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Companies Speak out About Data Center Power Consumption Costs
By Carrie Schmelkin TMCnet Web Editor
As companies look to cut costs and increase efficiencies in all departments, a big source racking up the dollars that they may be overlooking at is their data centers.
As data centers continue to be designed, a great deal of attention is being placed on what can be done in the future to counter the huge amount of data center power required to run the equipment. According to industry experts, energy consumption and data center power consumption are at an all time high and that can significantly drive up the costs of running the center. And with electricity now representing 25 to 40 percent of the operational expenditures in most data centers, centers are hurting.
One company CEO is tackling the problem head on, encouraging people to better assess their data center power consumption.
"While ripping out an existing data center and starting over may seem like the best approach, it isn't practical for most companies," said Brad Wurtz, president and CEO, of Power Assure, in a statement. "Increasing the efficiency of existing data centers can save millions of dollars per year in operating expenses, and avoid hundreds of millions in CAPEX outlays to build new a data center."
Power Assure is a leading developer of dynamic data center optimization software for large enterprises, government agencies and managed service providers
Wurtz proposed a list of questions that executives should ask their data center managers in order to determine whether money is being wasted because of inefficient management of energy and data center power consumption.
The questions include: “How frequently do you measure power usage?”; “What is your baseline power usage?”; “How much of the power allocated to your data center is actually used?”; “What is the limiting factor for your data center, space cooling, or power?”; “What is the average utilization of the servers in your data center?”, and “What is the power efficiency of your data center servers?”
According to Wurtz, if these questions are answered server power consumption can be reduced by more than 50 percent in a typical data center.
"It starts with the ability to view and manage power use across facilities and IT equipment, capabilities delivered by emerging data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution,” he said.
Like Power Assure, Server Technology, which designs and manufactures products to reduce downtime and improve data center power management, addresses issues surrounding data center power.
For those IT managers wishing they had the ability to manage all the power in their global network from one location and interface, Server Technology (News - Alert) has the solution, as it offers the Sentry Power Manager – a solution that helps managers address data center power related challenges by measuring, monitoring and trending power at the server cabinet level.
Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Carrie Schmelkin
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