Page 10 Processor.com April 20, 2012 HOW TO Boost Energy Efficiency Decrease Power Consumption & Get The Most Out Of Your Equipment Improving your data center’s energy efficiency and decreasing power consump- tion as much as possible are two great ways to increase the greenness of your facility, and it can save you money on energy costs, as well. This double bonus may be enough to entice data center and IT managers to do everything they can to boost their effi- ciency, but it can be difficult to know where exactly to get started. Here we’ll provide you with multiple ways to improve your energy efficiency and ensure you are getting the necessary and expected performance from your data center equipment. Measure Your Current Power Consumption give you a top-down view or trend view of the server cabinets,” Eisenberg says. “This allows organizations to see what devices are running warmer than others and then compare those readings to the set point of the cooling infrastructure.” According to Eisenberg, using power consumption and temperature analysis together is the best way to improve over- all efficiency. “These two readings used together will form a comparison, which can be used for capacity reports and allow users to find out what actual jobs are being performed,” Eisenberg says. This informa- tion can then help the IT team develop an approach based on decreasing the energy consumption of unnecessary equipment and providing just the right amount of cooling to servers and other physical infrastructure. The first step in boosting your energy efficiency is to look at the power consump- tion of different pieces of equipment to see what your current baseline is. Measuring Implement Monitoring consumption will let you know whether or & Management Solutions not your infrastructure is performing at the Once you have a baseline reading for optimal level and help you devise an effec- both power consumption and tempera- tive strategy. As with any analysis, the more ture, you should put long-standing moni- accurate you can be with your measurements toring and management solutions in place the better off you’ll be in the long run. so you can have quick access to updated According to James Cerwinski, manager reading whenever you need them. The key of product management at Raritan (www to improving your energy efficiency is to .raritan.com), you can’t manage what you make sure your adjustments are having can’t measure, so data centers should take the intended effect. Cerwinski rec- steps to measure device-level power con- ommends using iPDUs (Intelligent sumption. Rule-of-thumb estimates no longer suffice, because they can turn out to be just plain wrong, leading to unnec- essary and sometimes substantial costs, he says. For example, devices that were thought to be consuming very little power may be consuming a lot of power, even while sitting idle, according to Cerwinski. One simple solution that can be used to measure and monitor power consumption is a barom- The following steps were provided by Marc eter. This allows the company Eisenberg, senior systems engineer at Server to “see consumption rates over a Technology (www.servertech.com): period of time, make changes, and track the results of those chang- ¦ Monitor and measure the es,” according to Marc Eisenberg, power consumption of your senior systems engineer at Server Technology (www.servertech facility and post the findings .com). A barometer will help you for people to see. gauge consumption during peak hours as well as periods of little ¦ Evaluate the minimum and usage in order to get the best pos- maximum requirements to run sible view. a job, serve a process, or sup- port a product and compare Improve Cooling the evaluation to actual usage. To Maximize Energy Efficiency Action Plan The amount of cooling applied to different pieces of equipment can and will affect performance both negatively and positively. And while this may seem like common sense, some companies may be undercooling or even overcooling their data center. As with power consumption, you should get a base reading for the temperatures of your equipment to ensure that it isn’t overheating or overcooling that’s hindering your energy efficiency. “Evaluating a data center full of server cabinets from a temper- ature point of view over a period of 30 days to three months can ¦ Compare actual usage to faceplate readings and compare that to your existing infrastructure. ¦ Implement energy efficiency metrics into existing infra- structure, such as those from Green Grid and The Uptime Institute. Power Distribution Units), which monitor power consumption at user-defined intervals as often as once every few seconds. These solutions are often sophisticated and can even “calculate carbon footprints based on energy usage,” Cerwinski says. Implementing a DCIM solution will give you a more in-depth view of your power consumption and energy efficiency from multiple angles. It shows you what pieces of equipment you have and how they are being used as well as the amount of power needed to run your data center. Using a DCIM solution, you can make more min- ute changes to your infrastructure and in some cases set up alerts that will warn you if something is negatively affecting perfor- mance. Then, you can address the problem in a timely manner. Key Points Check the current power consumption of your equipment and see if it is comparable to the expected performance. If not, you will need to make a series of tweaks and changes to bring energy efficiency up to where it should be. Adjust your overall cooling approach to ensure that systems are running at an optimal temperature. Overheating or over- cooling can prevent your equipment from reaching its full potential. Take advantage of monitoring and man- agement solutions to track your energy efficiency. Once you have sufficiently improved your efficiency, use it as a base- line for the rest of your company. Use Energy Efficiency To Improve Overall Performance After you’ve used your energy efficien- cy information to make changes to specific pieces of equipment, you can use that data to improve the power consumption of your entire company. It’s great to start with your data center equipment, which is often the biggest user of power, but you don’t have to stop there. If you can also find ways to build a large-scale, energy-conscious approach to improve the power consumption of your lighting system, individual comput- ers, and other components, you can meet your green initiatives more effectively while decreasing your energy-related costs. P Get Started When approaching the sometimes daunting task of improving the energy efficiency of your entire data center, it is best to start off small with the highest priority systems before moving on to more difficult projects. “Start by identifying the area or areas that are most important for you to monitor, meter, and manage now,” says James Cerwinski, manager of product management at Raritan (www.raritan .com). “Also, consider what might be next so that you are positioned to continue to make improvements. You do not want to implement a solu- tion that will require significant modification or dismantlement, so you have time to make additional progress on future projects.” Top Tips The following tips were provided by James Cerwinski, man- ager of product management at Raritan (www.raritan.com): ? Avoid overcooling your infrastructure, minimize humidification in your environment, and reduce air missing via hot and cold air separation. ? Take advantage of server virtualization and consolidation. Move applications and jobs to virtualized servers and consolidate or completely shut down and decommission servers to maximize the usability of your existing infrastructure. ? Instrument the data center so you can understand rack inlet temperatures coming into the IT equipment and set appropriate thresholds so you can get alerts when the room environment surpasses accepted values.