Realize ROI Faster with Green Datacenters

Currently, 2% of all energy utilized in the world is thanks to datacenters.

This is equivalent to the total energy consumed by the airline industry

globally. Server capacity on the other hand, is expected to grow 6 times of what

it was in 2000 by 2010. Consequently, storage capacities are set to grow 69

times to accommodate the growth in servers. This directly relates, despite all

advances in the data centre industry, to a doubling of energy utilization every

five years, and for the records, energy costs have gone up by 10% last year in

the US. What is more shocking is the fact that the technology density of

datacenters is growing at 20 times every 10 years, which means you should

ideally have a datacenter which perform 20 times as well as your current

datacenter in the next 10 years. This almost impossible proposition is worsened

by the fact that 78% of all datacenters globally have not been upgraded, scaled

up or enhanced ever since they were deployed, and are more than 7 years old. The

only way out is to either ensure that your next data centre is green or change

the business dynamics to suit the changing trend in datacenter deployment-which

lowers the lifetime significantly and even provides datacenters on demand.

A green roadmap



As an ideal start, IBM announced in India recently, the launch of Project

Big Green 2.0, its global initiative to help enterprises build energy and power

efficient technology infrastructures that can meet growing business requirements

while realizing rapid financial benefits from such investments. Last year,

during phase 1 of Project Big Green, IBM invested USD 1 billion to promote the

concept of energy efficiency. This year, the project takes off from the point

that a higher percentage of IT businesses are seeing power and cooling as the

biggest challenges in datacenter mgmt (22% more than 17% last year).

IBM Site and Facilities Services Portable Modular Data Center

Datacenter in a box



Besides server optimization and integration services for VMware server

virtualization, an updated SAN volume controller and IBM Tivoli enhancements,

the project sees the launch of a new concept in datacenters — on demand and

personalized datacenter in a box. Aimed at large format events, that need a

sudden spurt of computing power, IBM's Portable Modular Datacenter saves space,

energy and is self sufficient for its running power. In other words, it provides

the complete physical infrastructure including power and cooling systems and

remote monitoring. The datacenter can be shipped and deployed into any

environment and can support multiple technology vendors. Ideal for Indian

markets that are devoid of real estate, these boxes claim to brave extreme

climatic conditions, making it ideal to be deployed at remote locations as well.

Scaling up enterprise models



If your business requirements are such that it requires higher turnkeys over

an extended period of time with regular upgrading, Scalable Modular Datacenters

are ideal for you, with 500-2,500 sq ft, at a minimum of 15% improved energy

efficiency, 20% lower price points and a deployment time of 8 to 10 weeks. This

is a pay-as-you-grow model and adding additional stacks does not require too

much time of downtime of existing systems. The Enterprise Modular Datacenter, on

the other hand, promises an attractive energy efficiency of 66%, and an open

architecture which includes multi-vendor support and service. This is ideal for

time intensive and high availability operations.

An online green meeting room



In order to collaboratively walk the path of energy efficiency in

datacenters, a global consortium called The Green Grid was created last year,

with members ranging from Dell to Microsoft to HP, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, and

Wipro Technologies being one of the most recent additions. The central aim of

the consortium is to 'advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business

computing ecosystems'.

The Green Grid is focused on defining meaningful, user-centric models and

metrics, developing standards, measurement methods, processes and new

technologies to improve data center performance against the defined metrics, and

promoting the adoption of energy efficient standards, processes, measurements

and technologies. The Green Grid has recently embarked on a mission to

qualitatively analyze and collate the various green initiatives directed towards

more efficient and eco-friendly datacenter design and management, across its 20

odd partner members.

Futuristic cooling blueprints



Scientists, in collaboration with IBM have also developed a method to cool

computer chips that have circuits and components stacked on top of each other

with tiny rivers of water, an advance that promises to significantly reduce

energy consumed by data centers. A few weeks back, Researchers, in collaboration

with the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, demonstrated a prototype that

integrates the cooling system into the three dimensional chips by piping water

directly between each layer in the stack. These so-called 3D chip stacks --

which take chips and memory devices that traditionally sit side-by-side on a

silicon wafer and stacks them together on top of one another-presents one of the

most path-breaking approaches to enhancing chip performance beyond its predicted

limits, while simultaneously reducing the energy consumed by data centers.