Bangkok--29 Oct--Core & Peak The growing data burden and inefficient storage management and systems are having a clear environmental impact. Taveesak Saengthong, Country Manager- Thailand, Hitachi Data Systems , examines how businesses can reduce their carbon emissions and power consumption by optimising their data centre and improving procurement practices. Only a few years ago, climate change figured very low in the public consciousness. Politicians and campaign groups may have discussed the implications of global warming to raise awareness but few in the business world or wider society considered it an urgent threat. That situation has since changed, with recent images of melting ice caps and shrinking lakes showing the very real impact our activities have on the environment. More and more people are worried about the future of the planet and climate change has become a significant concern for governments, industries and communities worldwide. At the same time, the introduction of new regulations and growing public concern means that organisations also face the risk of prosecution and irreparable damage to their reputation if they do not meet environmental standards. For example in Singapore, building control regulations require that the envelope of all commercial buildings that are air-conditioned must be designed with an overall thermal transfer value not exceeding a prescribed value. In addition, there are tax incentive schemes to encourage owners of trade, commercial and industrial buildings to use energy-efficient equipment and technology and highly efficient pollution control equipment. Data centres and the environment While everyone needs to do their part to help reduce carbon emissions and curb excessive energy use, business and industry are big contributors to the problem. Our ever-growing reliance on technology means that an organisation’s data centre, which often uses huge amounts of energy, can be one of the main culprits. Consider the average amount of electricity it takes to power the average data centre: Power required by data centre equipment 3mw Power-distribution losses, cooling, lighting 3mw Total power requirement 6mw Cost per kilowatt-hour US$0.06 Annual electricity costs for 24/7 operation US$3.15million Annual savings from a 10% increase in efficiency US $315,000 Source: Computerworld “Doing the Math”, April 06 (US figures) Why are data centres to blame? There are three big offenders:1. Servers: The Forrester Research estimates that a data center with 2,500 servers will use enough electricity in a month to power 420,000 homes annually.2. Storage: IDC estimates that storage accounts for 37 percent of overall data centre power consumption. The problem is that storage is often highly inefficient, with the average storage system usually achieving around 45 per cent utilisation, instead of the more acceptable 85 per cent that some older mainframes achieved3. Cooling: Gartner claims that traditionally 60% of power was required for cooling but this is rising to at least a 100% today where for every watt of machine power used an additional watt to a watt and a half is required for cooling.Source: 2006 Data Center Polling Results: Power & Cooling (February 2007). By Michael A. Bell (Gartner)Compounding this is the fact that virtually all organisations continue to generate and handle ever-increasing amounts of business-critical data. The more data produced, the more has to be stored, adding an even greater power burden. This doesn’t just damage the environment; it also compromises enterprises’ bottom lines.All these translate into pressure on the business community to address rampant power consumption and the impact that IT operations have on the environment. So what do organisations need to know and what should they be doing?Understanding the issueIt is critical that CIOs trying to come to terms with this issue understand the true carbon footprint of their department. Electricity spending is all too often hidden within operational costs, and this makes it very difficult to benchmark power usage.Where CIOs have traditionally focused on scalability and performance, they now also need to take into account space and energy requirements that are traditionally top of the facility manager’s agenda. CIOs must extend their cost models and baseline existing power usage so that they can develop a power-efficient storage infrastructure that is also cost effective.IT managers now grasp the importance of energy efficiency. Improving the performance of server processors has been a popular tactic but this only solves part of the problem. Storage plays just as big a role in excess power consumption and as such has its role to play in addressing the problem.IT managers must look at how they can consolidate their storage infrastructure, reducing the amount of data that is actually being stored and power being used by taking advantage of technologies such as virtualisation, de-duplication and thin provisioning.Gaining a true understanding of the environmental impact of IT also means researching suppliers. It’s not just about how much power, space and cooling hardware requires once installed but also how environmentally friendly the production process has been. What materials does the manufacturer use? Do they have control of the entire supply chain? How far have they shipped the product? What are the disposal and recycling plans?Taking positive actionBy now it is becoming increasingly apparent that organisations must begin building and using more environmentally friendly data centres. So what practical steps can they take to address this challenge?1. Maximise the utilisation of existing storage resources. The amount of energy consumed by storage depends on the number of drives used, not the volume of data held. Increasing the density of capacity makes storage systems more energy efficient, and enable an organisation to reduce power and cooling requirements2. Look for storage solutions that have lower power consumption and heat output, or that can be configured to further reduce cooling requirements while meeting environmental directives regarding construction and recycling3. Reduce the amount of data throughput. High-performance storage is not only expensive but also consumes a significant amount of energy. By using tools such as archiving, data de-duplication and compression, organisations can reduce the amount of data that actually has to be processed and stored4. Look at technologies such as virtualisation and thin provisioning to consolidate the number of systems in use. In addition to power, space and cooling improvements, these technologies also allow organisations to re-configure their data centre to take advantage of more balanced cooling configurationsFive steps to reducing your storage carbon footprint1. Reduce data centre hotspots. Storage and server racks should be configured with hot and cold rows. Use virtualisation capabilities to reconfigure hardware without disruption to take advantage of more balanced cooling configurations.2. Implement virtualisation strategies. Reposition hot spots without disruption. Utilise a single controller and interface and increase utilisation of existing resources3. Consolidate storage. Disparate systems are inefficient and consume unnecessary resources. Carefully evaluate future storage needs and consolidate, utilise thin provisioning to reduce the amount of physical capacity you require, lower the number of devices you use and consider centralised network-attached storage systems to further reduce costs of power, cooling and data centre space.4. Deploy services to design the right infrastructure. Consider professional services to help with designing storage architectures, deploying virtualisation and dispose of end-of-life equipment.5. Investigate the vendor’s environmental track record. Dig deep and investigate whether environmental issues and sustainability are really part of the DNA of a storage vendor. How much control do they have over the total supply chain? Do they have a defined roadmap to minimise their environmental impact?