- Datacentre infrastructure management
- Free air cooling
- On-site wind generation or use of renewable energy
- Low-power servers
- Modular datacentres
- Datacentre consolidation and virtualisation
- Cloud computing
Driven by rising electricity costs, green legislation and corporate social responsibility, green IT is increasingly on most IT professionals’ minds.
Whatever the reasons, experts say that in the long run, having an energy-efficient datacentre helps the environment.
An energy efficient datacentere can also save businesses money, so here are some of the main technologies that can help your datacentre become green.
Experts rate datacentre infrastructure management (DCIM) tools as one of the coolest technologies that can help companies make their infrastructure energy-efficient and green
Until 2009, DCIM had virtually no market penetration, but today it is one of the most significant areas of green computing, according to Simon Mingay, research vice-president at Gartner. DCIM brings together standalone functions such as datacentre design, asset discovery, systems management functions, capacity planning and energy management to provide a holistic view of the datacentre, ranging from the rack or cabinet level to the cooling infrastructure and energy utilisation.
It helps encourage the efficient use of energy, optimise equipment layouts, support virtualisation and consolidation, and improve datacentre availability. DCIM tools can help datacentre managers improve capacity planning, which can reduce hardware volumes and the associated cooling costs. “We are terrible at capacity planning. Any tool that helps us pack more computing resources per kilowatt of power for greater efficiency is welcome,” says Mingay. DCIM tools can also give datacentre managers a greater insight into the power and cooling needs of the infrastructure, enabling them to plan accordingly.
“DCIM, when fully mature, offers the opportunity to balance compute capacity (power drawn) with IT load and switch hardware into ‘low activity’ or ‘standby’ modes when the load is low,” according to the DatacenterDynamics Intelligence Power report by Ian Bitterlin, a professor at the University of Leeds, and Nicola Hayes, managing director of DCD Intelligence.
Providers are not investing greatly in DCIM tools at present because so few organisations are buying them, according to Ovum principal analyst Roy Illsley. “When this changes, however, users are going to demand a lot more value from DCIM tools and they will become better,” he says.
Datacentre power use is high on the agenda for most datacentre developers. Energy costs have become the largest single element in the datacentre’s total cost of ownership (TCO ) – ranging from 20% to 60% depending on the facility’s business model – and, as energy prices (and/or taxes) rise, the share of the total cost will only become larger, says Bitterlin.
Free or natural air cooling is the practice of using outside air to cool datacentre facilities rather than running power-hungry mechanical refrigeration or air-conditioning units. As a growing number of datacentre service providers build racks and servers that can run in temperatures as high as 27°C, natural air cooling has become a viable option. There is very little reason in regions such as the UK to not depend on free air cooling for most of the year, says Mingay, but most datacentres still use mechanical cooling. Using mechanical cooling only when the outside air temperatures become too high to cool datacentres is an effective strategy to make datacentres green. But free air cooling requires more than simply keeping the datacentre’s windows open. Datacentres also require filters to catch dust particles that can harm server equipment. The filtered air pumped in from the outside must also be treated to ensure the optimum humidity levels. A high moisture level in the air can lead to metal rust, whereas a very low level of moisture can cause problems with static electricity, say experts.
The savings of using free cooling are so evident that big datacentre operators are now confident enough to build datacentres without any mechanical chiller plants, according to analysts at 451 Research. Companies such as Capgemini are using free air cooling techniques in their datacentres.
A number of large businesses, including Apple, Facebook and Google, are taking initiatives to power their datacentres using wind energy. Mingay says wind energy can help datacentre managers meet environmental requirements, while also saving the business money on electricity costs. However, while Google may grab the headlines, an onsite wind farm is irrelevant to most datacentre operators, he says. “For regular operators, onsite generation of renewable energy will be through gas turbines. They may not be as sexy as Google’s wind farms, but they are practical.”
Analyst Andrew Donoghue from 451 Research says datacentre operators are looking for more efficient alternatives to the current x86 standard server racks and blades to make their infrastructure sustainable in the long term. IT providers such as HP and Dell launched their first low-energy alternatives (for development purposes rather than commercial deployments) in 2012. Such servers borrow from the technology driving smartphone computing, which tries to balance performance with battery drain. The trend will accelerate in 2013 as systems makers begin to release full production systems, according to a report by 451 Research analysts. These low-energy alternatives, or micro servers, rely on low-power central processor units (CPUs) from Intel and the ecosystem of ARM partners.
“Given the right workloads, they can be much more efficient than larger, monolithic systems,” says Donoghue. Utilisation rates go up, capital costs go down, high levels of redundancy are achieved, and running costs are lowered, both from lower power consumption and less supporting cooling infrastructure. The impact of low-power servers on the datacentre can be significant – they can help cut direct IT electricity costs and also help reduce operating and capital costs of cooling facilities.
Large enterprises such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are adopting modular datacentres in their bid to boost their green IT efforts. Unlike the way a traditional datacentre is constructed, a modular datacentre is portable. It is designed for rapid deployment, energy-efficiency and high density. Such modular designs are becoming increasingly popular since they are a ready-made datacentre-in-a-box, which can be scaled very quickly. HP EcoPod is a modular datacentre that claims to support more than 4,000 servers with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.05 when using free air cooling.
Virtualisation software extends the functionality of existing servers, which in turn helps reduce power consumption, according to the DCD Intelligence Power report. The report also predicts that virtualisation will play a huge part in raising the utilisation of the existing estate from under 10% to over 40%. It says supplier efforts are required in power management for IT efficiency. At low IT loads, the power management tools must fall in line with the load. Raising hardware utilisation rates this way will reduce the power demand by at least 20%.
Virtualisation and datacentre consolidation strategies help enterprises streamline IT resources and utilise the untapped processing power of high-power server and storage devices. The combination of virtualisation, low-latency and high-bandwidth network connectivity, and specialised servers, has the potential to slash datacentre capital costs and improve energy efficiency, says 451 Research’s Donoghue.
Cloud computing can help enterprises in their green IT efforts, since a computing cloud offers higher CPU utilisation. When one organisation is not experiencing a load, its spare resources are used by another one that needs it. However, 100% efficiency is a long way off. “Cloud computing, mainly public cloud, has a lot of promise for bringing a massive change in resource efficiency, but we are nowhere near there yet,” says Gartner’s Mingay.
Energy savings going forward
A wave of genuinely disruptive change is building in the datacentre industry that will help its green credentials. For instance, the University of Southampton has pioneered a technique to encase electronics in a fluid to support running circuits at higher temperatures. Another example is French company Iliad, which uses higher-efficiency coolers to reduce its CO 2 footprint. It monitors the power requirements of the load to ensure that only the necessary modules are in service. The remaining modules remain in a low-power standby mode, making large energy savings possible.
-Usimamizi wa miundombinu ya kituo cha data - Baridi ya hewa ya bure - Uzalishaji wa upepo wa mahali hapo au matumizi ya nishati mbadala - Seva za nguvu ndogo - Vituo vya data vya moduli - Kuunganisha na kuifanya kuwa halisi - Kompyuta ya wingu Kwa kuongezeka kwa gharama za umeme, sheria ya kijani kibichi na uwajibikaji wa kijamii wa ushirika, IT ya kijani kibichi inazidi kuwa katika akili za wataalamu wengi wa IT. Kwa sababu yoyote ile, wataalamu wanasema kwamba kwa muda mrefu, kuwa na kituo cha data chenye ufanisi wa nishati husaidia mazingira. Kituo cha data cha nishati ya ufanisi pia kinaweza kuokoa biashara pesa, kwa hivyo hapa ni baadhi ya teknolojia kuu ambazo zinaweza kusaidia kituo chako cha data kuwa kijani. "Wanafunzi wa teknolojia ya data na teknolojia ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data ya data.""" DCIM inashirikisha kazi za kujitegemea kama vile kubuni kituo cha data, kugundua mali, kazi za usimamizi wa mifumo, mipango ya uwezo na usimamizi wa nishati ili kutoa mtazamo wa jumla wa kituo cha data, kuanzia kiwango cha rack au kabati hadi miundombinu ya baridi na matumizi ya nishati. Inasaidia kuhamasisha matumizi ya ufanisi wa nishati, kuboresha mipangilio ya vifaa, kusaidia virtualization na kuunganisha, na kuboresha upatikanaji wa kituo cha data. Vifaa vya DCIM vinaweza kusaidia wasimamizi wa vituo vya data kuboresha mipango ya uwezo, ambayo inaweza kupunguza kiasi cha vifaa na gharama zinazohusiana na baridi. <unk>Sisi ni mbaya katika mipango ya uwezo. Chombo chochote ambacho hutusaidia kufunga rasilimali zaidi za kompyuta kwa kila kilowati ya nguvu kwa ufanisi mkubwa kinakaribishwa, <unk> anasema Mingay. Vifaa vya DCIM vinaweza pia kuwapa wasimamizi wa vituo vya data ufahamu mkubwa juu ya mahitaji ya umeme na baridi ya miundombinu, na kuwawezesha kupanga ipasavyo. "Wakati DCIM imekomaa kabisa, inatoa fursa ya kusawazisha uwezo wa kompyuta (nguvu inayotumiwa) na mzigo wa IT na kubadili vifaa katika hali ya ""shughuli ya chini"" au ""kuweka tayari"" wakati mzigo ni mdogo, ""kwa mujibu wa ripoti ya Data Dynamics Intelligence Power Center na Ian Bitterlin, profesa katika Chuo Kikuu cha Leeds, na Nicola Hayes, mkurugenzi mtendaji wa DCD Intelligence." "Watoa huduma hawawekezi pesa nyingi katika zana za DCIM kwa sasa kwa sababu ni mashirika machache sana yanayozinunua, ""alisema mchambuzi mkuu wa Ovum Roy Illsley." "Lakini hii itakapobadilika, watumiaji watataka thamani zaidi kutoka kwa zana za DCIM na zitakuwa bora zaidi, ""anasema." Matumizi ya nguvu ya kituo cha data ni juu kwenye ajenda kwa watengenezaji wengi wa kituo cha data. "Butterlin anasema, ""Gharama za nishati zimekuwa kipengele kikubwa zaidi katika gharama ya jumla ya umiliki (TCO) ya kituo cha data, kuanzia 20% hadi 60% kulingana na mfano wa biashara ya kituo hicho, na, kama bei za nishati (na au kodi) zinaongezeka, sehemu ya gharama ya jumla itakuwa kubwa zaidi.""" Free au asili hewa baridi ni mazoezi ya kutumia nje hewa baridi datacenter vifaa badala ya kuendesha nguvu-njaa ya mitambo baridi au hewa-conditioning vitengo. Kwa sababu idadi ya watoa huduma za datacenter wanaongezeka, wanajenga racks na seva ambazo zinaweza kuendesha katika joto la juu kama 27 ° C, baridi ya hewa ya asili imekuwa chaguo linalofaa. """Hakuna sababu kubwa katika maeneo kama vile Uingereza kutotegemea baridi ya hewa ya bure kwa zaidi ya mwaka,"" anasema Mingay, ""lakini vituo vingi vya data bado hutumia baridi ya mitambo." Kutumia baridi ya mitambo tu wakati joto la hewa ya nje inakuwa ya juu sana baridi datacenters ni mkakati ufanisi wa kufanya datacenters kijani. Lakini hewa ya bure baridi inahitaji zaidi ya tu kuweka madirisha datacenter ya wazi. Datacenters pia zinahitaji filters kukamata chembechembe za vumbi ambazo zinaweza kuharibu vifaa vya seva. Hewa iliyochujwa inayopeperushwa kutoka nje lazima pia itendewe ili kuhakikisha viwango bora vya unyevu. Kiasi cha juu cha unyevu katika hewa inaweza kusababisha chuma kutu, wakati kiwango cha chini sana cha unyevu inaweza kusababisha matatizo na umeme static, wanasema wataalamu. Uokoaji wa kutumia baridi ya bure ni dhahiri sana kwamba waendeshaji wa vituo vikubwa vya data sasa wana uhakika wa kutosha kujenga vituo vya data bila mitambo yoyote ya baridi ya mitambo, kulingana na wachambuzi wa 451 Research. Kampuni kama vile Capgemini ni kutumia mbinu za hewa ya bure baridi katika vituo vyao data. Kampuni kubwa kama vile Apple, Facebook na Google zinafanya kazi ya kuimarisha vifaa vyao vya data kwa kutumia nishati ya upepo. Mingay anasema nishati ya upepo inaweza kusaidia wasimamizi wa vituo vya data kukidhi mahitaji ya mazingira, wakati pia kuokoa pesa za biashara kwenye gharama za umeme. Hata hivyo, wakati Google inaweza kunyakua vichwa vya habari, shamba la upepo la mahali hapo halina umuhimu kwa waendeshaji wengi wa kituo cha data, anasema. <unk>Kwa waendeshaji wa kawaida, uzalishaji wa mahali pa nishati mbadala utakuwa kupitia turbines za gesi. "Wanasayansi Andrew Donoghue wa 451 Research anasema, ""Wanafanya kazi katika vituo vya data wanatafuta njia mbadala bora zaidi ya vifaa vya sasa vya x86 vya seva na blades ili kufanya miundombinu yao iweze kudumu kwa muda mrefu.""" Kampuni kama vile HP na Dell zilizindua mbadala zao za kwanza za nishati ya chini (kwa madhumuni ya maendeleo badala ya utekelezaji wa kibiashara) mnamo 2012. Seva hizo zinakopa kutoka kwa teknolojia inayoendesha kompyuta za simu mahiri, ambayo inajaribu kusawazisha utendaji na matumizi ya betri. Mwelekeo huo utaongeza kasi mwaka 2013 wakati watengenezaji wa mifumo wataanza kutolewa mifumo kamili ya uzalishaji, kulingana na ripoti ya watafiti wa 451 Research. Vipengele hivi vya nishati ya chini, au seva ndogo, hutegemea vitengo vya usindikaji wa kati vya nguvu ya chini (CPU) kutoka Intel na mazingira ya washirika wa ARM. "Kwa kuzingatia mzigo wa kazi sahihi, wanaweza kuwa na ufanisi zaidi kuliko mifumo mikubwa, ya monolithic", anasema Donoghue. Viwango vya matumizi huongezeka, gharama za mtaji hupungua, viwango vya juu vya redundancy vinapatikana, na gharama za kuendesha zinapunguzwa, zote kutoka kwa matumizi ya chini ya umeme na chini ya kusaidia miundombinu ya baridi. Matokeo ya seva za nguvu ya chini kwenye kituo cha data yanaweza kuwa muhimu - wanaweza kusaidia kupunguza gharama za umeme wa moja kwa moja wa IT na pia kusaidia kupunguza gharama za uendeshaji na mtaji wa vifaa vya baridi. Kampuni kubwa kama Morgan Stanley na Goldman Sachs zinatumia datacenters za modular katika juhudi zao za kuongeza juhudi zao za IT ya kijani. Tofauti na njia ya jadi datacenter ni kujengwa, modular datacenter ni portable. Ni iliyoundwa kwa ajili ya kupelekwa haraka, nishati-ufanisi na wiani wa juu. Miundo kama hiyo ya moduli inakuwa maarufu zaidi kwa kuwa ni kituo cha data kilicho tayari-katika-sanduku, ambacho kinaweza kupandishwa haraka sana. HP EcoPod ni modular datacenter ambayo inadai kusaidia zaidi ya seva 4,000 na ufanisi wa matumizi ya nguvu (PUE) kiwango cha 1.05 wakati wa kutumia hewa ya bure baridi. Programu ya Virtualization inaongeza utendaji wa seva zilizopo, ambayo kwa upande wake husaidia kupunguza matumizi ya nguvu, kulingana na ripoti ya DCD Intelligence Power. Ripoti hiyo pia inatarajia kwamba virtualization itacheza jukumu kubwa katika kuongeza matumizi ya mali iliyopo kutoka chini ya 10% hadi zaidi ya 40%. Inasema juhudi za wasambazaji zinahitajika katika usimamizi wa nishati kwa ufanisi wa IT. Katika mzigo wa chini wa IT, zana za usimamizi wa nishati lazima ziwe sawa na mzigo. Kuongeza viwango vya matumizi ya vifaa kwa njia hii itapunguza mahitaji ya umeme kwa angalau 20%. Mkakati wa kuunganisha vituo vya data na virtualization husaidia makampuni kuharakisha rasilimali za IT na kutumia nguvu ya usindikaji isiyojulikana ya seva ya nguvu na vifaa vya kuhifadhi. "Mchanganyiko wa virtualization, chini-latitude na high-bandwidth mtandao uhusiano, na seva maalumu, ina uwezo wa kupunguza gharama za data kituo cha mtaji na kuboresha ufanisi wa nishati, ""anasema 451 Research's Donoghue." Cloud Computing inaweza kusaidia makampuni katika juhudi zao za IT ya kijani, kwa kuwa wingu la kompyuta hutoa matumizi ya juu ya CPU. Wakati shirika moja si uzoefu mzigo, rasilimali zake ziada ni kutumika na mwingine ambaye anahitaji. Hata hivyo, ufanisi wa 100% ni mbali sana. "Cloud computing, hasa wingu la umma, ina ahadi nyingi za kuleta mabadiliko makubwa katika ufanisi wa rasilimali, lakini hatujafika karibu na hapo bado", anasema Mingay wa Gartner. Kuokoa Nishati kwenda Mbele: Wimbi la mabadiliko ya kweli ya kuvuruga inajenga katika sekta ya kituo cha data ambayo itasaidia sifa zake za kijani. Chuo Kikuu cha Southampton, Uingereza, kimetengeneza kifaa cha kuunganisha vifaa vya elektroniki na maji ili kuwezesha mzunguko wa umeme kuendesha kwa joto la juu. Kampuni ya Ufaransa Iliad, ambayo inashughulikia gharama za kutengeneza baridi, inatoa huduma ya hali ya juu ya baridi ya hali ya juu ya kupunguza athari za CO2. Ni kufuatilia mahitaji ya nguvu ya mzigo ili kuhakikisha kwamba tu modules muhimu ni katika huduma. Moduli zilizobaki kubaki katika hali ya chini ya nguvu ya kusubiri, kufanya kuokoa kubwa ya nishati inawezekana.