Cardboard, bubblewrap, parcel tape, foam padding, plastic strapping. In IT there is excessive packaging with every item purchased. A keyboard will come in 3 boxes covered in tape and surrounded by foam. The Register recently reported about a delivery of a standard PS2 Mouse to a reader from HP which was the only item strapped to a pallet. Excessive? I think so! They also reported another reader's delivery from HP of 32 pages of information. Each 2 sheets was wrapped in foam and enclosed in its own box. These 16 boxes in turn were in a larger box. Is it all really necessary??
There is a serious point to be made though. 6-10% of all IT equipment failures in Data Centres are solely caused by dust. Cardboard dust is the worst dust as it is very fine. It gets sucked into servers by the fans where it settles. This makes the fans work harder to cool the equipment as the dust reduces airflows and the fans create more heat as a result. The cooling plant must cool a higher temperature driving up power costs.
Many facilities have dedicated de-box rooms so that cardboard never enters the operational floor, but 90% of these rooms are ignored and people unpack equipment in the facility and use any spare space for storage. A number of facilities that Migration Solutions has visited has had boxes, clothes, furniture and food on the live floor to name a few! The design of a facility makes it easier for staff to keep to tidy habits and maintain a clean environment, but it is up to the Data Centre Manager to ensure that these standards are adhered to by the entire workforce. A well run facility will as a result be a clean and efficient facility.
Migration Solutions created ERA, an environmental report and assessment to look at Data Centres and Computer Rooms and investigate what improvements could be made to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Cardboard dust cropped up on many ERAs that were undertaken which greatly effects the efficiency of a Data Centre. Over 150 points are assessed in an ERA which provide Data Centre Managers a great incite into the health of their facility, and a selection of free, small cost and large cost suggestion on how to improve efficiency and save money. For more information vist www.migrationsolutions.com
Showing posts with label ERA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ERA. Show all posts
Monday, 17 August 2009
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
Green Repercussions
The EAC (Environmental Audit Committee) has commented today that they believe that if government departments fail to cut their carbon emissions in line with their Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) plan, that the taxpayers will have to pick up the bill. The CRC plan charges companies £12 per tonne of CO2 they release or expect to release in a year. Using energy saving technology to reduce emissions and increase efficiency will allow companies to be ranked on percentage of CO2 reduced and will then be given a rebate if they succeed or exceed the 12.5% reduction by 2012.
The government's plan is to give companies an incentive to reduce energy consumption and they expect the savings to more than pay for the £12 charge, making a net gain for the businesses involved. The EAC are suggesting that this plan could come back to bite the government if they cannot achieve their own targets, meaning the government would have to take money out of the national budget to pay for their own shortcomings.
There are widespread worries that a 12.5% reduction in CO2 emissions will be hard to attain for many companies.
In the words of Lance-Corporal Jack Jones "DON'T PANIC"!! This is far from a bad thing for Data Centres. As we all know, Data Centres consume around 3-4% of all power in the UK. 12.5% of this equates to the equivalent of a 200MW facility!
Reducing every Data Centre and Computer Rooms power consumption by 12.5% may sound like an impossible challenge, but in reality it can be a very simple to achieve.
Migration Solutions developed ERA (Environmental Report and Assessment) which concentrates on all aspects that affect the running of a Data Centre or Computer Room and advises clients on how to improve their efficiency and as a result, reduce their power consumption and costs. Using the advice provided by Migration Solutions, estimated savings that will be free to implement could save between 5-10% of your facilities power costs. With a small amount of expenditure you could expect to see a reduction of 12-20% in power consumption. So the CRC may not be as hard to fulfil as you may first think! For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255
The government's plan is to give companies an incentive to reduce energy consumption and they expect the savings to more than pay for the £12 charge, making a net gain for the businesses involved. The EAC are suggesting that this plan could come back to bite the government if they cannot achieve their own targets, meaning the government would have to take money out of the national budget to pay for their own shortcomings.
There are widespread worries that a 12.5% reduction in CO2 emissions will be hard to attain for many companies.
In the words of Lance-Corporal Jack Jones "DON'T PANIC"!! This is far from a bad thing for Data Centres. As we all know, Data Centres consume around 3-4% of all power in the UK. 12.5% of this equates to the equivalent of a 200MW facility!
Reducing every Data Centre and Computer Rooms power consumption by 12.5% may sound like an impossible challenge, but in reality it can be a very simple to achieve.
Migration Solutions developed ERA (Environmental Report and Assessment) which concentrates on all aspects that affect the running of a Data Centre or Computer Room and advises clients on how to improve their efficiency and as a result, reduce their power consumption and costs. Using the advice provided by Migration Solutions, estimated savings that will be free to implement could save between 5-10% of your facilities power costs. With a small amount of expenditure you could expect to see a reduction of 12-20% in power consumption. So the CRC may not be as hard to fulfil as you may first think! For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255
Friday, 29 May 2009
How good is wind?
The Scottish government has officially switched on the largest onshore wind farm in Europe. The site on Eaglesham Moor, which takes up an area the size of central Glasgow, has 140 turbines which will power 250,000 homes. The owners, ScottishPower Renewables, have been given further permission to increase the site by 25% to 176 turbines which would have the ability to produce 452MW of power. There are also discussions in place to build an 1800MW offshore wind farm in the west of Scotland. To put this into perspective, 452MW is about 1% of the UK’s electricity consumption, and 1800 MW is about 4.5%.
Data centres in the UK have been said to use around 4% of all power used in the UK. If the offshore wind farm in Scotland gets the go-ahead, these two sites combined would produce enough power for every data centre in the UK. The Whitelee wind farm takes up an area of 55 square kilometres and the UK would require 600 of these to meet its energy policy by 2050, or an area the size of Wales.
The question on many people’s lips is, will energy prices fall as a result of this renewable energy? In America, many IT companies base their data centres around the Colorado River, where hydroelectric power is created in huge volumes and is sold back to the public at a relatively low rate. The electricity prices in Colorado have risen 63% from 2002-2008, this new energy may be clean, but who can be sure how it will affect the price we pay in the UK?
Migration Solutions are a specialist data centre consultancy who recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, their environmental report and assessment. ERA takes a 360 degree look at your data centre and then suggests areas that you could improve on and could help save the environment while saving you money. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com
Data centres in the UK have been said to use around 4% of all power used in the UK. If the offshore wind farm in Scotland gets the go-ahead, these two sites combined would produce enough power for every data centre in the UK. The Whitelee wind farm takes up an area of 55 square kilometres and the UK would require 600 of these to meet its energy policy by 2050, or an area the size of Wales.
The question on many people’s lips is, will energy prices fall as a result of this renewable energy? In America, many IT companies base their data centres around the Colorado River, where hydroelectric power is created in huge volumes and is sold back to the public at a relatively low rate. The electricity prices in Colorado have risen 63% from 2002-2008, this new energy may be clean, but who can be sure how it will affect the price we pay in the UK?
Migration Solutions are a specialist data centre consultancy who recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, their environmental report and assessment. ERA takes a 360 degree look at your data centre and then suggests areas that you could improve on and could help save the environment while saving you money. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Be prepared for a hot summer
The first warm days of 2009 have arrived this week, and hopefully we are in for a good summer this year. But is it good news for your computer room?
The last two summers, have been, to say the least, pretty dismal, giving your computer rooms a reprieve. Don’t be complacent this year, if we have a hot summer you’ll need to be prepared. The last very hot, and long summer was 2003. All that new kit that you have been installing since then will only make cooling your environment more difficult, especially if the amount of cooling available is barely sufficient.
So how can you prepare?
Take a good hard look at your IT environment. Do you have any windows? Windows in a computer room are the biggest problem. Do what you can to block the windows, whether it be with boarding or blackout blinds, it will help. Ideally your computer room should be well inside the centre of a building.
Check your installed devices. If they are in racks with a best practice hot aisle/cold aisle arrangement make sure that the equipment is installed correctly. You’d be amazed how often we find servers installed back to front with the hot air being blown into the cold aisle. If you have Cisco kit, it may have side to side cooling. Have you installed baffles to redirect the airflow?
Check your cabling. Is it blocking air flow? Do you have sufficient floor grills? You may have sufficient cooling on paper, but if the airflow is blocked, or the air can’t reach the front of the servers it will cause problems.
Do you have glass fronted cabinets? These are also bad news for air flow.
Finally, if the worst comes to the worst, do you know which non-critical devices can be shut down? Do you have development and testing servers that can be shut down, and do you have a plan in place to do this? Are you able to resources portable air conditioning units at short notice?
These are just a few of the things that can be done, which will not only help you to get though the summer, but will also save you money all year round. 2009 could be a very bad year for computer rooms. Getting your computer room in shape now is essential.
Migration Solutions are data centre specialists. They recently won the Information Age Data Centre Innovation Award for ERA, an environmental report and assessment. ERA investigates all the elements that affect a data centre's operation and gives advice on how to be more environmentally friendly, more efficient and save on energy consumption. As a pre-summer health-check, Migration Solutions can advise on how to prepare for an anticipated hot summer. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com
The last two summers, have been, to say the least, pretty dismal, giving your computer rooms a reprieve. Don’t be complacent this year, if we have a hot summer you’ll need to be prepared. The last very hot, and long summer was 2003. All that new kit that you have been installing since then will only make cooling your environment more difficult, especially if the amount of cooling available is barely sufficient.
So how can you prepare?
Take a good hard look at your IT environment. Do you have any windows? Windows in a computer room are the biggest problem. Do what you can to block the windows, whether it be with boarding or blackout blinds, it will help. Ideally your computer room should be well inside the centre of a building.
Check your installed devices. If they are in racks with a best practice hot aisle/cold aisle arrangement make sure that the equipment is installed correctly. You’d be amazed how often we find servers installed back to front with the hot air being blown into the cold aisle. If you have Cisco kit, it may have side to side cooling. Have you installed baffles to redirect the airflow?
Check your cabling. Is it blocking air flow? Do you have sufficient floor grills? You may have sufficient cooling on paper, but if the airflow is blocked, or the air can’t reach the front of the servers it will cause problems.
Do you have glass fronted cabinets? These are also bad news for air flow.
Finally, if the worst comes to the worst, do you know which non-critical devices can be shut down? Do you have development and testing servers that can be shut down, and do you have a plan in place to do this? Are you able to resources portable air conditioning units at short notice?
These are just a few of the things that can be done, which will not only help you to get though the summer, but will also save you money all year round. 2009 could be a very bad year for computer rooms. Getting your computer room in shape now is essential.
Migration Solutions are data centre specialists. They recently won the Information Age Data Centre Innovation Award for ERA, an environmental report and assessment. ERA investigates all the elements that affect a data centre's operation and gives advice on how to be more environmentally friendly, more efficient and save on energy consumption. As a pre-summer health-check, Migration Solutions can advise on how to prepare for an anticipated hot summer. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Money Vs Environment
In these financially turbulent times, has everyone forgotten about the environment? Companies around the world have had their budgets slashed, all un-necessary projects stopped and anything to do with the environment put on hold until financial stability can be found again. Most people in the western hemisphere have been affected by the credit crunch in one way or another, some more than others, but it appears that the biggest loser has been the
environment. Six months ago everyone was cutting down paper use, recycling every scrap and utilising more efficient products but now people are more worried about saving money, sweating assets and managing to getting by. Can the two not go hand in hand?
100% efficiency is the final goal of any technology be it the combustion engine, kettles or computer chips. The growing trend in the car manufacturing market is for small, efficient cars that are cheap to tax, insure and run. They give consumers better value for money, albeit at a sacrifice of space, but even big cars like the hybrid Lexus GS 450h and the RX 400h 4x4 are embracing advances in electric engine and battery technologies to save their owners money. Sticking with the car theme, city car sales are up 17% while luxury and 4x4 sales are down over 40% each. What is the result of this boom in efficient, money saving designs? The environment is better off. Things that are good for the environment are good for our wallets!
Anyone who runs a data centre will know how expensive they are to power and cool and that any new technologies that save on these costs are embraced as soon as budgets will allow. Look at blade servers when combined with virtualisation software. A fully populated 10 bay blade chassis takes up 7U of rack space and will draw around 4kW of power. This is equivalent to 10, 2U servers, but they will draw around 5kW and take up 20U of rack space. When combined with virtualisation, you can combine many servers, over 100 instances on one physical server is possible ... seriously improving data centre efficiency.
Environmentally friendly plant is also a great way to save money. Free cooling chillers can significantly reduce the amount of money spent on cooling by using the ambient temperature to cool a data centre. In the UK, anywhere from 8 to 12 months of free cooling can be utilised every year, with up to 80% savings in power costs per month when it can operate without running the condensers. Fresh air cooling is even more efficient - you don't have any chillers, but replace them with large intake fans to cool the data centre from just the ambient temperature.
So the answer to the original question; Can money saving and environmental awareness go hand in hand? Yes! And there are huge savings to be made with very short returns on investment. Should everyone change all their IT and plant equipment straight away? No, because the imbedded carbon from physically creating the new equipment does not make replacing new or partly worn kit environmentally friendly, but as soon as it reaches its end of life invest in equipment to save the planet and save your wallet!
Migration Solutions is a specialist data centre consultancy and a member of the Green Grid. Winners of Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owwners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.
environment. Six months ago everyone was cutting down paper use, recycling every scrap and utilising more efficient products but now people are more worried about saving money, sweating assets and managing to getting by. Can the two not go hand in hand?
100% efficiency is the final goal of any technology be it the combustion engine, kettles or computer chips. The growing trend in the car manufacturing market is for small, efficient cars that are cheap to tax, insure and run. They give consumers better value for money, albeit at a sacrifice of space, but even big cars like the hybrid Lexus GS 450h and the RX 400h 4x4 are embracing advances in electric engine and battery technologies to save their owners money. Sticking with the car theme, city car sales are up 17% while luxury and 4x4 sales are down over 40% each. What is the result of this boom in efficient, money saving designs? The environment is better off. Things that are good for the environment are good for our wallets!
Anyone who runs a data centre will know how expensive they are to power and cool and that any new technologies that save on these costs are embraced as soon as budgets will allow. Look at blade servers when combined with virtualisation software. A fully populated 10 bay blade chassis takes up 7U of rack space and will draw around 4kW of power. This is equivalent to 10, 2U servers, but they will draw around 5kW and take up 20U of rack space. When combined with virtualisation, you can combine many servers, over 100 instances on one physical server is possible ... seriously improving data centre efficiency.
Environmentally friendly plant is also a great way to save money. Free cooling chillers can significantly reduce the amount of money spent on cooling by using the ambient temperature to cool a data centre. In the UK, anywhere from 8 to 12 months of free cooling can be utilised every year, with up to 80% savings in power costs per month when it can operate without running the condensers. Fresh air cooling is even more efficient - you don't have any chillers, but replace them with large intake fans to cool the data centre from just the ambient temperature.
So the answer to the original question; Can money saving and environmental awareness go hand in hand? Yes! And there are huge savings to be made with very short returns on investment. Should everyone change all their IT and plant equipment straight away? No, because the imbedded carbon from physically creating the new equipment does not make replacing new or partly worn kit environmentally friendly, but as soon as it reaches its end of life invest in equipment to save the planet and save your wallet!
Migration Solutions is a specialist data centre consultancy and a member of the Green Grid. Winners of Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owwners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.
Friday, 6 February 2009
We won!
Yesterday, Information Age, the magazine that has been the backbone of the IT industry for many, many years, announced the winners of the Information Age Awards. The awards were made for innovation in a number of categories; Data Centre, Security, Information Management, Eco-Responsibility and Business Applications. Over 500 voters, readers of the magazine and web site, voted for the finalists. Migration Solutions submitted an entry for its ERA product. It is a great honour to win the award, against stiff competition from Telecity Group for their new data centre design. You can see our entry here.
ERA (Environmental Report & Audit) is a product that Migration Solutions offers to customers to help them reduce the environmental impact of their data centre or computer room, whilst also reducing the power costs. The audit, or assessment, takes just a couple of hours on site and assesses over 150 different data points. The subsequent report provides informative advice on how the environmental impact can be reduced and operating costs can be cut. The conclusion of the report includes a series of recommendations, some of which will cost nothing to implement, some that may take some time or a small amount of investment and some that need planning and investment to achieve.
Since launching ERA take-up has been strong with many companies looking to reduce their environmental impact and also take advantage of the massive cost savings that can come with it. It is an indication of the success of ERA that every data centre or computer room that has engaged Migration Solutions to carry out the assessment has saved the cost of the service ... many within weeks!
So, forgive our pride, but it is great to be recognised by our peers and to win such a prestigious award!
Migration Solutions is a vendor indepedent consultancy, specialising in the design, migration and operation of data centres and computer rooms. To find out more, please visit: http://www.migrationsolutions.com
ERA (Environmental Report & Audit) is a product that Migration Solutions offers to customers to help them reduce the environmental impact of their data centre or computer room, whilst also reducing the power costs. The audit, or assessment, takes just a couple of hours on site and assesses over 150 different data points. The subsequent report provides informative advice on how the environmental impact can be reduced and operating costs can be cut. The conclusion of the report includes a series of recommendations, some of which will cost nothing to implement, some that may take some time or a small amount of investment and some that need planning and investment to achieve.
Since launching ERA take-up has been strong with many companies looking to reduce their environmental impact and also take advantage of the massive cost savings that can come with it. It is an indication of the success of ERA that every data centre or computer room that has engaged Migration Solutions to carry out the assessment has saved the cost of the service ... many within weeks!
So, forgive our pride, but it is great to be recognised by our peers and to win such a prestigious award!
Migration Solutions is a vendor indepedent consultancy, specialising in the design, migration and operation of data centres and computer rooms. To find out more, please visit: http://www.migrationsolutions.com
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