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Obtain Funding For A Data Center Project
Explore Processor.com (Jan 27 2011)
A data center project is an expensive proposition. So, it is important for IT personnel to make their case effectively and convincingly, especially when the time comes to seek funding from business management. This is especially true in these tough economic times, where budgets are tight and projects fiercely compete with each other for increasingly scarce funding. Thankfully, there are a number of good strategies IT personnel can apply to secure funding for a data center project.
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Comment Mentions: Department of Energy
Trends In Power Management
Explore Processor.com (Dec 16 2010)
Countless businesses have explored cloud computing and virtualization solutions with the hope of being able to save money and the environment by combining multiple environments and applications, lessening the number of physical machines and the electricity needed to run them, and reducing overall hardware costs. ... total facilities power consumed have become a basic function of IT process reporting,” says Tate Cantrell, CTO of Verne Global (www.verneglobal.com). ...
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Comment Mentions: Verne Global Facebook Tate Cantrell
Data Center Layout & Design Trends
Explore Processor.com (Dec 16 2010)
Countless businesses have explored cloud computing and virtualization solutions with the hope of being able to save money and the environment by combining multiple environments and applications, lessening the number of physical machines and the electricity needed to run them, and reducing overall hardware costs.
(Read Full Article)
Setting Up A Backup Or Replication Data Center
Explore Processor.com (Dec 2 2010)
Will Your Business Stay Afloat When Disaster Strikes? Establishing a backup or replication data center that provides reliable redundancy during emergencies is becoming a greater necessity. The task of creating such a resource can be overwhelming, and many data center and IT managers must start from scratch.
Spending the time and money to set up a well-functioning backup data center is often a hard sell internally, especially in a difficult economy. According to David Hester, director of data center strategy and planning at ACS (www.acs-inc.com), "This is one of those things that companies really struggle with trying to fund and finance, because it seems like a nice-to-have, until you have to have it."
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Equipping The Data Center
Explore Processor.com (Sep 26 2010)
Energy Efficiency & Virtualization Are Among The Things To Keep In Mind When Outfitting A Facility. When it comes to building a data center, the level of care taken is just as precise as the measures needed when building a house or other physical structure: Faulty plans, or solid plans executed improperly, can make the whole thing come crashing down. The same is true for outfitting your data center with the necessary equipment, so we asked industry experts for their tips on equipping a data center with gear that can serve you not just today, but for years to come.
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Data Center Building Trends
Explore Processor.com (Sep 24 2010)
As data center technology and infrastructure change, organizations need to keep pace with designs that accommodate space, power, and cooling modifications.
Although many data center managers might yearn for a center that can last a decade, very few will manage to stick it out that long, believes Peter Sacco, president of PTS Data Center Solutions (www.ptsdcs.com). Build what you think you need for the next three to five years, he advises. At this point, facilities have become similar in their build cycles to replacement of IT hardware, and we are finding that you're lucky if you get two builds out of one facility. Because facilities need to be tweaked far more often than in the past, here's a look at the latest data center building trends. r is an ...
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Running The Data Center
Explore Processor.com (Sep 24 2010)
As IT becomes increasingly automated, decision makers are closely scrutinizing the staffing levels required to man modern data centers. In trying economic times, saving budget dollars by minimizing staff required to tend to data center operations is a no-brainer. But, savings generated from building data centers that are designed to run in dark orcdim mode cannot be realized until the appropriate technologies are selected and implemented.
There are a number of key operations and management, or O&M, technological trends that administrators should monitor closely. These trends are necessary to support data center environments where infrastructure management is highly automated and much less labor-intensive.
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Google Proposal For Better Data Center Networks
Explore Processor.com (Sep 9 2010)
Google may be on to something as it is exploring how to build energy-efficient data center networks that use power proportional to the data that gets transmitted throughout the network. Most networks currently operate on the same power levels regardless of whether data use is at its peak, in a lull, or somewhere in between.
Several Google researchers recently authored a paper, Energy Proportional Datacenter Networks, in which they propose several new methods of data center network designs. The methods pertain to the large clusters of 10,000 or more servers used by companies like Google and could result in significant energy and cost savings. In their paper, the research team demonstrated an 85% power reduction in a simulated energy proportional network.
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Realistic PUE
Explore Processor.com (Jul 29 2010)
• If you can’t measure PUE, tracking total power usage monthly works, too. • At smaller enterprises, small energy changes can bring down PUE. • PUE shouldn’t be used to compare data centers to one another. With ... (Read Full Article)
Comment Mentions: The Green Grid Uptime Institute
Keep Your Power & Cooling Up & Running
Explore Processor.com (Jul 7 2010)
Preventive Maintenance & Proper Planning Are Both Key To Staying Operational & Efficient. No company wants to face the hassle and expense of replacing its data center—or even any of its components—until it absolutely has to. Yet, many companies are lax when it comes to performing the preventive maintenance that can buy months, even years, of reliable service from their equipment.
Here are some tips from industry experts on how to get the most mileage from your equipment, specifically from the standpoint of power and cooling.
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Comment Mentions: ASHRAE GlassHouse Technologies
"Greening" The Data Center
Explore Processor.com (Jul 5 2010)
The EPA reported a few years ago that data centers in the United States consumed about 60 billion kWh (kilowatt hours), or about 1.5% of all U.S. electricity consumption in 2006. Since then, the EPA says data center power consumption is on track to double by 2011 to more than 100 billion kWh, for a total energy bill of $7.4 billion annually.
However, data center managers are not powerless to reverse this trend and are often in the position to use technology to slash power consumption while boosting server and network efficiencies. Here are some ways to make your data center more environmentally efficient, which, if applied on an industry-wide scale, would offset the EPA’s less-than-optimistic predictions about data center power consumption in the United States. In addition to covering ways to reduce power, some of the tips show how data centers can be more self-contained ...
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Comment Mentions: Iceland ASHRAE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Power & Cooling Tech To The Rescue
Explore Processor.com (Jul 2 2010)
Upcoming Technologies & Trends Are Set To Stave Off Rising Heat & Growing Power Demands. Like an invisible avalanche, power consumption and heat continue to tumble down upon hapless IT managers as increasingly demanding technologies take data center environments to their limits. But on the horizon is a group of innovative saviors that could prevent these menaces from wreaking their seemingly endless havoc.
“Data center managers can expect to see continuing improvement over a wide range of products and concepts that will help meet the increasing power and cooling challenges,” says Steve Susina, director of marketing for Laurus Technologies (www.laurustech.com). “The easy gains from more efficient air conditioning units or equipment arrangement into hot/cold aisles have been attained. And users will continue to demand more from their systems—the growth of data will continue; IT will become more strategic across a range of business functions; and the demand for ...
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Data Center Metrics Demystified
Explore Processor.com (Jul 2 2010)
If You Don’t Measure, How Can You Manage? Data center efficiency goes beyond knowing if servers are still up. These days, data center managers are accountable for energy usage, energy efficiency, compliance, regulation, and the list goes on. Performance must be monitored and trends must be predicted to ensure that the data center is always up and ready for capacity increases at any time. For this to happen, a well-designed set of metrics must be enforced. But there’s plenty of confusion surrounding data center metrics, especially metrics such as PUE (power usage effectiveness) and DCiE (data center infrastructure efficiency).
Here, we break down some of the leading data center metrics in use in small to midsized enterprises, what they mean, and how knowing more about them can impact your enterprise.
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Comment Mentions: Verne Global The Green Grid Uptime Institute
Lower Your PUE
Explore Processor.com (Jun 18 2010)
What Steps You Should Take To Reduce Energy Consumption. The IT community has known for a while that for every dollar most data centers spend on server hardware, another dollar gets spent on cooling that hardware. In terms of PUE (power usage effectiveness), this gets a value of 2. (Recall that PUE equals total facility power divided by IT equipment power, with 1 being considered a “perfect” score wherein all data center power would be consumed by IT hardware.)
As energy costs continue to rise and the environment’s carbon tolerance recedes, there’s every incentive to lower data centers’ PUE values as much as possible. Here we focus on how to reduce those PUE scores in the first place.
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Comment Mentions: Intel Google Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Precision Air Conditioning
Explore Processor.com (Jun 17 2010)
Orange, Calif.,-based company Data Aire started providing cooling solutions for data centers back at a time when relatively low-power computers were nearly the size of a room and the thought of individuals owning them was all but ludicrous. But even those low-power computers needed solutions other than the typical residential and commercial air conditioners available at the time.
A long-standing, reliable manufacturer of cooling for data centers, Data Aire (www.dataaire.com) saw business grow modestly last year at a time when many other companies were suffering double-digit declines, which company officials attribute to continued steady growth of data centers, particularly in its target markets of financial services, health care, and government, all of which need sufficient cooling in order to remain viable.
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Pumping Up The Heat
Explore Processor.com (Jun 17 2010)
Since ASHRAE adjusted its temperature standards and specifications, many enterprises are listening and responding by raising their data center temperatures. But some are hesitant and skeptical because of the potential risks and concerns involved (including overheating and humidity levels). One of the biggest questions is: Will raising the temperature as a way to lower costs increase costs in other areas? At any rate, for ASHRAE, it’s all about reducing energy consumption.
Warm Savings
Michael Sigourney, senior product specialist at AVTECH (www.avtech.com), says many IT managers are taking a look at running warmer data centers because studies from ASHRAE and others (such as Google) claim that it can be more economical to replace IT components more frequently because they fail due to environmental stress. The benefit here, they say, is not paying larger ongoing power costs.
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Cool Down A Data Center
Explore Processor.com (May 20 2010)
As enterprises look to reduce energy costs and improve energy efficiency and environmental friendliness, one element they are considering is implementation of some form of passive cooling. These strategies work with airflow to boost efficiency, lowering the need for additional CRAC units or air conditioners. However, it’s not always so simple to just put in a few extra ducts. Passive cooling involves several tactics and some extra effort and time from IT staff, but the payoff could be a lower-cost center that is cooled properly.
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Meeting Of The Minds
Explore Processor.com (May 6 2010)
hat are the biggest IT-related issues facing today’s small to midsized enterprise?
“Those SMEs that have data centers face particular challenges. Small and midsized data centers lack economies of scale, and their operators find it difficult to afford, install, and manage the increasing amount of equipment and software now being used to manage the data center. Many of these data centers weren’t purpose-built and therefore have become progressively less efficient as more equipment is installed. PUE (power usage efficiency) ratios at small, older data centers are [believed to be] worse than industry averages,” Lawrence says.
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Comment Mentions: Uptime Institute
Buying Green
Explore Processor.com (May 6 2010)
Today, good environmental stewardship—in other words, “thinking green”—is on everyone’s mind. Because they consume so much energy, data centers are logical places to identify ways to go green.
There are numerous ways green strategies can be implemented in the data center, but perhaps the most effective one is ensuring that new equipment purchases meet or exceed standards for energy efficiency. Manufacturers are striving to develop and market equipment designed to conserve energy, so procurement personnel should keep such equipment in mind when making purchasing decisions.
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In-Depth Airflow Analysis
Explore Processor.com (Mar 25 2010)
As companies continue to squeeze capital budgets in the post-recession economy, data center managers find themselves challenged to support more densely packed, heat-intensive equipment in a space that was never designed to accommodate the resulting thermal load. Without money to build new facilities or retrofit existing ones, IT must find creative ways to get more capacity out of the existing space. Computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, has emerged as an increasingly helpful tool for planning and analysis.
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Energy Savings In The Data Center
Explore Processor.com (Feb 25 2010)
The ongoing conversation about global warming and green industrial practices is increasing the emphasis on capturing energy savings in the data center. Data centers use a tremendous amount of energy, so no matter what side of the argument over global warming one chooses, the bottom line is that data center energy savings can deliver significant monetary savings.
And that is music to the ears of top management, who must control costs in today’s challenging economic environment. Thankfully, experts recommend many strategies—some of them very easy to implement—that data center administrators can use to achieve substantial energy savings.
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Comment Mentions: ASHRAE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory SunGard
Cost-Saving Strategies For Data Center Projects
Explore Processor.com (Feb 25 2010)
Thinking about expanding your present data center or building a new one? Contrary to what you might think, now is the time small and midsized enterprises should consider forging ahead with these plans rather than putting them on hold.
That’s the advice from Steven Harris, director of data center engineering at technology consultancy Forsythe Technology. Enterprises looking to make data center changes can take advantage of a drop in equipment, labor, and construction costs, he says.
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Judge The Health Of Your Data Center’s Power & Cooling
Explore Processor.com (Feb 25 2010)
Evaluate your data center or server room’s power and cooling utilization, energy efficiency, and long-term capabilities. The power and cooling infrastructure in your data center or server room plays a big role in your facility’s reliability ...
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Harness Heat & Power Consumption
Explore Processor.com (Jan 14 2010)
Data centers aren’t the only things chugging along into the new year, as heat is anticipated to have yet another successful year of delivering headaches to infrastructure managers around the globe. However, by undertaking a project in 2010 that can help to keep temperatures and power consumption under control, data centers can force heat to look elsewhere to continue its productive run.
An easy approach to controlling rising temperatures is simply to throw more cooling at the heat, but then the data center faces increased power consumption costs. The challenge, then, is to achieve acceptable temperature levels while keeping an active eye on green IT measures.
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