Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/148754
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), data centers consume as much as 20 times more power per square foot than a typical office building. Gartner Group backs up this claim: "Energy-related costs account for approximately 12 percent of overall data center expenditure and are the fastest-rising cost in the data center… tives. DCIM's ability to assist server and infrastructure consolidation, via real-time views into energy consumption, was a major factor for the solution's adoption. In fact, the survey estimated that DCIM's IT infrastructure consolidation abilities can replace nine standard servers for every single blade server – resulting in a 42 percent decrease in energy costs. Another area of savings the survey identified is active thermal management. The results show DCIM specifically contributes to safe reduction of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratios by 16 percent. Impressively, this equals $149,000 in annual cost savings for 10,000 sq. ft. of floor space. One company in particular noted big savings leveraging DCIM in server consolidation driven by real-time views into the facility and operations. The media/ information company originally adopted DCIM to specifically reduce energy costs. Upon implementation, the company uncovered that 80 percent of its servers – across three separate data centers – were only using 10-15 percent of their potential capacity. With one of the biggest efficiency killers across data centers being underused or underperforming servers, many companies look to server consolidation as a means to correct the situation. In an effort to perform efficient workload processing – without reducing reliability – the media company ran a comprehensive analysis of server utilization and performance. In the end, they successfully transitioned 1,243 servers into 137 blade chassis. Most impressively, this meant an average of 42 percent reduction in energy-related costs. In real numbers, this translates into an annual savings of 2.44 GWh in energy consumption and $586,570 in power-related costs. Furthermore, the company effectively reduced carbon emissions by 2,841 tons. A number of survey respondents adopted DCIM specifically for the purpose of tracking and improving data center thermal conditions. By actively making adjustments, eliminating hotspots, and ensuring heat tolerances aren't exceeded – actual cooling was drastically reduced. In addition, a colocation facility surveyed increased reliability and avoided network failures by maintaining extremely low cooling temperatures – just to be safe. The company simply had little insight into the proper cooling levels needed to avoid failures. This resulted in higher cooling bills passed onto its customers. But with an active view into actual chilling, the company was successfully able to increase temperatures by one degree each week and still maintain the proper amount of cooling needed to ensure continued operations. As a matter of fact, the reduction in data center cooling requirements helped them achieve an annual savings of 2.3 GWh in energy consumption and $285,120 in power-related costs which is passed onto their customers as direct savings. DCIM – WORTH A LOOK No doubt data center operations are expensive – encompassing expenditures on new capital and maintenance. Between the cost of expansion, the power necessary to cool, and inefficient use of power – many data centers are wasting significant amounts of money due to the limited The new TS IT rack with snap-in technology. Quick and easy to install. www.datacenterjournal.com THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL | www.rittal-corp.com/makeITeasy 31