Mission Critical - Winter 2008 - (Page 46)

Green Information Technology continued Blades themselves are providing leadership for energy savings. Although they are in a more dense form factor, the very unique features of blades can save significant money. A recent Sine Nomine report in 2007 compared the HP BladeSystem to an equivalent amount of compute power in a rackmount configuration. The result was a surprising 36 percent less power consumption for the HP BladeSystem compared to the rack-mount servers. Thanks to the “active cool” fans that turn faster or slower, (depending on the cooling needs), the blade system delivers just the right amount of cooling, to the right location. Data Center Infrastructure In addition to servers and blades, the data center itself and the associated infrastructure needs to be closely examined for energy efficiencies. High airflow rack cabinets, power distribution racks, and three-phase uninterrupted power supplies (UPSs) can reduce power loss attributed to converting electricity from ac to dc and back to ac, as some online UPSs do. The power distribution rack cabinets reduce all Green IT means more than saving energy, it also means increased reliability. runs the processors. The virtualized server leverages the same rotating hard drives, mother board, I/O slots, memory, fans, and power supplies which account for 70 percent of the remaining power needed in a server. Furthermore, a server power supply operating at 80 percent capacity is much more efficient than one operating in the 20 percent range. Storage products also have new solutions to reduce the number of hard drives needed through a unique provisioning process that allows the operator to provision once at a high capacity, but only add physical storage drives as needed. Many power companies will offer rebates for replacing older servers with newer more energy-efficient ones. Software Power management software is also a powerful tool that can be used effectively to reduce power consumption. The processor vendors all have a type of power throttling that can reduce consumption on processors that are not being fully utilized. Most server manufacturers leverage this technology and generally add features that allow IT managers to monitor, measure, control, and reduce the power draw in server or blade equipment. Unfortunately, most data centers do not use basic power management software tools. HP Power Regulator, for example, comes free with ProLiant servers and can reduce energy consumption by up to 10%. And, HP Insight Power Manager (IPM) is an integrated power monitoring and management application that provides centralized control of server power consumption and thermal output at the datacenter level. That’s what is commonly referred to as “low-hanging fruit” that can provide a positive benefit at minimal or no cost. Practices that save energy begin at the chip but also include rack and room-level strategies. Blades 46 | Mission Critical Winter 2008 the cable clutter under the raised floor, thus allowing better airflow in a more laminar fashion. And, taking a single leg of a 480-volt (V), three-phase rack PDU may eliminate the need for a step-down transformer to get 277-V delivered to the server. A server vendor can provide good advice and offer the necessary products to meet energy needs and assessment services. Every watt of IT power requires about a watt of power to drive the cooling. Therefore, more efficient power distribution has a twofold benefit; reduced power losses in the power distribution chain and lower power required to cool those losses that are generally given off as heat. Many server

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Mission Critical - Winter 2008

Mission Critical - Winter 2008 Table of Contents Editorial: What Have We Been Doing? Cronin’s Workshop: Imagining the Perfect Data Center Power And Cooling Solution Digital Power: The Next Edge in Business Resiliency Zinc Whiskers: Keeping Up With The Green Movement Mission Critical Care: Shipping, Staging, and Installation Legal Perspectives: “A Reliable Energy Supply Is Key to Data Center Success” Continued Payback, Instant Protection Beyond the Nines The Green Information Technology Revolution Health Care Network Offers Glimpse of the Future of Backup Power High-Density Data Centers – Discuss, Design, Deploy High Performance Data Centers Call for Innovative Cooling Techniques More Data in the Data Center Five Considerations for Powering Data Center Racks New Products Industry News Events Classifieds Letters Ad Index Datacenter Wiki: wiki-Mission Critical

Mission Critical - Winter 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.