Data Center Retrofit Can Boost Savings
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Retrofitting existing data centers could generate nearly as much energy savings—and money—as building state-of-the-art centers, a new study says. |
The study, Data Center Energy Forecast Report, from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the business consultancy Accenture, basically validates a 2007 report to Congress by the Environmental Protection Agency that said state-of-the-art technology and processes could reduce data center energy use by 55 percent, with a more readily achievable best practices cutting usage by 45 percent. How? Reductions could be achieved, in part, through better server utilization brought on by virtualization, improved cooling techniques, better power distribution and sensor networks.
According to the Silicon Valley/Accenture report:
Legacy retrofits can almost be as efficient as new commissions. Existing data centers can also contribute to reducing energy use. The onus is not only on newly commissioned data centers.
Citing the latest study in the blog O'Reilly's Radar, Jim Gestal—chief technology officer of Gestalt, an Accenture business and IT consultancy in the defense and electric generation sector—writes that tests in working data centers show these legacy facilities can be transformed to provide savings similar to state-of-the art data centers.
That conclusion follows from the less surprising finding that the most bang for the buck comes from improvements on the "IT" side of the energy draw (energy efficient servers, virtualization, etc.) rather than from the harder to retrofit "site" side (cooling systems etc.). The dog wags the tail after all and if you can reduce the direct power consumption by the IT equipment, you will simultaneously reduce associated cooling costs whether in an old building with relatively inefficient HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems) or a shiny new one.
