LEED - Is it beneficial?

Increasing amounts of Data Centre operators in the United States are looking to get LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification on new Data Centre builds in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. There are obvious advantages to creating a more sustainable building which conserves and/or generates its own power, but are all the LEED checklist points beneficial to the building of a new facility?

23% of the LEED checklist refers to the site chosen for building construction. The checklist covers areas such as the reduction of impact on the land, rehabilitating biodiversity and minimizing the effects on water flows and runoff. Although many of these site-related points can be achieved, the nature of Data Centres generally require them to be located close to, or in, a major town so as to avoid the huge cost of re-routing power and sourcing data connectivity. Urban sites are often limited and developers often do not have the space or money convert 50% of the land to promote biodiversity which is one of the LEED requirements.

Conforming to other sections is easier. There are recommendations on taking logical steps to reduce carbon emissions. Building in minimum levels of energy use in new devices by design can realise significant power reduction.

A major section is to demonstrate that a building will be more efficient than a normal building, scored on a percentage improvement on an incremental scale. It encourages improvements at every stage of the build to encourage the highest scores. The more efficient the building materials used, the more efficient the building will be.

A relatively small maximum score (6.3%) is awarded for the production of on-site renewable energy, which appears to recognise the fact that it is not feasible to produce off-grid energy in large quantities at this point in time. They also give points for sourcing grid power from a green source. Most electricity providers now supply, for a premium, energy produced sustainably using wind, wave, hydro and solar. Crucially, LEED promote building power metering - essential for a well run Data Centre. Only by monitoring and logging energy use can it be properly assessed. This provides the basic tool to make informed changes to reduce energy use.

So to answer the original question 'Is LEED beneficial to new Data entre construction?' the answer is.....it depends! The benefit of LEED accreditation must be balanced with return on investment. Many of the criteria for LEED compliance are industry best practice and should be followed as they will result in lower running costs. Other criteria may not be considered as essential, and with budgets being tight, this may mean that not enough points could be realised to obtain creditation.

There is also the issue of potential conflicts between LEED and meeting the requirements for a tiered facility, as defined by the Uptime Institute.

Companies will look at a return on investment when designing a new Computer Room or Data Centre. The benefit of LEED accreditation has to be weighed against cost. LEED best practice should however, be followed where possible.

Migration Solutions is a specialist Data Centre consultancy focused on improving data centre and computer room design. Migration Solutions is an active member of The Green Grid, the only UK accredited RIBA CPD Network Provider for data centre design and endorsers of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255.

Free Cooling Calculation

Free cooling has been around for a significant amount of time and many data centre managers are choosing to, at the end of its practical life, replace their current cooling plant with equipment that takes advantage of free cooling technologies. In smaller data centres where IT is a support tool and not the core business, data centre managers often find it difficult to persuade the people who hold the purse strings that it is better to spend a little more money now and make large savings down the line.

The Green Grid, campaigners for more efficient data centres, have developed a tool to help data centre managers to justify the extra capex when replacing the cooling plant. Their calculator 'The Free Cooling Tool' takes into account your data centres country, location within that country and all of your cooling and power use thresholds and combines this information with the cost of power to estimate the savings possible from replacing your current equipment with a free cooling type.

With this tool, the Green Grid hope to assist the world in making data centres as green as possible and to reduce their global carbon footprint. The net result is that you can help save your company money, while saving the environment and improving your facility.

Migration Solutions are specialist data centre consultants and members of the Green Grid. Being vendor independent allows them recommend free cooling equipment that will not only be the best available on the market, but best for you and your data centre or computer room. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

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

Is a wireless Data Centre possible?

Does your Data Centre look like this?

The majority of Data Centres and Computer Rooms in the UK have disorganised cabling and patching which inhibits air flow and reduces efficiency. The organic nature of a network infrastructure often starts with the best intentions and neat cabling, but develops into a sprawling mess when 'quick patches' are made and then left in position. Five years down the line and you can't see the rear of your servers!

There are so many benefits to a neatly patched facility. Connecting your servers through a patch panel allows quick organised alterations to the network while maintaining sub-floor cabling and air flows through the Data Centre. Using cable management arms inside cabinets keeps all cables neatly together and easily traceable, and allows hot air to exit quickly and unobstructed from the servers, which reduces the need for the computer fans to work as hard, reducing power usage. But could we do away with cabling all together?

Companies like WiTricity are already researching safe, wireless power transfers with the idea that in the future, you will be able to walk into a room or your office and phones, laptops and and mp3 players will start charging automatically without being connected to anything. The potential for this technology is unlimited, giving true freedom for you and your gadgets. But what about Data Centres and Computer Rooms? If the same technology was applied, power cables could be removed which would improve air flows and therefore cooling efficiency. The question remains though, would the amount of power required be able to be safely transferred to the equipment reliably? And, more importantly, being only around 40% efficient vast improvements will have to be made to make it a viable solution in a Data Centre environment.

So if wireless power is a possibility, what about wireless networking? Cisco are currently operating and improving a wireless Data Centre. Their facility uses Power over Ethernet and Wi-Fi Ethernet to create a network cable free Data Centre. They have up to 27 routers in the ceiling per meter to give excellent redundancy and bandwidth levels. This technology, along with wireless monitoring and management like the service provided by Synapsense would create a true, wireless Data Centre. Synapsense gives an on-demand picture of temperatures, humidities and pressures within a facility which could replace an expensive and often in accurate CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) test.

While CFD has its place, it lacks the ability to map each individual facilities server utilisation. This new method would allow a Data Centre Manager to fine tune a facility so that servers are always in the most efficient area. With the ability to move servers and racks around freely to optimise cooling, with the only constraint being floor grill placement, super efficient data centres could be just around the corner and they could, just possibly be wireless!

Migration Solutions is a member of The Green Grid which is focused on advancing efficiency in Data Centres. They have also recently received Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.

Swine Flu

The world has gone swine flu crazy! The public has become paranoid about contracting swine flu and doctors have been inundated with appointments from people who think they have the symptoms. The NHS has just launched a telephone and online service to handle the huge number of enquiries and to provide Tamiflu without the need for a visit to the doctor, where the infection has potential to spread rapidly. Record numbers of people have been phoning the service and accessing the online website, www.pandemicflu.direct.gov.uk.

In the first hour they received 10,000 phone calls and 9.3 million website hits!

NHS direct normally run at around 110-140 GB of bandwidth a month with people looking for information on their website. With their dedicated swine flu website coming online, in the first 3 hours they used 1,404 GB! The new website does use a less bandwidth-heavy design, but even taking that into consideration, they had a rise of 2,453% in bandwidth used! If you compare their normal bandwidth figure (110-140GB a month for 2006-2007) with that of 2003-2004 (25GB) you can see how much of an increase in the reliance on the internet there has been to help find information and diagnose problems.

Is the internet becoming a core utility? The majority of the country use the internet daily to find out everything from directions to talking to relatives abroad. We rely on it as our library, dictionary and news source. When did 'Google it' become an acceptable business term!? Lord Carter's Digital Britain report has promoted the need to give everyone in the UK access to broadband internet by 2015. When you move house, ensuring that you have internet connectivity has become as essential as organising your electricity, water and gas suppliers. If the internet is becoming a core utility, should it be treated as such? Should each house have a bandwidth meter to measure 'how much' internet you use? That way, you could could pay for what you use and not what you think you will use; better value for money for the consumer.

Using the same methodology in Data Centres would reduce the amount of website downtime that is linked to company's exceeding designated bandwidth limits. Companies wouldn't have to second guess the amount of bandwidth they might use which would make Data Centres more competitively priced. There would be a larger focus on the cost of power and subsequently the efficiency of each Data Centre. With more efficient Data Centres, less power would be used and there would be less CO2 being released so the Data Centre operator, customer and the environment would benefit!

Migration Solutions created a Environmental Report and Assessment to look at how a Data Centre operates and areas that could be improved within the facility and operations. The ERA report comes with an entire section on changes that can be made to help your Data Centre run more efficiently and effectively. These improvements range from free, low man-time changes that can yield a 5-10% reduction in power costs to major works which include changing a facility layout, rack layout and replacing old plant equipment. For more information on the Environmental Report and Assessment visit www.migrationsolutions.com.

Power to the People

Have you got power? Do you know where your power comes from? How long can you survive without power? Many companies in Kent are asking these questions as they face a third day without electricity. Up to 100,000 homes and businesses have been left without power after a suspected vandal attack on an electricity substation in Dartford. Many businesses have had to close as they cannot function without power and only facilities with backup power generation have been able to continue their operations as usual.

For those who need to keep their businesses going, there has been a huge demand for generators and fuel. EDF who own the substation have been trying to restore power and have been providing backup power in 3 hour long, rotated sessions where possible. A number of Data Centres in the area who do not have generators on site have been paying higher than usual prices to source power at short notice. They are starting to realise how fragile the national grid is in the UK and how there is an increasing need for standby generators with present and expected, future power problems.

So do you know where your Data Centre gets its power? Do you have diverse feeds to maintain resilience? In a worst case scenario, how long could your facility survive without mains power and without generator fuel? For the majority of Data Centres with standby generators, no more than 24 hours worth of fuel is kept on site. According to the Uptime Institutes tiering standards, a tier 4 facility is only required to have 4 days of fuel while a Tier 3 only 3. What happens if fuel trucks cannot get to your facility to refill the tanks? Some Data Centres claim to hold enough fuel for 90 days of normal operation. This may seem very expensive and sound like overkill, but talks of London running out of power in the near future and past fuel price strikes are leading business continuity experts to recommend larger fuel tanks to minimise potential impact on critical business systems. How vital are your systems and how long could your facility survive?

Migration Solutions are a specialist Data Centre consultancy focusing on design, build, operation and migration of facilities throughout the UK and Europe. Contact us now for advice on how to make your Data Centre or Computer Room more resilient for the future at www.migrationsolutions.com

Chillerless Facilities

In the news this week is another of Google's data centres. Their facility in Belgium does not use chillers and traditional air conditioning, but utilises fresh-air cooling to effectively cool the data centre for free. Fresh-air cooling is not a new technology and it is in use by many different facilities around the world, but the clever part is that Google have done away with the need for backup air conditioning units for the few days a year when temperatures rise above the safe operating levels of their computer equipment.

To allow this facility to run at optimum levels, the technology employed had to be redesigned from the ground up. Google already build their own servers which mean they can purpose build them to their specific requirements, using minimal components and reducing the need for expensive casings and multiple drives. These servers can be run at a temperature of 27 degrees centigrade which allows for cooling requirements to be minimal in the first place. The average summer temperatures in Brussels are between 19-21 degrees which allows a 6 degree variance for heat waves or unseasonal hot days. If the temperature in the data centre rises to a level where the IT equipment cannot handle the heat, Google, using its virtualisation technology, starts to transfer the servers activity to different facilities around the world which allows the data centre to cool naturally, restoring a lower temperature and allowing the facility to continue to operate at normal levels. This process is performed automatically by the data centre, which can recognise when it may be over heating. There is also an increasing reliance on local weather forecasting so they can pre-empt any problems that may occur.

As the world moves towards virtualisation as a more efficient method of server utilisation, the question remains, is the Google data centre blueprint the future of the modern computer room? Google have the ability and the financial backing to be able to take a problem, dissect it, and redesign it so it works most efficiently for their requirements. This is their plan for Google OS, but are Googles requirements the same of the rest of the worlds?

Making your Data Centre as efficient as possible will reduce your yearly power bill significantly. Some very small, often free changes can return 5-10% savings in power. Migration Solutions are specialist consultants who created their ERA, Environmental Report and Assessment, to help Data Centre and computer room operators save running costs and extend the life of servers and their support equipment. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Super-Data Centres

Has anyone got a spare million lying around? How about cheeky $2 billion?

The NSA (National Security Agency) in America, has announced plans that they intend to build a $2 billion, 1 million sq ft data centre in Utah as they are fast growing out of their Fort Meade headquarters. The proposed 65 MW facility will be sited on 2 major power corridors and will house new supercomputers that the Fort Meade facility can no longer support. The NSA, who watch and listen to most communications - via the internet, phone calls, radio broadcasting and other communications methods. They watch over the whole world's communications, attempting to spot dangers to the USA from foreigners. An element of this information is shared with GCHQ, the UK's version of the NSA. The NSA build bespoke supercomputers to break ciphers and encryption around the world, which require huge amounts of power and cooling to operate effectively. As an example, the world's most powerful supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner takes up 296, 42U racks and uses 2.53MW of power, not including the water-cooled CRAC units.

In the UK we can presume that GCHQ must have a similar sized computing capacity. There is not much information as you would expect from a highly classified branch of the government, but they have stated that “It’s hard for an outsider to imagine the immense size and sheer power of GCHQ’s supercomputing architecture.” This does beg the question, does the government/GCHQ have access to vast amounts of power that is not readily available to the public and average data centre operator. There is a severe shortage of power in the UK which has been highlighted through the reserving of electricity for the Olympics by many companies who have been paying vast sums of money in a bidding war to secure the limited power available. The government has a plan in place to build a number of new nuclear power stations and clean coal powered stations (which will include carbon capture) by 2018, but many sources are saying that the UK will run out of power by 2015 as old power stations come to the end of their lives.

The best way to safeguard your data centre or computer room for the future is to make it more efficient now so that you will not require excessive power in the next 10 years. Migration Solutions are specialist Data Centre consultants who design and build, operate and migrate data centres all over the UK and Europe and have recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, an Environmental Report and Assessment which looks at ways that computer room and data centre operators can cut costs and improve their facilities efficiency. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255.

Digital Britain

The final Digital Britain report was published last week with many interesting discussion points. The report was commissioned to ensure that the whole of the UK, from businesses to consumers could maximise the benefits that the internet and emerging technologies surrounding it can provide. Key points that were highlighted were the development of broadband across the country, especialy rural areas, so that the entire population can have access to higher download speeds; ensuring the public have sufficient IT and media literacy skills to take advantage of new technologies; creating a digital copyright framework to protect intellectual property rights to support and promote creativity along with investment opportunities and job creation in sectors important to the UK and to combat internet piracy to ensure the future of on-line music and film downloads.

One of the surprises that came out of the Digital Britain report was that all wired internet users will now have to pay a 'broadband tax' of 50p per month to help pay towards the expansion of fast internet across the country. There has been doubt expressed already that the government is just trying to look as if they are doing something to alleviate the problem, and that the big cabling providers do not require a "meaningless sweetener", and that it is just another stealth tax. When it comes to piracy, the government will only intervene as a last resort. This means that abusers will not be disconnected if they flout the law, which does not seem much of a deterrent. Whether this will work remains to be seen, but if after a year there are not significant improvements, Internet Service Providers will be asked to slow the abuser's connection speeds and as a last resort block their IP addresses. Removing the internet from the illegal downloader's appears to be one of the few viable ways of stopping piracy.

Data centres were touched on very briefly, maybe to explain to those not in the know what data centre is! All the report revealed is that the need for data centre and co-location space is increasing - which is stating the obvious! There does not appear to be a plan in place to help provide power for these 'in-need' data centres which is the biggest limiting factor at present. This means that power will remain very expensive as it becomes a bidding war for provision and it will become increasingly harder to obtain. As a result the public will end up picking up the cost.
So with all these 'revelations', internet use will increase while the ability to host the vital equipment needed to run the internet will remain limited!

Migration Solutions are a specialist, vendor neutral consultancy who focus on data centre design and builds; business continuity planning and disaster recovery; data centre migration and operation. For more information vist www.migrationsolutions.com

Restoring trust for the future

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the highly honoured professor credited with being the father of the internet, has revealed that Gordon Brown has given him a job to assist the public in regaining the trust of their government. In new plans, Gordon Brown has agreed with Sir Tim, that taxpayers' money has paid for data about the government, so they should have access to it. This sudden bold move by the Prime Minister comes after a wave of resignations following the 'expenses scandal' which revealed that many MP's have been claiming for items and houses that they were not entitled to, passing them off as 'perks of the job'. Sir Tim's role will be to create a website that gives complete transparency of the government's expenditure in an attempt to restore trust before the next general election.

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, an Oxford graduate from London, presented the first proposal at CERN for an HTTP client for the sharing of information between scientists. In 1990 with the help of Robert Cailliau, they created the first communication via the internet. This team could also be considered the parents of the modern data centre. Data centres were already in use throughout the 1980's as the reliance on computing grew across the globe, but it wasn't until the internet took off in the mid 90's that data centres became what they are today. As many companies turned to the internet as a way of marketing and creating brand awareness, the internet exploded in size which resulted in the dotcom boom. As a result data centres evolved very quickly and many new facilities were constructed.

It is believed that data centres use 3% of the worlds electricity, while in the UK this figure is over 4%. This is equivalent to around 800 2MW data centres across the country. In reality this is made up of thousands of small 10 rack or less computer rooms. The figure gives an idea of just how much power we consume in IT. 1600MW would run 3.6 million homes for a year. While our requirement for data centre space is on the increase, computer processing capabilities are also increasing which allow a single server to perform multiple tasks more effectively and efficiently. The more efficiently a server works, the faster we can receive results from it and so our expectations of how long a task should take are reduced. As a result, we have created a perpetual cycle of power consumption that will be very had to slow down.

With the release of the full Digital Britain report today, the country is expecting to see an attainable action plan to get every person in the UK on the internet at a connection speed of at least 2Mbps. With 61 million people using the internet, and internet connections getting faster, eventually becoming fibre connections, data centres will need to have faster connections into the facilities and faster servers to process the information. This will just add more fuel to the perpetual technology cycle. The cost will fall to the consumer with a premium paid for faster connections and to the data centre operator who will have to increase the bandwidth to each facility. Improving data centre efficiency is likely to be the first step in keeping costs down. Migration Solutions has created a tool for this. ERA - the Environmental Report and Assessment takes a snapshot of all aspects of a data centre from the cooling to the layout, power to the processes and procedures, to help data centre operators save money and save the environment at the same time. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

iPhone - The Next Generation?

As the whole world will know, Apple has announced the release of the new iPhone handset for next week. This small piece of equipment has been the market leader in smart phone technology since its initial release in June 2007. The iPhone has made the internet accessible from pretty much anywhere with mobile phone reception and as a result, many more people have been accessing the internet, reading and writing emails, downloading music and Twittering on the go rather than waiting until they are at their PC or Mac. The public is becoming more dependent on the internet for everything, and the iPhone is one of a handful of phones that is contributing to this dependency.
The iPhone now has a better camera, 3.2 megapixels over the 2 previously, and supports video capture. It can connect and transfer data faster than ever. For the consumer this is brilliant news, and for Apple it's even better as many people will upgrade their phone, but how will it affect the users, the data centre owners and the data centre operators?
The faster connection speeds will require faster processing power in data centres to keep up with the advancing technology. The consumer will expect the infrastructure to be able to support the new technology and so data centre operators involved with any aspect of the iPhone will have to improve and maintain their technology to keep up with the ever increasing demand for speed. For many ageing data centres, this will mean that old servers will need to be replaced with new, multi core processors with sufficient RAM and fast storage attached to a fibre or cat 7a based network connection. New equipment and faster processing will necessitate more efficient and reliable cooling. The faster processors and increased cooling will require more power which increases the cost of running a server. The net result? The public will end up paying a premium on the services relying on data centres - which will show up on your phone bill as higher line rental and data charges.

Choosing a Co-Lo

Does your co-lo match your needs? Do you know what your needs are? Do you know what is best for your data?

When choosing a facility to host your IT equipment, be it one 1U server or 30 racks of high density storage, it is crucial to choose a data centre that matches your requirements. There are so many companies out there offering services that appear very similar, but are very different once you scratch the surface.

Do you need access to your server? So many people host their servers in the centre of London or in the surrounding area, paying a premium to be close to their server(s). Could you host your server in Iceland for example and take advantage of cheaper power and cooling costs - would latency be an issue? If you went down this route, would you have the confidence to know that you are getting a service that you have never seen or to do the research to get the level of hosting that is closest to your requirements?

When talking about facility location, do you consider its security implications? Major towns and cities suffer from increased security risks from accidental outages from non-related infrastructure maintenance and potential terrorist attacks (not just to the facility but near-by). From a power point of view, brown-outs and power cuts are becoming a greater problem in major cities as the present supply is stretched with our increasing demands.

How redundant are the co-location facilities? Do they have multiple data (telecoms) and power feeds, on-site generators, N+1, N+2, N+N equipment duplication? If they claim that they have redundancy in their water-cooled air conditioning, does this extend to the pipes, water pumps and water tanks?

The question that you need to ask is "What are you paying for?". When you want 5kW of equipment in 1 rack, do they charge you for 3 racks because they only have power provision for 2kW per rack? If they charge you for 3, is your equipment spread between 3 racks or put in one, and is there a cooling implication linked with this?

There are so many questions that you need to ask when hosting your equipment, and it can be a very daunting process whether you know data centres inside and out or have no experience in them at all. Migration Solutions are data centre consultants that specialise in performing due-diligence on behalf of their clients to ensure they have the best fitting, best priced solution based on their specific needs. Extensive experience in data centre design and operation allow Migration Solutions to help you get exactly what you want and what you need first time, minimising the stress of the selection process. For more information or to find out how they can help you visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call now on 0845 251 2255

PUE, DCiE, what’s it all about?

PUE is a metric developed by The Green Grid to measure Power Usage Effectiveness, which compares the total facility power usage against the IT power load. DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency) is simply the inverse of PUE reported as a percentage. What do these figures actually tell us? They give a snap shot in time of a data centre or computer room's power use which can be used to suggest how efficiently your data centre's plant equipment is running. One of the main problems with PUE and DCiE is that the results tend to vary depending on the weather conditions at that particular moment in time. For example, if you took PUE measurements at 6am and again at 2pm, the difference in outside temperature and humidity would affect how hard your plant would have to work. A higher outside temperature requires air conditioning chillers to work harder to cool the same load, which has a significant impact on power usage. To make effective use of PUE and DCiE, reading need to be taken regularly to get an averaged result.

OK, so now we are in recession. There are, and will be more, calls for spending cuts and more efficiency from existing hardware and our staff. PUE and DCiE can play an important part in this. But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.

How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department. Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important. Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.

How much will you save by installing this meters? Without proper metering, who knows?

Migration Solutions is a member of The Green Grid which is focused on advancing efficiency in data centres. They have also recently received Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.