One of the benefits of Green data center is moving toward a more virtual and sustainable environment while helping operators find greater efficiency and success.
Selecting a Green data center is a well-deserved choice for any organization, no matter its size, to save money and operate more sustainably.
Introduction to Green or Sustainable Data Center
A Green or sustainable data center is a facility that utilises energy-efficient technologies to store, manage, and disseminate data. They do not contain obsolete systems (such as inactive or underused servers) and take benefit of newer, more efficient technologies and minimise environmental impact. The Green data center is responsible for performing the following roles:
- Data storage, management, backup, and recovery
- Productivity applications, such as email
- High-volume e-commerce transactions
- Powering online gaming communities
- Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence
Strategies used in Green Data Centers
One of the biggest challenges faced by companies looking to operate more eco-friendly is the cost of building and operating green data centers.
We are providing a list of strategies used in sustainable Green data centers:
- Minimised building footmarks
- Low-emission building materials, such as carpets and paints
- Sustainable landscaping
- E-waste reprocessing
- Catalytic converters on backup generators
- Alternative energy, like photovoltaic technology, heat pumps, and evaporative cooling technology
- Hybrid or electric vehicles for employees.
Components of a Green data center
Every data center component can be made more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, from how the building is constructed to the equipment in use.
Whether upgrading an occurring data center or building a new one, energy efficiency and environmental considerations are essential to design components. Operators planning a Green data center can use a design firm with experience designing energy-efficient & environment-friendly buildings.
Components and design considerations of a Green data center are available as follows:
- Cold & Hot Aisles: Data center servers are set and contained in a way that permits the hot air to get pumped to the air conditioner (AC) returns & cold air to get pumped where necessary for cooling.
- Free Air Cooling: These systems utilise outdoor air to cool data centers tactically located in cold temperatures.
- Low-power Servers: Low-power servers work efficiently in data centers. Their low energy consumption increases their efficiency more than regular servers.
- Modular Data Centers: Such energy-efficient data centers are transportable and can get quickly set up wherever needed. They are also known as data centers in a box.
- Evaporative Cooling: Several technologies, including evaporation pads and high-pressure spray systems, decrease heat through the evaporation of water.
- Heat Recovery & Reuse: Waste heat after data center power usage gets reused to heat other buildings.
- Ultrasonic Humidification: Energy-efficient ultrasound creates the wetness needed to run some devices in a data center.
Benefits of Green Data Center
The real challenge the world of IT faces is the difficulty of making energy efficiency easy and getting it to where it’s needed most – in data centers.
The best green data centers find the right balance of all of these factors. It may seem like an impossible task when starting, but with careful planning and diligent effort, facilities can achieve their green data center goals sooner than expected.
Now time to look at the benefits of Green data centers usage in our business:
Reduce Impact on Environment
If you have been following the news regarding carbon footprinting, you are probably aware that there are several companies actively trying to reduce their carbon footprint. There is talk of corporations moving towards carbon-neutral operations by 2020.
As green data centers move into the market, they will make it easier to power data centers with renewable energy resources and less energy-intensive technologies. Plus, such centers are expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 10-14% relative to conventional data centers (1-2Mt per year) which is the amount necessary for achieving the agreed-upon target of capping global warming at less than 2°C.
Green or sustainable data centers reduce energy consumption and exert a minor impact on the environment than traditional ones. Moreover, the new equipment and unique energy-saving techniques can easily get implemented in sustainable data centers. This implementation dramatically lessens the carbon footprints and adverse effects on our environment.
Consume Less Energy
An electricity-efficient data center is essential to the growth and success of any business, which makes maximizing energy efficiency a viable option for any company.
The Green Data Center has expanded efficiency in energy consumption. Virtualisation enables the IT staff to observe and control the equipment remotely.
It permits the data center management to keep the optimum temperature and minimal lighting. Even a little increase in the temperature can reduce the energy cost, and the virtual data center empowers the operators to maintain the temperature to consume less energy.
Next-generation Storage Experience
Traditional storage solutions are complex, costly, and difficult to manage. They require significant investments in training and ongoing maintenance. Cloud-based storage solutions offer a simple and cost-effective alternative to on-premise storage solutions.
The next-generation storage experience is all about simplicity, efficiency, and scalability. With the right storage solution in place, you can save time and money while increasing operational efficiency.
The BFSI sector and several other industrial sectors have recorded a tremendous growth in data over the past few years. This swift growth in data leads enterprises to find a sustainable data center.
Virtual data centers are more advanced and cost-effective than regular ones to meet the company’s ever-increasing data requirements. Virtual data centers can offer a futuristic data storage facility irrespective of business model and size.
Turn Off Unused Servers
The regular data center assigns specific storage space based on the operator company’s needs. After some time, as the requirement increases, the data center automatically gives additional space. Usually, this process creates dead server space. It is one of the most significant benefits of Green data centers.
According to an estimation, up to a 5th of all servers are idle or unused mainly due to this reason. These servers consume power & other resources to increase capital expenditure. The Green data centers can switch these servers off & reduces energy consumption and cost.
Decrease Capital Expenditure
One of the primary reasons you have to pay a lot of bucks for using data centers is that the power consumption is very high at regular data centers. Environment-friendly Green data centers use the lowest power thanks to continuous monitoring & effective data management services.
Also, such data centers can reclaim unused abilities for various applications. In a way, these data centers absorb energy very efficiently, thereby reducing capital expenses.
Both virtual and dark data centers are thoroughly efficient and utilise much less energy than traditional data centers. Good Data center management can assist your business in making such eco-friendly data centers. All these benefits of a Green data center increase their worth in the future.
Improved reputation among customers and employees
Employees in particular are increasingly interested in working for companies with a reputation for environmental stewardship, so setting up green data centers can help attract talent while improving your company’s image among consumers who care about such things.
Future of Green Data Centers
Trends suggest that more & more data center providers will move to green infrastructure by adopting renewable energy as prices fall. However, these moves can’t come soon enough for businesses that know that 80% of US consumers care about utilising renewable energy.
One of the benefits of Green data centers is moving toward a more virtual and sustainable environment while helping operators find greater efficiency & success. Selecting a Green data center is a well-deserved choice for any organisation, no matter its size, to save money and operate more sustainably.
If the data center is appropriately managed, the Green data center can save up to 60% on hardware costs and increase 32% Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). Also, green data centers can reduce carbon amounts significantly by giving efficient energy consumption.
Your business can contribute to protecting our environment while saving different costs. Giants like eBay, Amazon, Facebook, and NSIDC depend on their operations’ green or sustainable data centers.
Conclusion:
Recently, high energy consumption and carbon emissions from the regular data centers have increased the demand for Green data centers.
A greener facility will use less energy and water, which will lower your utility bills in the long run. This could also mean that you’ll need advanced HVAC units or chillers in a data center facility, which could mean lower maintenance costs and less equipment to replace over time.
Depending on the type of Green Data Center you’ve invested in, you’ll be able to take advantage of different benefits, including savings on energy costs. There are many ways to implement green data centers, and it’s not very difficult to tell which processes are the most eco-friendly.
Green data centers are more efficient and cost-effective than traditional data centers. That is why their implementation trends are rising globally due to the benefits of Green data centers.
In the end, it’s about making the right choice for your business. Whether you choose to locate in a state-of-the-art green data center or build one from scratch, selling green is the way to go.
Staying green is one key to having a competitive edge in the business world. Keep reading for more tips on how your data center could become a green data center.