The Green IT Picture

By Dan Gatti, SVP Worldwide Market Operations, Verari Systems

Today, in these economic times, energy usage is one of the primary concerns facing IT organizations. Companies are ‘Thinking Green’ since our natural resources are diminishing, power costs are skyrocketing, and available real estate for new data centers is shrinking. IT departments are becoming concerned about their return on investment and are beginning to look more heavily at energy efficient solutions for their overwhelmed data centers.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy are pushing data center operators and facility managers to reduce their carbon footprints by increasing energy efficiency. It is becoming even clearer that no corporation is above being environmentally responsible. Consumers are also demanding this from businesses, influencing the decision-making within each company’s IT department. According to market analyst Gartner, growth in power demand is projected to force 80% of all data centers to run at their maximum available power and cooling levels by 2010. [1] In turn, this means IT managers are developing green data centers to address eco-conscious challenges, such as reducing carbon footprints, while pursuing new operating cost efficiencies inherent in more energy efficient, next-generation data center designs.

Computer manufacturers, such as Verari Systems, are enabling IT organizations to significantly increase the delivered computational performance per watt with solutions like the FOREST container, or ‘data center in a box’. Enterprise companies’ IT departments are attracted to the ‘data center in a box’ design due to its energy efficiency versus traditional brick-and-mortar data centers. Companies such as Verari, HP, SGI, and Sun are developing containerized data center solutions that manage IT equipment life cycles more effectively and use energy more efficiently.

Why Be Green
IT departments are being asked to do more with less in order to kick start a company’s “Green Initiative.” This creates a trickle-down effect throughout an organization, impacting deployment plans for laptops, PCs, phones, and networking gear. At the C-level, executives are encouraged by shareholders to reduce the energy costs and carbon footprint of their operations from top-to-bottom, impacting all departments at all levels. They are implementing programs and processes that cut operating costs and increase their bottom line, which include consolidation or removal of less energy efficient IT equipment and eco-responsible disposition of e-waste.

In the year 2000, servers and their associated cooling equipment in the United States (not counting network and storage equipment) consumed approximately 23 billion kWh. By 2005, this figure had risen to 45 billion kWh, accounting for 1.2% of all 2005 U.S electricity sales. The total magnitude of data center energy consumption, including network and storage equipment, is now estimated to be between 1.5% and 3% of all electricity generated. [2] These are factors why companies need to implement energy efficient strategies in the data center since demand for computing power is not going to continue to increase. Also, given increasing load densities and advancements in chip design, hard drives, and other server technology, IT managers realize the heat generated from the servers in the same physical footprint is going increase and be harder to keep cool.

Measurements for Accountability in the Data Center
IT departments are beginning to measure everything within a data center – power, cooling, and space efficiencies. With power density increasing for all IT equipment at a rate of some 20% to 30% per year, companies are concerned with the amount of power needed, what the heat output of the equipment is, and how the cooling systems will continue to keep the equipment functioning. Even with shrinking components, the heat output of the equipment is not decreasing; more often than not it’s increasing. With increasing processing and storage densities, IT departments are concerned about more heat produced in the data center and how to provide the necessary cooling to ensure low failure rates.

To account for the energy use of site infrastructure systems, IT energy expert, Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D., of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Stanford University, assumes an average value of 2.0 for the ratio of total data center energy use to total IT equipment energy use. This ratio is often referred to as the “Power Usage Effectiveness,” or PUE ratio. This PUE ratio estimate of 2.0 was based on a recent energy use benchmarking study of 22 data centers performed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Greenberg et al. 2006, Tschudi et al. 2003). [3]

A PUE ratio is a place to start with measuring data centers, but it does not take into consideration the system’s fans. Utilizing the reciprocal of the PUE, an IT manager can see the amount of power consumed by the IT equipment. This measurement is called the “Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency,” or DCiE percentage. These measurements can be used together to improve a data center’s efficiency, compare to other data centers, and give operators ideas for improving data center design to lower operating costs.

The Green Grid organization encourages data center owners to measure energy efficiency using either the PUE or DCiE metrics and share these numbers with the IT community. By sharing, IT managers can gain a better understanding of their data centers and then analyze their metrics to achieve better results in the entire industry. With better results, enterprise IT managers can reduce their carbon footprint and, more importantly, decrease their overall data center costs.

Barriers to Being Green
According to the EPA Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency (August 2, 2007), the server and data centers sector consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption) for a total electricity cost of about $4.5 billion. This estimated level of electricity consumption is more than the electricity consumed by the nation’s color televisions and similar to the amount of electricity consumed by approximately 5.8 million average U.S. households (or about five percent of the total U.S. housing stock). Among the different types of data centers, more than one-third (38 percent) of electricity use is attributable to the nation’s largest (i.e., enterprise-class) and most rapidly growing data centers. [4]

Industries that adopt energy efficient technologies and practices experience attractive paybacks, even given new investment costs and learning curves. With no clear definition for what is “energy efficient” in the data center, IT managers have a tough time justifying the switch to more efficient equipment. Another difficulty for enterprise companies is where the responsibilities lie for purchasing and operating IT equipment. Most companies have facility management professionals (not IT professionals) deal with the power and cooling infrastructure of a data center and related utility bills. This leads to a conflict of interest between departments of IT and facilities. Also, with IT departments consolidating data centers, some departments fear potential down time of equipment that could cause business disruption.

These are issues that data centers have to be concerned with, but making the decision as a company to be green will come with more economic benefits than costs. Getting an IT and facilities department to work together will be beneficial to keep the green strategy moving forward and, in the long run, save money throughout an organization. IT managers should not be bothered by a lack of efficiency definition, but interested in how to maximize the productivity of their IT equipment. For example, if maximizing IT productivity means consolidating and utilizing virtualized machines, then IT managers need to also decrease the amount of compute power, cooling, and space that their IT equipment consumes.

Incentives for Being Green
Under their Non-Residential New Construction (NRNC) program, PG&E has led this energy savings initiative targeted to the IT industry. Over twenty utilities are emulating the PG&E program nationally, and many more plan to implement a program in 2009. The basis for the program is the Standard Performance Contract (SPC). SPC offers incentives to non-residential customers for installing new, high efficiency equipment or systems. For the period from 2009-2011, PG&E has reserved, for example, $50 million in energy credit incentives for data centers alone. [5]

With utility companies providing energy rebates, enterprise companies can obtain a cash rebate for installing energy efficient IT equipment. Energy credit incentive programs, like Verari Systems’, reward customers who plan to install new energy efficient IT solutions. These programs make it easier for companies to apply and qualify the equipment for energy rebates offered by local utility companies. With these utility programs, executives can improve their data center efficiency, minimize their carbon emissions, save capital expense, and add more competitive IT equipment to their data center. Utilities also benefit by avoiding the construction of new power plants, minimizing carbon emissions, and reducing government taxes. Providing energy credit incentives for customers proves that ‘Thinking Green’ has immediate, “hard cash” payback for new IT projects.

Summary
IT organizations see the market value in providing energy efficient equipment to customers, and IT managers realize installing this equipment will increase their bottom line and have a positive environmental impact. Improving data center cooling, power, and space efficiencies enable sustainable green practices that enable corporations to save on operating and capital costs, and provide a faster return on investment. The decision to ‘Think Green’ not only makes good business sense today, but benefits society by lowering the IT industry’s carbon footprint for years to come.

References
[1] The Green Grid: Addressing Organizational Behavior – Issues to Optimize IT and IT and Facilities Energy Efficiency, July 30, 2008.
[2] Tackling Today’s Data Center Energy Efficiency Challenges – A Software-Oriented Approach, by James Parker, PE, CEM, CMVP, Square D Engineering Services, Hugh Lindsay, Schneider Electric PMC Operations, Bill Brown, PE, Square D Engineering Services – In Conjunction with the Square D Critical Power Competency Center.
[3] The Green Grid White Paper, The Green Grid Data Center Power Efficiency Metrics: PUE and DCiE, 2007.
[4] Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency Public Law 109-431, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ENERGY STAR Program, August 2007.
[5] VFS Energy Credit Incentive Program. (2009). Retrieved June 23, 2009, from Verari Systems Financial Services Website: http://www.verarifinancial.com/green.asp.