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Optimize the Cooling in Your Existing Data Center, an Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2009, WebMediaBrands Inc.
Optimize the Cooling in Your Existing Data Center
power.Second,datacentersarendingthattheirfacilitiesarenotdesignedtohandleadditionalcoolingdemandsefcientlyoreffectively.Third,thecapitalandoperatingexpensesas
-
sociatedwithpowerandcoolingarerisingrapidly.Fourth,giventheeconomy,bothcapitalandoperatingexpensesbud
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getsarelimitedand,inmanycases,shrinking.Thismeans
that budget growth in these areas will come at the expense o
anotherareasuchasnewservicedevelopment.Inshort,the
combination creates risks that need to be managed.
Toaddressthesechallenges,twothingsmusthappen:
energyconsumptioninITsystemsmustbemanaged,ifnotreduced.Atthesametime,coolingmustbecomemore
effectiveandefcient.ThepurposeofthiseBookwillbeto
discuss means or existing data centers to address demandsor additional cooling.
Baseline Current Environment
Therststepistounderstandthecurrentstate.Therearetwoaspectstounderstand:demandandsupply.Itisimportantto
understand cause-and-eect o the improvements perormedand also to demonstrate to management and other stakehold-ers the results o improvement activities.
Fromthedemandside,thismeansunderstandingthepower
going into the data center and how it’s consumed with what-ever level o granularity possible. Rack-level or ultimately com-
ponent-levelconsumptiondataistheideal,butinitiallyunder
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standingtotaluseisavalidrststep.Fromthesupplyside,organizationsareimplementingincreas
-ingly sophisticated sensor grids to understand the tempera-ture and humidity in the data center along with cooling-related
powerconsumption,andotheroperationaldatapointsfrom
the cooling systems themselves.There is a growing body o studies and recommendationsregarding how to deploy sensors to monitor environmen-
talconditionsandpower.Ingeneral,thetypesofsensors,
location,anddensityshouldbedrivenbycostsandbenets.Itispossibletocollectdataatthedevicelevel,intheaisles,airvelocityinplenums,andsoforth.Alongwiththesensors
you need sotware tools that can help sta with the analysiso the data so they understand trends and generate various
alertlevelswhendenedconditionsaremet.
Improvement Opportunities
There are many ways to improve the cooling capacity o exist-ing data centers. The ollowing are common opportunities that
mightyieldsignicantimprovementinyourenvironment:
Reduce Cooling Demand
Therststeptoimprovingavailablecoolingcapacityisto
literallyreducethedemandforcooling.Itmayseemsimple,andsomeaspectsofitare.Theveryrstthingtodoistalk
to sta and discuss their ideas and observations on howto reduce the power being used by IT equipment.
Aneasyrststepthathaslowcostsandhighpotentialben
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etsistoidentifyandremoveghosts.Theseareserversthatarestillrunning,consumingpowerandcoolingbuttheservice
they were providing to the business is no longer needed andnobody told IT to decommission the systems. Ghosts can be
identiedwithnetworkmonitoringandsystemsmanagementtools,whichcanidentifysystemswithlittletononetworktraf
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cand/orCPUutilization.
Another approach is to consolidate applications and ITservices into as ew as possible. Large organizations that
havegrownorganically,orhadextensivemergersandacquisi
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tions,arelikelytondmanyneedlesslyredundantapplications
andservicesbeingprovidedtothebusiness.Forexample,
10 accounting packages in use versus one. The duplicate
systemsshouldbeidentiedandactionsidentied.Some
duplicateswillbeveryeasytoconsolidate,whereasothers
may take substantially more eort to gain approval.Reducing the number o servers and volume o data storagethrough consolidation and virtualization is another method.The whole intent is to reduce the amount o power being con-sumed and thus heat being generated by IT equipment thatmust be cooled.
Whereastheaboveoptionsallmentionservers,itis
important to note that o the power going into the data
center,onlyapproximately30percentisactuallyconsumed
by IT systems. The majority is consumed by environmentalsystems (45 percent) then power related inrastructure
(24percent),andthenasmallamountforlightingrounding
out the list (1 percent).
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Depending on how a data center is
designedandtheequipmentused,theselevelscanvary
signicantlyandunderstandingthecurrentstatecanhelp
prioritize improvement approaches. One can imagine there
willbedatacentersthatndlargesavingsoutsideof
servers.Forexample,someorganizationsmayndthat
theycanrecoverasignicantamountofcoolingbymovingalloftheUPSsoutoftheclimate-controlled
data center.A last approach to mention is to evaluate i some level o out-sourcing to collocation and cloud computing vendors may
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