Green IT Innovation – Data Center Efficiencies to reduce Carbon Footprint – Part 1.

Part 1 of 3 – Consolidating Data Centers and Servers.

When most IT managers think of DC efficiency, they jump right to the topics making the most headlines, “Strategic hot and cold server rows, high efficiency power supplies, LEED certification analysis and building retrofits, etc.” Yes, I’ll cover those things in some detail in Part 3, but one of the most effective and least costly ways to cut your total electricity usage (and therefore your company’s carbon footprint) is to reduce the overall number of servers you’re using and especially strive to phase out older model servers.

In a report published by David Greenhill, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, (Space Watts and Power), he indicates that older model servers can consume 45 times the energy of newer models. In his case study the 1997 server used 13,456 watts / hr. compared to only 300 watts / hr. for the 2005 server. But even 300 watts/hr. (0.3 Kw/hr.) add up quickly when you realize you’re typically running it 7/24/365. In fact, each 300 w server uses about 2600 Kw per year. Then you factor in the hundreds or even thousands of servers most large organizations are using and the air conditioning, UPS, lighting, etc. to house them, and you can start to see why less is definitely more.

There are plenty of other reasons for consolidating your servers too including (reduced software licensing fees, reduced maintenance costs, reduced leased space and possibly even reductions in total staff to watch over the servers.) So, the next step is figuring out How to Best Consolidate your servers.

Server Consolidation 101

• Identify and work with your key IT professionals to build a project team and plan. Select from each of the following critical areas: IT Infrastructure, Servers and Hardware, Project Management, Business Solution Managers (BSMs – point people who represent the customer), Software development, Database engineering and support, IT Architects, QA, mainframe, etc.
• Have this team build a picture of the current state: How many total servers, where are they located (country/state or province/city/building/floor), what customer groups are using which servers, what applications are on each servers, how much disk space is being used, what % of CPU utilization is being used (average and peak), etc.
• Have your IT Architects, Database, Software, BSMs and mainframe team members research to figure out which applications and databases can share the same server (not all applications are sophisticated enough to share CPU, etc.) From the list of those that cannot, work through the BSMs with your customers to see if any applications can be phased out or upgraded to enable a shared server environment.
• From the list of those applications that can live on a shared server, work with the BSMs and Project Management to initiate migration projects. (Each application and database will have its own Service Level Agreement – SLA that defines its maintenance window, etc.) and you will need to carefully coordinate with all business customers to ensure “business critical” apps are not negatively impacted during the migration.
• From your list of server utilization statistics, have your team determine the best candidate boxes to be the new primary host and backup (fail over) servers, and which boxes will be phased out (end of life’d – EOL, and hopefully recycled back to the manufacturer. See Cradle-to-Cradle. Or reused through donatation to charity organizations.)
• Decide what two physical locations will become your primary and backup data centers (more on chosing ideal DC locations in Part 2 of this series.)
• Then communicate your project plan, goals and projected benefits to all stakeholders and start implementing!
• Don’t forget to include your QA team in each step along the way and especially when verifying sytems and applications post-migration.

At the large financial institution where I participated in this type of migration, we reduced nearly 50% of our servers, saved $tens of millions off our budget and dramatically reduced our electricity and carbon footprint.

If you’re interested in learning more, please be sure to read Part 2 and 3 of this series and referencing some of the other valuable resources out there on this topic: The Green Grid, WEEE, and RoHS. Contact the author at: ToddRawlings.com.