The energy-saving approach in the 10 data center

Gartner predicts from professional data that the cost of providing more than three years of energy supply to the server will quickly exceed the cost of the server's purchase. This will cause losses to businesses. With that in mind, Chris Loeffler, the product manager of Eaton's Datacenter Solution, addressed the issue at the Gartner Data Center Conference, introducing 10 ways to save energy in the data Center for the company. He says it's not a wild-style management plan and technology that, if properly adopted, would reduce the energy consumption of up to 50% of the data Center for the enterprise, most notably without compromising availability. Let's summarize.

1. Turn off the idle device.

Loeffler says typical x86 servers consume between 30% and 40% of their maximum energy consumption in idle time. He says IT organizations should shut down servers that do not need to perform tasks. If someone complains, the organization should see if the less used part of the application can be virtualized.

2. Virtualization.

Virtualization is one of the hottest topics in this year's data center meeting, so it's not surprising that it appears on Loeffler's list of recommendations. The vendor says server utilization typically floats between 5% and 15%. The utilization of direct attached storage is between 20% and 40%. The utilization of networked storage is between 60% and 80%. Virtualization can increase hardware utilization by about 5 to 20 times times, enabling organizations to reduce the number of servers that generate energy consumption.

3. Combined calculations.

Loeffler says organizations should integrate servers, storage and networks as much as possible. They should replace the rack server with a blade server because they can share resources such as power supplies, fans, networks, and storage. Blade servers are 10% to 25% less energy needed than servers with the same computing power. He says organizations should also consolidate storage and use tiered storage for different workloads.

4. Use or enable the CPU energy management function.

Loeffler says many hardware products have built-in power management capabilities, but never used. "Most mainstream suppliers have been using it for quite some time now," he said. You just may not know that it has been developed or that the server itself has such a function. "This feature enables the CPU to optimize power consumption by dynamically switching between multiple performance states." It lowers the input voltage and frequency based on the number of instructions running on the chip. This saves the organization up to 20% of server energy consumption.

5. Use efficient IT equipment power supply devices.

"Many manufacturers are starting to put their products into the ' 80-plus ' club to be more than 80% efficient," Loeffler said. "It organizations that want to improve energy efficiency in their power supply units can improve the efficiency of their entire energy delivery infrastructure," he said. Loeffler said it would reduce energy consumption and refrigeration requirements in about 15% of the data center.

6. Use efficient uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

UPS efficiency fluctuates between 80% and 95%. Loeffler said: "If you use the older UPS system, it may be only 80% efficiency, and if you use the updated UPS system to replace it, you can achieve 95% efficiency." There's a huge payoff here. It may seem like this, if you're running a system that was built back in the 80 or 90, there's a huge potential for energy improvement by replacing some of these aging systems. ”

7. Use 208 volts or 230 volt power distribution for the server.

Using a high-voltage power supply such as 208 volts or 230 volts, rather than a standard 120 volt distribution, can increase server power efficiency from 82% to 84% or 85%. "All you have to do is make sure that when you deploy your server and deploy power to your racks, you use high volt power distribution and the capabilities that the server actually has," Loeffler said. That is to say, use high voltage to the server as much as possible. ”

8. Adoption of best practices in refrigeration.

Loeffler says many data centers may use hot or cold channel configurations to improve refrigeration efficiency, but they also have some smaller aspects to improve efficiency. You can install a simple bezel in an empty slot on the server rack. He said: "That is to ensure that the cold air in the cooling channel does not mix to the hot air in the heat channel is very effective way, which can make the temperature mixing slower than the original." ”

Loeffler said the organization should also seal the cable openings to minimize airflow around. He said the data organization should consider the use of air treatment and chillers, using such efficient technologies as frequency conversion drives to adjust the motor speed of the air-conditioning system when the cooling demand drops.

9. Evaluate the utilization and efficiency of your data center.

As mentioned above, in addition to shutting down unused IT equipment, organizations should also eliminate unused software applications, focusing on more efficient software that requires additional CPU cycles.

10. Prioritize actions to reduce the energy requirements of your data centers.

Loeffler says organizations should identify and prioritize actions to reduce the need for energy requirements in data centers. He said it should get the support of top management of the company before embarking on these efficiencies, forming cross-functional teams to develop an energy strategy for IT operations.

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