IT expert launches measures for greener data centers

Addressing at the Data Center World meet in Las Vegas, Dasgupta dispelled the myth among Chief Information Officers (CIOs) that they were responsible only for IT infrastructure.

He urged the CIOs to treat power, space, cooling and networks as an integral part of the data center.

Data centers are designed to be fail-safe with multi level back up in power, computers, networks and air-conditioning virtually turning them to be energy guzzlers.

It is estimated that data centers consume over 2 percent of utility-produced electrical power in the United States and European Union.

A new breed of multi-tenant data centers, set up to address the cloud infrastructure environment, together with tens of thousands captive data centers is leading to an unprecedented 15 percent power consumption each year, Dasgupta said.

Dasgupta also expanded on eBay’s Digital Services Efficiency (DSE) framework for data centers that works well with Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Software.

This alone, he said, could lead to improved operational efficiencies and optimization of power, space, cooling, networks and IT infrastructure requirements in a data center and mitigate environmental impact.

Dasgupta’s framework also proposes to measure IT efficiencies for each operations person in a data center--data center managers, infrastructure and operations staff and IT staff--that would be unveiled in the next-generation DCIM software for achieving high availability in a leaner and greener data center.

Just as balanced scorecards had a profound impact on driving overall economic value of enterprises that use them, Dasgupta suggested that data centers can be better aligned with business goals through scorecard-based DCIMt software.

The absence of monitoring and lack of proper measurements or key performance indicators (KPIs) are the principal causal factors of data center failures, inefficiencies and wastage, he said.

Dasgupta said that high power consumption in Data Centers could be controlled through better Capacity Planning and reducing over-provisioning without impacting availability goals.

"It is now well established that poor design and absence or lack of good Capacity Planning are the main causes of wasted capital expenditure, higher power and cooling costs as well as increased space use. Even though most servers and other equipment come with vendor-provided power-saving techniques, data centres run up huge power bills as a result of either poor design or lack of Capacity Planning," he added.

Held each year in Las Vegas, the Data Center World is the premier global meet for data center managers. The global meet drew upon the knowledge and experience of global experts to offer real solutions for data centers.