Emerson’s Data Center Users Group Report notes economy not impacting majority surveyed

Design Editorial

Tuesday, 02 December 2008 11:24

Written by Staff Writer

This statement was recently supported from a report published by Emerson Network Power. The report surveys more than 165 data center facility and IT managers. In this report it was noted that “Despite tight capital equipment budgets, changes to the data center are still planned. Thirty-seven percent of survey participants responded that current economic conditions are impacting their ability to operate or expand their data center. However, in a sign of just how dynamic and critical the data center has become, more than 75 percent of survey respondents are still planning for changes to take place within their facilities.”

The criticality of the data center is growing for large enterprises. According to the same survey, three of four respondents stated that the data center is more critical today than in past years. The dependence of the data center to compute and store information is the life line to any organization, but even more so for large companies that have more to manage and who utilize automation.

Power is always a concern in today’s data center. The rising power density in the data center is mostly to blame. According to the report, “Power densities across the room (Data Center) and within the rack are increasing sharply. In doing so, they're pushing facility capacity to the max - and fast. In the last two years, average rack power density has risen from 6 kW to 8 kW. More than 10 percent of respondents said they will be out of data center capacity by the end of this year and a total of 68 percent expect to be at capacity within the next three years.”

It is clear to see why many of those surveyed are planning future projects for their facilities. Many of those projects will be power related.

As power continues to cause challenges the recent buzz of energy efficiency has not challenged data center pros on whether availability is more important than efficiency. “Data center managers are unwilling to compromise availability for efficiency. Data center managers will be taking into account corporate initiatives to improve energy usage throughout the data center; yet, this directive is challenged by the understanding that availability remains the top priority. On a continuum of one (reducing energy usage is main priority) to seven (maintaining high availability is our main priority), 69 percent of respondents identified a priority level between five and seven in favor of high availability.”

With that said it is obvious that if energy efficiency is not a priority for most organizations then those same companies will not have an energy usage strategy. According to the report, only 28 percent of survey respondents have a documented strategy to reduce energy usage.

To learn more about the report please visit: http://www.liebert.com/common/ViewDocument.aspx?id=1231

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed