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Articles from itbusinessedge.com
1-14 of 14
CIOs Reduce Data Center Costs Through Power and Cooling Efficiency
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Feb 1 2012)
Energy costs are the fastest-rising cost element in the data center. Based on current trends, the EPA estimates that energy consumed by data centers will continue to grow by 12 percent per year. Power and thermal energy consumption balanced with energy savings is one of the major responsibilities of facility and IT managers. Intel Data Center Manager group has observed how the data center is now a source for CIOs and their technical teams to add to the bottom line through increased power and cooling efficiency.
Leading data centers are ramping up to real-time power and thermal management. There is a growing recognition of the ROI benefit through monitoring usage by device. This provides real-time energy consumption data in relation to the actual workload for individual servers and groups of servers. Collecting data of the actual power and thermal trends over days, weeks and years provides ROI benefit through the ...
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Mentions: Sun Microsystems Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Building the Advanced Architecture: A Question of Priorities
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Jan 9 2012)
Modern information technology can seem like a Gordian Knot sometimes: you can't solve Problem A until you've solved Problem B, which first requires a solution to Problem C, which, in turn, can only be accomplished by solving Problem A.
But while Alexander the Great untied the knot simply by cutting the rope, today's data environments call for a much more nuanced approach. Part of that process should be an assessment of your data and operational requirements going forward so that changes to basic infrastructure can be tailored to meet rapidly shifting requirements.
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Mentions: Forrester Research
Many Paths to the Green Data Center
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Dec 28 2011)
It doesn't take much of a genius to realize that the data center will become more energy efficient in the coming year and beyond.
Financial incentives aside, the mere fact that nearly all enterprise systems are touting low-power operation right down to the processor level indicate that enterprises will see lower electric bills whether they plan to or not. But within the overall trend toward a greener data center, there are numerous twists and turns that could have a dramatic effect on data operations and overall productivity of the knowledge work force.
One of the key questions going forward will be how to define data center efficiency. While many metrics are kicking around, there is wide discrepancy as to how best to measure usage in relation to IT productivity. The widely touted Power Usage Effectiveness metric, for example, merely measures the ratio of energy consumption by data equipment to ...
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How Green Is the Cloud?
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Dec 7 2011)
How green is the cloud? The answer may be a bit more complicated than many believe considering the enormous complexity that the technology brings to data center environments and IT's ability to manage and monitor them.
At first blush, the cloud would seem a net benefit to the environment. The ease with which data can be shifted to available resources allows enterprises to find the most efficient means to handle current loads. Over-provisioning and the maintenance of costly infrastructure are greatly lessened, and managers can easily seek out the lowest energy costs to handle low-level tasks like non-critical batch processing.
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New Approaches to the Green Data Center
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Nov 24 2011)
According to triplepundit.com's Jeff Rangel, data center power consumption stands at 1.3 percent of worldwide use, nearly three times what it was in 2000. That represents nearly 80 metric megatons of carbon emissions per year and is on pace to more than quadruple by 2020. In dollar terms, Gartner reports that the cost to cool a 25,000-square-foot data center now tops out at $4.1 million per year.
Clearly, something has to give to both the economic and political pressures that high-energy consumption entails. That's probably why we're seeing such a wide range of ever-more exotic solutions to the data center's green problem.
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The Argument For and Against Low-power Servers
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Mar 24 2011)
Whenever the conversation in IT circles drifts toward low-power servers and the new class of chips that run them, I'm reminded of an early scene in "Joe Versus the Volcano."
Joe (Tom Hanks) walks into his dead-end job where Mr. Waturi (the brilliant Dan Hedaya) is having an endless telephone argument with another middle manager: "I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? (Pause) I know he can get the job ..." In the end, we never find out if "he" actually gets the job, let alone succeeds or fails, but the point is that low-power servers present the same dilemma to IT management.
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Keep Full Virtualization Tech Secure Using NIST Guidelines
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Nov 22 2010)
Full virtualization, where multiple operating systems and applications are run on top of virtual hardware, allows businesses to make gains in operational efficiency by increasing the workload on existing computers. A server using full virtualization uses more of the computer's memory and processing power than several servers running a single OS and set of services. Desktop PCs using full virtualization technology can run more than one OS while supporting applications that only run on a particular operating system.
Full virtualization has drawbacks when it comes to security. The technology creates additional complexity when it comes to security management and, due to consolidation of operating systems and applications on a single system, the impact of a security compromise is greater.
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Green Tech: Prioritize Tasks, Determine Savings Using ...
Explore itbusinessedge.com (May 31 2010)
Checklists are handy for keeping track of milestones, organizing tasks and setting priorities. The Knowledge Network contains a variety of checklists to help IT decision-makers manage and account for many "moving parts," whether for a project or for the entire business.
Since I've recently written about virtualization and other "green" data center strategies, it's an opportune time to highlight a popular, comprehensive checklist that aims to increase energy efficiency by reducing consumption in areas common to most data centers.
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Mentions: IBM
Still Plenty of Green in the Data Center
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Apr 14 2010)
For many data centers, going green meant going virtual -- that is, the vast majority of power savings over the past two or three years was the by-product of server consolidation.
While there's nothing wrong with that, it does lead to something of a conundrum as virtualization reaches its practical limits: how to maintain energy efficiency gains once your consolidation ratios start to encroach upon service level and reliability requirements?
“The move to system-wide energy management is not dissimilar to the call for more holistic ERP deployments, which blindsided many IT departments.”
The good news is that there are still plenty of areas in the data center that are ripe for significant energy-use makeovers. The bad news is that many of the most effective measures require a substantial up-front commitment, both in terms of capital costs and systems architecture.
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Mentions: IBM
Energy Efficiency Requires More than Just Lip Service
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Apr 5 2010)
Quick quiz: How important are energy costs to your organization's bottom line? And how many of you know how consumption will be affected by planned upgrades?
The reason I ask is that new research is showing a pretty wide gap between IT's acceptance of energy use as a key planning factor and concrete steps to even assess the impact that upcoming rollouts will have on consumption. New data from Kelton Research reports that more than a quarter of enterprises have moved energy consumption into the top three in terms of annual operating expenses, even though only half say they calculate those costs into their annual IT budget.
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Mentions: Greenpeace IBM Microsoft Corp
Inflection Point: The Future of the Data Center
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Sep 24 2009)
We are all racing feverishly to improve the efficiency of our data center infrastructure, mainly as part of cost containment and perhaps to “Go Green.” However, there's a huge amount of finger-pointing and confusion in the computing world today over the impact that blade servers and virtualization are having on the data center. On the one hand, you have the faculties groups calling for a major overhaul of the data center to upgrade physical infrastructure in the data center, while on the other, IT equipment vendors are promising that the next generation of systems will be a lot more energy efficient, thereby reducing the overall power load.
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Green IT: Permanent Changes
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Aug 27 2009)
So is the greening of IT a genuine environmental movement? Or is it just a reaction to high oil prices and the global recession?
My guess is that it's a little bit of both. However, one thing is certain: the changes being made today are more than just window dressing. They are long-term, structural renovations that will continue to fuel efficiencies and give the environment a break long after short-term financial considerations are met.
Of course, those financial considerations are nothing to sneeze at. Symantec estimates that a typical large enterprise coughs up close to $27 million for electricity to run their data centers.
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Mentions: IBM
Cooling a More Mature Green Data Center
Explore itbusinessedge.com (Aug 10 2009)
The concept of "going green" in the data center may have jumped the shark, as the saying goes, but only in the sense that adopting energy-efficient technologies and practices is no longer about catch phrases and empty promises.
Instead, it appears that the movement is transcending the novelty phase and has settled in as a permanent component of the upgrade and expansion process. That means you're less likely to see green technologies put in place for their PR factor as much as for their impact on the bottom line.
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Mentions: Amazon.com ASHRAE
Get Going on Green Technology Before the Going Gets Pricey
Explore itbusinessedge.com (May 19 2009)
Energy costs are on the rise and some companies might be hitting themselves for not taking energy conservation seriously, says IT Business Edge contributor Arthur Cole. He predicts an expected price hike in oil prices this summer might push those companies, which have previously been hesitant to seek greater data center efficiency, to now embrace the idea.
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