FOCUS ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Issue 3, April 2009
COST-EFFICIENT PERFORMANCE ENERGY:
The issue of energy burned up in the course of business is top of the current list of pressing data center concerns. If “you can’t control what you can’t measure,” as we are constantly told, then it is time to look at the tools available
debated in meetings these days. “It’s easy to see why,” he says. “Six years ago, a unit of energy cost 6p, whilst today that cost per unit has climbed to between 14p and 16p and is showing no sign of slowing. That’s a 150% rise in costs.
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“To put this into perspective, a company running a data center of 50,000 square feet and pulling 2,000W of energy is looking at an increase in power costs of £1m per annum, based on the current increases in energy prices,” explains Sodzawiczny.
But power drawn by a data center is not proportional, says Sodzawiczny, which means true cost implications are diffi cult to calculate without systems that deliver accurate monitoring.
Vendors of data center equipment and infrastructure are responding in a variety of ways, with tools that put the data center engineer in control of energy used.
So what exactly can these IT solutions do to help control energy, reduce costs and tick the
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ranek Sodzawiczny, development director at data center operator Sentrum, says the cost of energy seems to be the topic most commonly
environment box at the same time? What’s available and who is delivering it?
Under the umbrella brand name of Dynamic Infrastructure, IBM and its software subsidiary, Tivoli, offer a number of answers. Making the most of the assets you have is always key to the energy issue, says Nick Drabble, data center energy effi ciency leader at IBM Tivoli Software. “If you look across the data center, you will typically see asset utilisation levels of around 15%,” he says. “This means that 85% of what you’re paying for sits there doing nothing, consuming energy and being cooled. It’s very wasteful.”
MEASURING THE BENEFITS Data center engineers, says Drabble, need to start by asking themselves some important questions. “They need to ask, ‘How much energy is being used across the various racks and infrastructure? And how much of that energy is actually contributing to the business services we provide?’ If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then you don’t know how to reduce energy and better manage it,” he says.
Central to IBM Dynamic Infrastructure is Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management software. “The basic technology is already
used to monitor the health of IT systems – how they are performing,” he says. “Now we are using it for understanding energy use.
“It helps you decide in real time how to manage energy to meet your business needs. You can, for example, pinpoint the least- effi cient servers with it. Your asset base can be provisioned in an energy-aware fashion – not just IT, but other elements of your infrastructure, too. It’s a single source of information that allows assets in different silos to be brought together on screen.
“I get asked, ‘Can I turn off the airconditioning in my data center if it’s cold enough outside?’ The answer is yes, but only if you have the right tools to measure and minimise your risk,” explains Drabble.
“We can increase levels of utilisation, mainly by the virtualisation route. Why run 100 servers at 15% utilisation, when you can have 20 at 75% utilisation and turn 80 off? A lot of what we’re doing with Dynamic Infrastructure is to enhance performance without increasing the power envelope,” says Drabble.
Another leader in tools for monitoring and controlling energy usage is HP. Phil Dodsworth, HP’s director of data center services, explains
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