Data Center Power Featured Articles
Server Technology Enables Managers to Optimize on Data Center Power by Driving Efficiency
By Susan J. Campbell TMCnet Contributing Editor
An airflow optimization project has been completed across 12 U.S. data centers by global network and IT services provider Verizon (News 
- Alert). With a focus on reducing data center power consumption, this move is expected to produce annual energy savings of 18.8m kWh.
To complete this project, Verizon contracted Polargy, a California-based provider of containment services. On its end, Polargy designed the containment solutions for each of the designated facilities, managed the installation, secured the local fire-marshal approvals, and helped with the commissioning process.
The data center power containment solution was dubbed PolarPlex and included hot-air redirection, the blocking of panels to fill empty rack space, and the installation of plastic or solid panels for air containment. The partnership with Polargy was established as the provider could deliver the desired energy savings and reductions for environmental impact.
The 12 sites together make up roughly 1m sq ft of data center space. Once the project was completed, Verizon noticed an aggregate 7.7 percent improvement in overall energy efficiency across all involved facilities. The overall Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE) metric across all 12 facilities increased from 0.45 to 0.5.
Server Tech is one provider focused on increasing efficiencies within the data center. Managers in the data center space are increasingly searching for ways to make their centers more efficient and reduce the overall cost of power.
“Their interest in efficiency is really about saving money and cost,” Server Technology’s (News - Alert) Senior Director of Software and Firmware Engineering Calvin Nicholson told TMCnet in a recent interview. “We like to believe that they want to save the earth and that they are green, and I think some of the California companies take that seriously, but in general it’s because they see that it’s really affecting their bottom line.”
“Because of that, there’s a bunch of different areas where things have changed,” Nicholson said. “They are looking at efficiencies of the devices that are in the data center. The UPSs that are on the data center floor have gotten a lot more efficient, and the power supplies and the servers and the devices have gotten a lot more efficient.”
Over the last 25 years, Server Technology has worked with the data center industry to design, develop and provide power management products and system. Definite changes have occurred within the industry during that time, including the increase in responsibilities for data center managers and the push toward virtualization.
Essentially, data center managers want to know where they are using power and how they can become more efficient. Server Tech provides data center power tools such as the Sentry Power Manager to enable managers to measure, monitor and trend data center power usage. In addition, the increased migration to virtualization is helping to improve efficiency within the data center through consolidation.
In the industry overall, data center power usage has increased, but managers are getting much more done, using less power for each service. The goal is to continue to drive this efficiency as the demand for data center power continues to increase.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Carrie Schmelkin
Data Center Power Resources
Featured White Papers
This article explores the various monitoring systems typically found within the data center ecosystem and how to navigate getting the required power and environmental information needed to make better decisions within your data center facility.
[Read More]RF Code provides an enterprise class, wire-free sensor solution that is ideal for monitoring in real time the environmental conditions in IT dense areas such as data centers and IT closets.
[Read More]Within enterprise data centers, power used for operating the facility, lighting, running IT loads and cooling is the largest operational expense. Numerous papers and articles have been published by The Green Grid, The Uptime Institute, PG&E, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories and others discussing ways to measure, monitor and increase efficiencies. This paper discusses the effect on efficiency of load balancing across phases in a 3-phase distribution system.
[Read More]