GREEN Data Centers: Dream or Reality?

In the first part of this series, we presented a setof green metrics that should be considered forbuilding a data center. Use these metrics to carryout a self-assessment for your data center, and con-sider facilities, IT equipment and utilization rate. Seetable 1 for some tough questions you should ask your-self during this assessment. Although there are met-rics and measurements available, going green needsto be thought of as a holistic approach. It's not justabout optimum energy usage, or server consolida-tion, or optimum utilization of IT assets (explainedour PCQ Nov, 2010 article). Building a green datacenters also includes planning for a green building tohouse the IT equipment.

As per traditional thinking, the thought of measur-ing, monitoring and eventually conserving energy wastreated as an area for environmentalists and powercompanies to worry about. Today, the situation haschanged, and to appreciate the value of reducing yourdata center's carbon footprint, you need not be a vo-cal advocate of 'saving the Earth'. In fact, saving our planet should be everyone's concern. Reducing theenergy needed for temperature and humidity controlcould save your department a large amount of money.Managing your energy usage more effectively canfree up power for future data center growth and youmay be able to get into carbon trading schemes (alsoknown emission trading or cap and trade).

Environmental Regulations & Pressures

As going 'Green' becomes 'Cool', the regulatory environment is becoming 'Hot'! The European Union has laid down strict restrictions for building data centers. Nearly 75% of European data center managers are con-cerned about the impact that environmental regulations could have on their data centers. Companies in North America are realizing the climate challenge.However, the steps to reduce their overall carbon impact are sluggish. Today, more than half of the NorthAmerican companies have someone on board who'sresponsible for energy and environmental issues.According to recent surveys, climate change, energy,and water are the top three environmental issues.

It seems that companies in Asia Pacific area (AP)are slower than their counterparts in either WesternEurope or North America to address climate chal-lenge issues at the board level. Over half of the com-panies in AP are yet to put in place active plans toreduce their overall carbon impact. Less than 40% ofAP companies have someone at board level entrustedwith the responsibility for taking up energy and envi-ronmental issues. These percentages are far lowerthan those of North America and Western Europe. Inaddition, very few of the of AP companies have a di-rector with a role focused specifically on energy or en-vironmental issues. Even fewer companies in AP leave it to the CIO or IT director, and a few leave it toanother director on the board. More than half of theAP companies have no program in place to reducetheir overall carbon impact, as compared to a major-ity of North American and Western European compa-nies. In such a milieu, it is heartening to know that InDecember 1997, India signed the Kyoto Protocol — aninternational binding agreement that attempts to limitclimate change to no more than 2 Degrees Centi-grade.

Green Buildings for Data Centers

Bringing 'Green' only in IT operations is not sufficient.The thinking should be holistic. It is not just be aboutthe heat generated by servers and other IT equipmentin a data center, nor is it just about the GHGs releasedinto environment. Even a data center building shouldbe planned with a green environment thinking. LEED(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)from USA has developed a voluntary building ratingsystem. There are other initiatives as well, likeBREEAM (Building Research Establishment Envi-ronmental Assessment Method) developed in UK,and GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat As-sessment) in India. These schemes are instrumentalin raising awareness about green building design.

Green Data Center — Summary of Best Practices

Let us summarize the key points to consider for cre-ating a green data center.

I. Think strategically: do research on private andpublic energy-efficiency initiatives. Have executivemanagement approval, have a dedicated team, and in-volve everybody. Prepare plans with IT andsite/facilities considered together. Start with conduct-ing assessment of the current situation. Always in-clude energy costs as part of every business case.Share the data costs with all stakeholders.

II. Consider IT Equipment Best Practices: Buyservers with virtualization and power managementfeatures. Set the foundation for maximum flexibility and a sustained investment into the future. ConsiderIT architectures that help drive up utilizations and re-duce the need for systems. Install new servers as vir-tual instances for flexibility. Make a shift from lessefficient to more efficient hardware. Consider consol-idation of old servers to virtual servers on efficient hard-ware. This reduces energy, carbon footprint, and eventhe space footprint of the data center. Identify systemswith complementary loads and consolidate them. Par-tially utilized systems can often make one fully utilizedsystem. Also consider virtualizing other elements ofyour IT infrastructure like storage and desktops.

III. Reduce energy, carbon footprint and space foot-print: Manage power consumption of your IT systems.Take advantage of the energy consumption and heatload according to the workload. Reduce the energy andcarbon footprint of the data center. Measure the ther-mal and power loads of your IT systems.

IV. Site facilities best practices: Manage the airflowin your data center. To increase airflow efficiency, havea clear path for the cool air to travel under the raisedfloor and to get to the loaded areas. Above the raisedfloor, allow a path for the hot air to return back to theCRAC units. Get thermal profiling done for the datacenter. Managing hot aisles and cool aisles in a datacenter is important (see the next point). Arrange hotand cold aisles. The hot aisle and cold aisle configura-tion enables much better airflow management on the raised floor, for both hot and cold air.

V. Use Localized cooling: locate heat exchangers atthe heat source, which lessen the need for a CRACunit. This increases the efficiency of the remainingCRAC units and the capacity of the available coolingwithin the data center. These heat exchangers are allscalable. It is a good idea to plan for water-cooling inyour data center. Newer infrastructure products aremore energy efficient. Consider replacing the oldestinfrastructure equipment first, because it is likely to failnext and is less energy efficient. Benefits of GreenData Centers are presented in above figure.

Conclusion

All of the above can reduces the energy and CO2 foot-print of the site, and simplify its management. Giventhe environmental issues and regulatory pressures,going green in our IT operations as well as other business practices is imperative. Non- compliance togreen regulations will have financial, business and moral repercussions. We can now expect ROIs to havethe “Green Tag”. Green thinking, ideally, should happen as a natural course of action i.e. not merely due tothe fear of regulatory pressure. A green data centerplan comes from well thought metrics and a systematic assessment of the current scenario about wherethe data center stands in terms of its carbon footprint.From triple bottom line accounting perspective, eco-friendliness is mission-critical to our survival on this planet.

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