Gartner Tackles Greener, Leaner Data Centre Issues

Gartner has highlighted the role of the power utilisation efficiency (PUE) index in the rise of sustainability as one of the four forces impacting the data centre.

In preparation for upcoming seminars and summits, Gartner has prepared a report on the issues facing data centre development over the next five years. Aside from what they call ‘Green Pressures’, the Gartner specialists have also selected ‘Smarter Designs’, ‘Cloud Computing’, and ‘Conquering Density’ as their key areas of study.

Key tasks are space and power reductions

PUE is a measure of the total power used by a data centre divided by the power that drives the computational elements. The aim is to make this equal unity and, as such, gives data centre managers something to aim for.

Gartner said that, before PUE, comparatively little attention was paid to the “greening of IT” unless pressure was applied by senior management or the public at large. PUE, touted by the Green Grid consortium of manufacturers, has created a measure by which performance can be judged.

“The development and marketing of power utilisation efficiency by the Green Grid continues to gain ground in the market, and many new data centres are being developed with specific PUE targets in mind – for the energy-efficiency advantages and the public relations impact,” said the report.

Tied in with this is the smarter design of installations, the Shrinking Data Centers: Your Next Data Center Will Be Smaller Than You Think report points out that data centres have often grown over time and the requirements of hardware from different eras, or based on differing densities, should be zoned according to their needs.

These “density zones” may employ directed cold air, or even in-rack cooling to support very high density workloads, and each can impact on the other . To minimise the effects, secondary zoning can be used to further divide the low-power equipment from high-power, hotter-running hardware to cause minimum disruption.

Increasing density can improve sustainability

Related to these two categories, focusing on hardware density can result in greener, smarter designs. Often space is poorly used, Gartner asserts, with average rack densities being only 60 percent used. Upgrading to newer, more efficient rack systems can increase this density to between 85 and 90 percent to improve the usage of space and, at the same time, benefitting the productivity per kilowatt ratio.

Even so, floor space is always at a premium in a mature data centre and, the report claims, the thoughtful introduction of cloud computing can completely remove some hardware to free-up space for future development, or simply to reduce the local environmental effects.

Gartner recommends that all of these areas should be considered over the next five years to yield cost savings in having to extend facilities and environmental benefits from power economies.