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 following: effective capacity planning, power provisioning, device utilization or replacement, preventive maintenance, and failure or disaster avoidance.

Here are three value drivers for power and cooling efficiency, outlining the various options for CIOs to reduce costs in the data center and contribute to corporate profitability.

>> Read full article now  By Jeff Klaus is director, Intel Data Center Manager

What are the Promises, Challenges and Imperatives of Data Center Infrastructure Management?  Contact Us

Alternating current (AC) power is ubiquitous in data centers, and it's hard to change the status quo. But a direct current (DC) power demonstration project conducted by the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory produced some interesting results: a 7% energy savings over top-notch AC technologies.

SearchDataCenter.com recently reported on an experiment in using DC power in a data center at Syracuse University, furthering the practical research into this data center power option. While total DC power infrastructure for data centers isn't quite ready, these investigations are putting the concept on the top of mind for data center professionals concerned about power consumption.

Will DC Take to the Data Center?  DC Power could save a bundle, but tech managers are just exploring it.  

More than a century after DC bowed to AC as the most efficient method of electrical distribution, DC is getting a second look. But this time around, the ambitions of DC supporters are more narrowly focused. They're touting DC over AC as a way to make the facilities that house massive and power-ravenous data computing, storage, and communications systems more energy efficient. In a replay of the original AC-DC fight, however, AC supporters counter that tried-and-true AC, especially if it's optimized for efficiency, still reigns superior.

The battle is taking place against a backdrop of the surging "green" movement and an increased awareness of how much energy data centers use (and waste) because of how they're configured. Electrical engineering conferences, white papers, and demonstration projects that assess the comparable benefits of AC and DC for data centers have been proliferating. They've accelerated since 2006, when Congress directed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to oversee efforts to mitigate spiraling data center power consumption.

Has AC met its match?

DC has emerged as one possible fix, primarily because it would eliminate one of the biggest sources of energy loss and waste with AC - the multiple back-and-forth transformations and conditioning needed to step voltage down for use by IT equipment. By converting high-voltage AC to DC earlier, keeping it in DC form, and delivering it directly to rack-based servers, energy loss from conversion and the resultant heat that must be removed with cooling that also requires energy could be reduced. In fact, some studies peg energy savings as high as 30%.

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At any given moment, millions of financial transactions, e-mail, and online videos may be coursing through the circuitry of one of the massive computer server farms that have proliferated in the Internet age.  In Alfonso Ortega's thinking, it's a lot of hot air. He's not talking about spam.  

The Internet generates a huge amount of waste heat, said Ortega, a Villanova University professor of energy technology.  By some estimates, 3 percent of the nation's electricity is devoted to computer processing and data centers, enough to light up a couple of states. The cost of cooling the equipment nearly equals the cost of powering the computers that process the bits and bytes, said Ortega, who is also the college of engineering's associate dean for graduate studies and research.

"People started to pay attention when companies said, 'Wow, unbelievable, we're now eating up half of our costs just to keep this thing cool,' " he said.

Ortega's Villanova team, along with a consortium of four other universities and four area corporate partners, were recently awarded a five-year, $3.4 million grant by the National Science Foundation to study ways to improve energy usage at data centers. The effort is formally called the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center in Energy-Efficient Electronic Systems.  

DVL is one of the four area corporate partners, at the forefront of the data center industry research.

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Great Ideas To Design A Better Server Room

While increasing energy efficiency has been a growing initiative in data centers across the country, largely due to demands to “do more with less” in a challenging economy, an amalgamation of myths related to data center “greening” and a general lack of understanding of how to approach and achieve it has had a significant negative impact on the universal adoption of true “green IT” practices. 

Most data center managers have no direct visibility to the data center’s total energy consumption with respect to the IT and facilities infrastructure, especially when the data center/computer room is located in a mixed-use building. Fortunately, the emergence of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solutions is driving a paradigm shift where the gap between IT and facility infrastructures is being bridged to offer a holistic use of resource utilization throughout the data center.

>> Read more now 

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A new era in IT is upon us.  The 2011 Technology Training Summit and Expo will give you the knowledge you need to get ahead during this new Technology Era!

Virtualization has changed the game and affected every aspect of the data center.  It is not just about server virtualization – desktop virtualization, voice, video, mobility, collaboration, unified fabric, cloud, and tablet devices all impact how we do business now. We had the initial Technology Training Summit on Thursday, October 13, 2011 in King of Prussia, PA.  There were multiple training sessions and an expo where you had the opportunity to:

• Get the latest information and technology updates related to the data center, collaboration, wireless, and much more
• Experience live demonstrations showcasing the latest technologies
• Meet leading technology experts from major vendors and network with your industry peers.

There were many manufacturers including Cisco, Emerson Network Power, EMC, and VMware in attendance to answer questions and provide information on their specific technology and solution offerings.  Over 100 IT people from multiple industries attended the informational sessions this past Thursday. 

SIGN UP FOR THE NEXT CISCO/EMERSON TECHNOLOGY SHOW HERE

Learn more about the latest technologies and trends in the industry and how they apply to your top IT initiatives by joining us at one of the upcoming events.  

NEXT EVENT:  October 20, 2011 at Art's Quest in Bethlehem, PA

SIGN UP FOR THE NEXT CISCO/EMERSON TECHNOLOGY SHOW HERE