 
 
Increasingly, however, companies are adopting “green” strategies in the physical design and layout of data centers, upgrading to more energy-efficient servers, improving HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) efficiencies, and consolidating servers by using virtualization in order to run multiple programs on a single server. The good news, according to the EPA, is that these technologies and strategies can reduce typical data center energy use by an estimated 25 percent, with even greater energy savings possible as technologies advance. 
 
Switching to fewer computers or more energy efficient equipment is certainly a start.  But those practices only get you so far.  With those approaches, the “lights” (or, in this case, the servers) are still on all day and through the night – a wasteful practice that companies must address.  In fact, this is such a serious issue that businesses must try things they have never considered before:  something as simple as turning servers off that they aren’t using.  Doesn’t sound revolutionary, does it?  But the urban myth that it’s bad to turn on and off the servers in your data center (and the burden of trying to do this manually) has kept every server in every data center on since it was first plugged in.  Why?  Because servers must be powered down and up in a sophisticated and systematic way.  There are many dependencies between the applications, databases, and other software running on servers which, until now, have not been addressed.
 
The good news:  organizations can start to do something about this.  Technology now exists to safely, intelligently, and systematically power down unused or idle servers, and power them back on when needed.  This active (rather than passive) approach to power management takes into account variables such as time of day, peak- and off-peak power schedules, and curtailment requests from power companies, such as when utilities request that customers restrict power consumption on hot summer days. Data center administrators can use active power management to create policies that control the on/off switch as they see fit.  The technology required is application-aware and hardware and software independent, so it’s safe and works in the most complex environments with both new and legacy systems without requiring any changes to the hardware or software.
 
Despite the startling rise in energy consumption in the data center and the availability of measures like those above to curtail it, many companies aren’t yet taking action – even though higher utility costs impact their bottom line, where power and cooling gobble up about 20 percent of data center budgets, rivaling the cost of the underlying hardware.
 
Why the hesitation? Corporate I.T. departments have had little incentive to push for energy efficiency.  Some believe energy efficiency comes at the expense of data center performance.  With active power management, that’s no longer the case.  Also, tax breaks for going green are just now gaining attention but are still a far cry from incentivizing companies to take real action.  What’s worse, there’s no single individual tasked with solving the problem.  And there’s no standard metric against which to benchmark energy consumption in the data center. 
 
Companies that are wasting energy in their data centers should not waste any more time before fixing this problem.  Here are six actions that companies can and should take now to tackle the issue.
 
1. Appoint a single executive sponsor/owner of your “Go Green” strategy. Energy consumption is too important to be owned by a committee. Companies should weigh the benefits and cost savings in tasking a single owner to champion, promote, and oversee energy consciousness throughout the organization, including driving “green” criteria in IT purchasing decisions.
2. Champion energy conservation and going green in your data center
3. Gain a better understanding of your server usage patterns
4. Investigate new technologies that can power off servers when not in use in a safe, intelligent, and systematic manner
5. Establish and implement reasonable goals over time for reducing energy consumption in your data center.
6. Join associations for technology transfer of proven steps that improve energy efficiency in your data center
Energy conservation in data centers is one of those cases where the right thing to do for business is also simply the right thing to do.
 
Bill Coleman is CEO of Cassatt Corp., a San Jose, CA-based software company. Previously, he founded and was the first chairman and CEO of BEA Systems, Inc.

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