Green is the hot topic these days, and the concept
is having an impact on the way people think about
datacenters. Companies around the world are
announcing ways to save energy and reduce costs by
5 buying new hardware and services. Yet, there is little
guidance on how you can take action to control energy
costs. In the past, electricity has been treated as an
overhead expense, like the cost of space. But with rising
power costs and issues regarding reliability, supply, and
10 capacity, electricity requires its own specific strategy.
Projects regarding performance optimization and
cost reduction are a part of everyday best practices in
nearly every area of business. So why not treat energy
cost in the same way?
15 As Information Technologies (IT) pros, many of us
make decisions about the configuration and setup of
servers, the specifications on the equipment our
organizations purchase, and the requirements for
datacenter upgrades and construction. We even provide
20 early design input during application development. When
it comes to these projects, we obviously have a golden
opportunity to be green and influence the energy
efficiency of any datacenter.
The first part of any strategy is to know your current
25 energy usage. You need to know where your energy is
used and by what specific equipment, as well as what
usage is efficient and what is wasteful in the datacenter.
Unfortunately, it's rare to find power-consumption
metering in place that can break down usage to a level
30 where people can see the results of their actions. Most
organizations typically only see a monthly power bill
that rolls up consumption into an overall bottom line.
This offers little incentive for saving energy since
individuals never see the impact of their decisions, and
35 there is no way for them to prove that their changes
have actually saved energy.
One of the first issues people confront when
considering a green datacenter initiative is whether they
have executive support. For the purpose of the article, I
40 am going to assume the answer is "not yet." Executive
support requires a serious commitment that provides
resources and budget for your initiative. And while there
is a lot of talk about green datacenters, the reality is
that there is still often a lack of serious support at the
45 executive level. If you did already have such executive
support, you would probably be running a green
datacenter right now.
Still, even assuming you are not getting the support
you need, there is a great deal you can do to push your
50 green datacenter initiative forward. So how do you
determine effective actions to take in achieving your
goals? Fortunately, energy efficiency is not a new
concept and there is a lot that IT pros can learn from
other industries. [.]
55 Anyway, for whichever direction you choose,
planning an energy efficiency program for your datacenter
will require collaboration across groups in IT. Until
recently, the typical approach to planning IT solutions
has been to ignore power costs early on during the design
60 phase, focusing on the hardware and software being
purchased, along with the labor and hosting costs of
the solution. When power is buried in the overhead cost
of running solutions in a datacenter, energy efficiency
is a low priority. Exposing the actual power being
65 consumed by solutions is the first critical step in changing
the behavior of your organization.

By Dave Ohara
TechNet Magazine, October 2007