How Data Centers Can Make the Grade
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If you can't measure it, you
can't improve it. So goes the battle cry of the Green Grid, a global consortium
pushing a rating system for use by data centers to measure whether they are
meeting energy-efficiency goals.
"We have a fundamental
belief that once you start measuring, you end up improving just by creating
self-awareness," said Christian Belady, a product engineer at Microsoft
and member of the Green Grid. "At the end of the day, a lot of motivation
is coming from the Green Grid, the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], the
European Commission and Pacific Gas & Electric Company. All of us want to
help motivate people to start looking at the efficiency of the data center."
Various entities, including solution providers, vendors and users, are
collaborating on a project to create a rating system with the ultimate goals of
lowering costs, improving equipment utilization, measuring actual performance
and demonstrating improved performance. The system will give solution providers
a framework for talking to customers about their data center environments and
IT power consumption.
As an added attraction to
customers, organizations that meet the goals set by the rating system could
claim distinction as green facilities.
Today, data center managers
understand that energy is expensive and that costs are rising quickly.
Intelligent Energy-Europe, another group encouraging energy conservation,
predicts that energy costs associated with operating servers will exceed the
costs of server hardware by 2015.
As costs rise, demand for
power is also on the upswing. "The industry has been wrestling energy efficiency
for a while from a business perspective, as hardware vendors increase server
density and processing power," said Michael Mallia, chief executive
officer of AFCO Systems and a Green Grid member. "In addition,
the world is becoming more technology-oriented, particularly toward graphics
and video, which eats up tons of processing power." An average server
enclosure five years ago would generate 500 to 1,000 watts of power
consumption, while today each cabinet accounts for 15 to 20 kilowatts of power,
Mallia said.
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