5 strategies for greening your data center

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Introduction
  3. Method 1: Move to more efficient hardware
  4. Method 2: Software management
  5. Method 3: Efficient cooling strategies
  6. Method 4: Use clean power
  7. Method 5: Raising ambient temperature
  8. Key takeaways
  9. About Adam Lesser

1. Summary

Over the past five years, increasing attention has been paid to the use of energy in the modern data center. Driven by the growth of cloud computing and public efforts by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Apple to show their commitment to going green, significant resources and efforts have gone into improving the energy footprint of leading data centers.

Those experiments and implementations at many leading data centers hold lessons for smaller data centers that may not have the dedicated engineering and facilities staffs to fine-tune their efficiency.

Key findings in this report include:

  • The main method for improving data center efficiency is more power efficient IT hardware — servers, storage, and communications.
  • Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software tools can be a key part of assessing the energy footprint of a data center, improving uptime, and improving individual server utilization rates.
  • The leading option for most data centers in search of clean power is working with the local utility to put more clean power on the grid through investment. This can become part of a larger strategy for carbon neutrality at a company.
  • Estimates show that raising the temperature of a data center even one degree can result in up to a five percent energy savings.

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