The greening of the data center

Vendors have jumped onto the green bandwagon. Akhtar Pasha writes that at this point it’s more hype than reality but that soon green IT technologies will make their way into the corporate data center as IT heads are aware of the savings that green technologies confer

Former US Vice President and 2007 Nobel Prize winner for his work on global warming Al Gore preaches the good word. HP, IBM, Sun and others tech giants sell it. A good number of businesses are buying into it. We are talking about green IT. Companies globally have been forced to go green or at least some shade resembling that color thanks to governmental diktat. It’s the information technology industry’s turn now. Are we there yet? Not really. Therein hangs a tale.

Tech vendors, the press, and yes, industry analysts have latched onto crisis language to describe power and space shortages in corporate data centers. Christopher Mines, Senior Vice President, Forrester Research said, “Let’s all calm down. Tech marketers push green by hyping a crisis in corporate data centers. We surveyed enterprise IT professionals and found a moderate level of interest in improving energy efficiency in their data centers, but nothing that warrants the ‘crisis’ label. It’s in everyone’s interest to tone down the language and keep the focus on realistic assessments and initiatives to improve efficiency and greenness in corporate data centers.”

Let us look at some headlines...

“IBM Unveils Plan to Combat Data Center Energy Crisis.”

“Gartner Predicts Data Center Power and Cooling Crisis.”

“Coping with Data Centers in Crisis”

“Research shows that more than 70 percent of customers are in crisis mode, unable to properly cool the gear they need to meet their business goals.”

Grave power scenario

Closer home the per capita consumption of energy in India nearly doubled from 238 kWh in 1990 to 408 kWh in 2001. At the current annual generation capacity of 1,30,000 MW, India faces shortages of nearly nine percent with peak load deficits being higher at 10 to 11 percent according to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), India. Electricity generation capacity needs to go up from our current installed capacity to between 800,000 to 950,000 MW as indicated by the Integrated Energy Policy document mentioned in the Hon. Prime Minister’s speech at the Energy Conclave 2006.

Power and cooling are the most notorious problems plaguing the data center and this is being discussed by IT heads ad nauseam but it has not reached at critical stage that warrants immediate attention and will not do so for at least for another year and half. According to T N Rangarajan, Vice President-IT, Brakes India “More than heat dissipated from servers, I feel that the major cost to data centers is the cost of cooling (air conditioning). We spend 40 percent of our maintenance expenditure for our data center on cooling and that’s a significant portion. We need to keep a lot of green in our pockets to run data centers efficiently. We have heard about green technologies that are being introduced by vendors. However, our priority is to stabilize our IT infrastructure first. We may look at green technologies much later on.” In his opinion it is a bit too early to look at green IT in India but nevertheless Indian CIOs are aware that these technologies have saved money for global enterprises. T G Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors Company Ltd. offers a different slant, “With data center costs going up, organizations are spending money to dissipate heat generated by servers, which needs to be controlled.”

There is a strong possibility that organizations will look at green technologies to reduce their data center costs without even knowing it and that because most of the bigger and multiple data centers of large enterprises are run by IBM, HP or Sun. As Probir Mitra, Senior General Manager-IT, Tata Motors puts it, “We acknowledge that there are power, cooling and space constraints in the data center and that cost reduction is the highest priority for us. However, it has not come to a panic situation. Additionally since we are not experts in data centers, IBM is managing our data center for us. We will leave it to them to use the best possible technology to keep our data center costs low.” This is an interesting statement by Mitra and it leaves the door wide open for green technologies to get into Indian data centers for sure.

Jyothi Satyanathan, Vice President, System p, STG, IBM India/South Asia said, “Data center managers must rethink how they approach power and cooling. Only one percent of managers take design into consideration when setting up a data center–and even fewer think about cooling.” According to Gartner, traditional data centers typically waste more than 60 percent of the energy that they use to cool equipment. “Rethinking energy efficiency trends and considering new technologies available today can lead to dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and cost as the data center is fast becoming oceanfront property for today’s business. In addition to the cost and environmental benefits in moving towards a greener data center, businesses will also reap the benefits of their IT investment for a much longer period of time. There is a causal relationship between high temperatures and how long equipment lasts. Less fans and AC equipment also means less noise,” added Satyanathan KP Unnikrishnan, Director, Marketing, Alliances & Teleweb Sales, Sun Microsystems India Pvt Ltd. said, “About 60 percent of CIOs today are concerned about the growing data center real estate problem, power and energy infrastructure and cost. The industry is constantly seeking ways to tackle the data center ecological issues of cost savings and energy efficiency and this is not hype.”

Durgadutt Nedungadi, Director Marketing & Alliances, Technology Solutions Group, HP India added, “The question of whether the customer is going green or not is not that important. [That said] the perception does depending upon what their priority is. We have seen customers with multiple data centers experiencing power and cooling problems. In most urban areas, the power envelope that draws into the data center is increasingly becoming limited and it is getting difficult for computing and storage boxes to operate with the same power envelope. Aging data centers are also adding to this problem.” HP has customers in telecom and manufacturing who are engaging with the company to evaluate their data centers for power, cooling and space optimization. “It’s a healthy sign,” he added.

The data center goes green

According to Satyanathan, energy efficiency innovations that exist today are in the form of software tools that plan for data center power needs, deep cooling doors that utilize chilled water and high frequency, energy-efficient chips all of which can help reap dramatic power benefits. As energy costs continue to soar, the problems of energy usage and heat generation that accompany extremely dense technology, will only continue to worsen. By considering all available options in terms of software, hardware and virtualization, IT managers can run the most cost-effective, energy-efficient data center possible.

Express Computer found that be it IBM, Sun or HP—all the server majors have a similar strategy and are offering to keep power, cooling and space costs under check. The only difference is in marketing this solution under different names. We dug deep to understand how different vendors are playing their cards to push the green technologies into the data center.

The value proposition of green IT is simple: save money on power and cooling while doing your bit for the environment. IT users can pick and choose the solution that they want to use to reduce costs and can dip a toe in the eco water with simple assessment tools to see where and how much money is spent on energy and cooling and how it can be controlled using the right solution. Vendors need to fine-tune their green IT messages to particular industries and customer segments and emphasize that energy efficiency saves money even in the absence of a crisis.

akhtar.pasha@expressindia.com