Data center energy efficiency is needed in order to increase energy productivity and decrease carbon emissions. To learn more about how data centers can improve energy efficiency, read its full article.
Data Center Energy Efficiency in a Digital World
In this modern era, the value of the latest cloud computing technologies, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of things is growing fastly. These latest inventions reduced the usage of data center energy worldwide.
The reason behind this is that these data centers are energy efficient. In other words, you can say that cloud computing and colocation data centers are eco-friendly. Datacenter may consume less energy because of its infrastructure and the IT equipment. Earlier, when IT technologies had not arrived, people used data centers, which consume more energy. Therefore, the invention of digital technologies proved beneficial for data centers.
Many technologies can keep the data center energy efficient. But Cooling is the major technology in this regard. They reflect energy saving in two ways. One is by optimizing the data center airflow, and the second is reconfiguring the CRAC unit, analyzing environmental data collected by wireless sensors, resulting in a reduction of 48% of data center energy consumption achieved.
Datacenters slowly gain popularity, starting from small-sized organizations and monitoring the real traffic from global conglomerates like Amazon Company. This company has hundreds of millions of consumers and product data”.”
Firstly its cost is cheaper, but every day, when it becomes the need of every company, they start taking advantage by increasing its cost. But once it invests money in a data center, the company feels relaxed.
The data center providers are responsible for their complex data center cooling system and keeping data safe. We required more electricity to run the data center to run various equipment. Because of this, we try to make data center energy consumption more efficient.
The invention of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
To measure the data center’s energy efficiency, they designed the new equipment to measure the energy efficiency and determine its future performance. For better data center energy efficiency, the Power Usage Effectiveness is designed.
The Green Grid developed this for the measurement of data center efficiency. To find the PUE, a data center facility manager divides their Total Data Center Energy Consumption by the IT Equipment Energy Consumption.
PUE is measured at two different scales: Global PUE and Local PUE. Global PUE measures the entire facility as one unit, the average of all individual data center facilities within that facility (for example, racks). Local PUE measures each rack within that facility, the average of all servers within each rack.
One might think it’s easy to measure the efficiency of a data center. After all, you can look at how much power it uses compared to how much energy it takes to run all its equipment. But that’s not enough information if you want to understand how sustainable your data center is or whether it could be made more efficient in the future.
Why are Data Centers Energy Hungry?
According to the German statistics office, the total number of data centers worldwide is 7.2 million.
However, the United States has around 2,670 data centers. The UK follows them with 452, Germany with 443 data center, China, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, France, and Japan.
As hundreds of data centers are built in every country, they want the maximum amount of electricity to run the IT equipment. At the same time, they need a lot of cooling systems to keep normal temperature on its facility.
No doubt, the bigger data centers are the energy eater. It means they use a huge amount of energy. The only reason different data center managers found was the countless use of social media applications.
The usage of social media apps and internet services uses a lot of energy. But there is a benefit as well. The more the data center grows, the more pressure there is to make energy efficient.
However, the environmental impact also reduces. When bringing Squid Game and Netflix, they make a chain reaction and use energy. This happens not only on personal devices but also in data centers as they are scattered around the world where the information is stored.
During the coronavirus worse pandemic, they only fueled their dominance and worked remotely. Use video conferencing and file sharing through cloud services. Because of this, the data centers are ranking high because of increased digitalization and more regulation.
Similarly, many businesses are now fed up with their on-site servers and taking the space on rent on the cloud servers to meet digitalization and focus on core businesses without worrying about IT issues.
Sometimes, finding the costs of purchasing and maintaining such equipment from outside companies is cheaper and more efficient. But sometimes, business are using colocation centers. The colocation is shared by the user and the manager of the companies. They make the data centers hyperscale
Undoubtedly, every country is making maximum efforts to bring revolution in their data center. But fails to become successful. Therefore, we have gone through multiple steps to increase energy efficiency, from processing to memory and storage.
Ways to Improve Data Center Energy Efficiency
There are hundreds of ways to improve the efficiency level of the data center. Below, we have listed useful ways to increase the data center’s energy efficiency while dramatically reducing operational costs.
Invest in Cooling System
Introducing simple cooling solutions is one main factor in reducing data center energy efficiency. The data center needs to deploy the hot aisle/cold aisle configurations. It becomes significant to conduct. Using this, we can create uniform air temperature by alternating the cold aisle with a hot air exhaust.
The blank panels are used inside equipment enclosures to prevent the air from mixing the two aisles. However, the optimization airflow of the cooling center is also important. Ensure the cool air is recycled back to cooling units instead of circulating in the data center.
The server room air-conditioning units are also oriented perpendicular to the hot aisles and toward the enclosures to increase the cooling efficiency.
Air-Economizers
On the other hand, air-side cooling economizers bring cool air from the outdoors into the data center building and give it to the servers. These economizers also include warm exhaust air if the outer temperature is cold. Because of this, the humidity and temperature fall the same.
One fantastic thing about the air side economizers is that they save the maximum amount of energy as their purpose is to keep the data center cool. Hence, it is proved from the discussion that installing air-side economizers also keeps the data center energy efficiency.
Use Airflow Management
Airflow Management is another saving method of data center energy efficiency. The raised data center floor will prevent air leakage, which results in vast quantities of cool air reaching the IT equipment. Implementing airflow management is a critical energy-saving practice.
Data centers with raised floors can easily suffer from uncontrolled air leakage, resulting in disproportionate quantities of cool air reaching the IT equipment.
We recommend the data center managers seal the raised floors properly and remove unnecessary blockages placed under the floors.
The blockage of the cable underfloor is also responsible for inhibiting cool air from reaching the IT equipment. The blockage can also be controlled using virtualization.
The data center cooling counts for half of the total data center energy consumption. Because of this, it becomes mandatory to optimize the airflow to improve energy efficiency.
The majority of people have no idea of bypassing knowledge. Therefore, we first discuss what Bypass airflow is. Bypass airflow is the same as air but returns to a cooling unit without removing heat.
This process results in losing cooling capacity and higher cooling costs. Hence, bypassing airflow decreases the cooling system’s energy efficiency, requiring additional cooling to remove heat from the IT equipment.
Move to variable-speed fans
One of the efficient ways to decrease the energy is to switch to variable-speed fans. Recent research shows that power consumption can be reduced by 20% through CPU fan speed reduction.
Those who want to cool the data center equipment must use variable-speed fans. When these fans run, they consume power and only run at the required speed. This speed, however, is based on sophisticated thermostatic measures. You can only check the cooling features with uninterruptible power supply devices.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the data center will only be efficient if we keep the IT equipment cool. We recommend the data center managers follow these above points to clear their doubts. They continuously make efforts for better efficiency and regulation. However, hope took place in their minds on the bypass airflow and certification.
Every organization must select the data center carefuly as it is helpful for thousands of enterprises and agencies. New data center hotspots are emerging. Following the above points, to reduce the data center energy efficiency.
Cloud services, nowadays, are in high demand in data centers. Without adopting the latest IT technologies, the company will not succeed in the future. Utilize the virtualization and bypass airflow to efficiently work data center energy.
Feel free to send us a message to get complete details about the data center’s energy efficiency. We try our best to resolve the queries that appear in your mind. The above discussion proved that the data center would only protect by efficient energy and a friendly environment.
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