Going Green in the Data Center
With thousands of servers running throughout the day and night, data centers are notorious for consuming energy. As people are becoming more and more aware of the ever-increasing energy use, data centers are starting to find ways to lower their consumption.
Many companies are finding ways to make their data centers more energy efficient. One way of doing this is to use servers that shut down or idle when they're not in use. By allowing servers to have idle time, you save energy and power when the server is not in use. The problem that comes along with this is that it takes about twice as much energy to power the server backup than it does to just let it run. So for this option to work you have to take into consideration the extra energy that will be used when the server needs to be accessed again.
One solution is to use the "80/20" rule, where 20% of the servers will be accessed 80% of the time, and the remaining servers being accessed the rest of the time. In this case, a plausible solution is to have only the most used 20% of servers on all the time. And the remaining 80% will run with energy-efficient servers that have the ability to power down when they are not in use. This way, the data center still saves energy without interfering with access to the server.
Heat reduction is the area that eats up most of the energy in many data centers. It can be a difficult task to keep the room cool with so many servers generating heat. Data centers can go green by using energy-efficient cooling systems. Instead of using the traditional method of cooling the room with air conditioners, data centers can use water to cool the room.
Using water to cool the server rooms is much more efficient than air cooling because it can handle higher temperatures since water is more conductive of heat. Data centers are slow to implement this cooling system though, because of the potential problems it might cause within the data center. A small leak could do great damage to many of the servers. However, there are many systems available now that have been tested and are proven to be reliable.
Another idea that some people are throwing around for green cooling is using liquid metal to cool the racks. The benefit of this is that the metal can cool the servers without any moving parts and without the concerns of pumping water through the racks.
Other ways that data centers are implementing green solutions are by using on-site power generation using fuel cells, solar power, or by using direct-current wiring to lower electricity use. Collecting rainwater for toilet and landscaping, using non-volatile paints and using reflective materials to reduce heat absorption are some other techniques data centers are implementing to reduce costs and raise the overall efficiency of the building.
Energy consumption is rising exponentially and data centers are one of the leading consumers of energy throughout North America. With increased awareness to the problem of energy efficiency and over-consumption, it's important that data centers implement as many techniques as they can to curb the amount of energy they use.
