Aligning Efficiency

With less money in IT budgets, many companies feel backed into a corner by the need to reduce power consumption without jeopardizing IT performance. As a solution, some chains are adding monitoring systems that target energy use and allow retailers to reduce a data-center’s energy consumption without interrupting enterprise IT operations.

The need to reduce data-center energy consumption has grown in recent years as chains have added more robust high-density and blade servers to run enterprises. While these units save space in the facility, they require more power for cooling. As a result, this equipment can bump annual operating expenses to $4.6 million.

“Data-center operating expenses are soaring, and this will continue for at least the next year or two,” Jack Pouchet, director of energy initiatives, Emerson Network Power, St. Louis, said during “Aligned Efficiency in the Data Center,” a Webinar presented by InformationWeek. 

The monitoring systems are comprised of power meters and cameras, similar in size and shape to closed-circuit-television monitoring equipment. This hardware, which is installed inside the data center, records equipment-processing activity and energy consumption. The information is digitized and stored in a database.

Executives view graphs on Web-based dashboards to stay abreast of storage capacity, networking levels and equipment uptime. The system also delivers real-time updates of power consumption, cooling levels and thresholds, and carbon-reduction statuses.

“These systems also support analytics so companies can better optimize operations and energy usage in the data facility,” Dr. Kenneth Uhlman, director, data center business development, for Raleigh, N.C.-based electrical-systems manufacturer Eaton Corp., said during “Scalable, Modular, Energy Efficient Data Centers With Real-Time Infrastructure,” a Webinar presented by Ziff Davis.

Monitoring systems can also help in the case of a system outage.

“They help companies pinpoint what might have caused the outage in the first place, which helps them avoid a similar situation in the future,” Uhlman said.