Going green is one of the most important trends in IT in recent years. The green trend affects technologies and equipment of all kinds but probably one of the areas where its impact is most tangible is data centers. Data centers are known for their lavish energy consumption. This lavish energy consumption presents endless opportunities to introduce new technologies and polices in order to make data centers greener.

President Obama recently signed Executive Order 13514 which outlines sustainability goals for the US government.  “In order to create a clean energy economy that will increase our nation’s prosperity, promote energy security, protect the interests of taxpayers, and safeguard the health of our environment, the federal government must lead by example,” Obama wrote in the order.

Jeff Stewart, the electronics stewardship coordinator for the Department of Energy said, “It’s going to make all of look at what we do with IT with a new eye.”  The order requires that 95% of new acquisitions be either Energy Star compliant or Federal Energy Management Program compliant.

The necessity to make data centers greener is indisputable and in some cases it is also a matter of regulatory compliance. The steps a data center can take in the green direction are numerous and while some of them are not cheap, many of the steps are easy to do and require no investment at all. This guide will give you a basic idea about why it is important to make your data center green, as well as some of the steps you need to take in order to achieve this goal.

Why You Need a Green Data Center

Greener data centers are not just the latest fashion trend. It is true that eco-friendliness matters for all kinds of products – from food, to clothes, to automobiles, to computers – but the drive towards greener data centers stems not only from the fact that data centers want to follow the latest trends, but it is mainly due to the fact that data centers are among the largest energy consumers.

A data center consists of hundreds and thousands of computers and other equipment. As a rule, this equipment is always on and it needs energy. Energy consumption is constantly on the rise and as computers become more and more powerful, this trend is expected to continue. It is not an exception for high-end equipment to demand more than 30 kilowatts per rack.

However, powering equipment is only part of the energy expenses at a data center. The other part, which could be as substantial as powering, is cooling. Powerful machines emit a lot of heat and if this heat is not taken away, it might easily burn the equipment. This is why cooling is vital.

There are various cooling systems but most of them use electricity, which further increases the energy bill for a data center. In some cases electricity costs are the single largest expense for a data center, outnumbering even capital expenditures and labor costs. Hardware costs are times less than energy costs, which certainly must ring a bell that data centers are becoming real energy monsters.

According to Aperture, “Currently, power and cooling costs represent up to 44 percent of a data center’s total cost of ownership”. This data might seem shocking but the reality is that energy eats the financial resources of data centers. Needless to say, this situation is impossible even in a booming economy and no manager will put up with it.

Going green is one of the possible solutions to the ever increasing energy expenses problem. Green technologies can help cut energy expenses by 20-30% or even more without any disruption to the normal work of a data center. Many of these green technologies are new and are specifically designed to meet the green demands of a data center from recent years but there are also many evergreen tips on how to use less energy and perform the same amount of work.

Greener data centers are gaining more and more popularity and this is for a reason. Green data centers are not only cheaper to maintain but they are also your ecological contribution. Since data centers are among the largest energy consumers in the industry, it is obvious that when data centers as a whole consume less energy, this leads to decreased energy production, which in turn has a positive environmental effect.

Saving the environment by using less energy is not only noble. In some cases it is mandatory. There are different regulations all over the world, which impose green requirements on data centers. Therefore, even if you personally don’t care about the environment, you still need to go green because otherwise you risk pretty severe penalties.

Going green is not that difficult. If you are building a new data center, chances are that most of the equipment you will be getting is green. If you are not building a new data center, the steps you need to take are not that complex and some of the most important ones are described next.

Coming up:
Part 2: How to Make Your Data Center Green