If you watch the news or get online, you know that there is a growing concern over ecological issues. People want to do their part to keep the environment from suffering and to make the most of natural resources. There are lots of people recycling and conserving energy by any means necessary. People expect companies to be good stewards of environmental resources too. This means that companies need to do all they can to reduce carbon emissions and to improve their energy usage. There is a growing need for every company to do their part and help in the battle for the environment. Data centers are not exempt from the quest to “Go Green”. Data centers consume a lot of energy every day to stay up and running.

Going Green for Less Green

For years companies were hesitant to go green. It really affected the bottom line for corporations to take steps in a more “Eco-Friendly” direction. There are so many other financial concerns that business owners have to deal with, that tacking on extra charges to save the environment just wasn’t feasible. There’s good news for companies that want to go green. There are a lot of inexpensive steps that can be taken that will make your data-centre friendlier to the environment.

Here are a few suggestions.

Run an assessment on your cooling system. It’s important for data centres to stay cool. It takes a lot of energy for data centres to stay at optimal temperatures. A good way to start your check of the server room is to look for obvious energy leaks. Check the walls, ceilings and floors for cracks or holes. If you find any cracks or poorly insulated areas, you have found spots that are literally stealing energy from your server room.

Check for servers that are not being fully utilized. Check servers to see what duties they are performing and what applications they are hosting. You may find several servers that are running constantly that are very under-utilized. Look for servers that can handle additional loads and install several applications on one server. By doing this you will be getting your money’s worth out of the server and you may be able to sunset out a few servers in the process. If you are able to eliminate any servers from your data centre, you will quickly see savings in energy costs. Less servers running also means a less taxing environment for your cooling system.

Look for older, less efficient servers and have them replaced. If you have servers that have been around for more than 5 years, they need to be evaluated. They may not be energy efficient devices. Replacing servers is not cheap, but over the lifetime of a server, you may be able to negate the extra cost with energy savings. Any time an old, resource hungry server can be replaced with a more efficient model, you are doing your part to keep your data centre on the green team.

There are other, more involved steps that can be taken to make your data centre “green”. Alternative energy sources, like solar energy are becoming viable ways to power building effectively. Even if you don’t go all-out and adopt solar panels, you can still be a responsible data centre manager by following the steps listed earlier. You could also save your company some money in the process. SABUNG AYAM