Ways to Drive up Data Centre Efficiency

Beyond cooling and power, a data centre solution that considers and designs for the five critical elements of performance, time, space, experience, and sustainability will be reliable, flexible, scalable, and efficient in many ways

FREMONT CA: Data centre managers highly focus on optimising power utilisation, yet they still encounter difficulties as power expenses as a percentage of continuing data centre costs rise. The power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric has emerged as the industry standard for determining how efficiently a data centre uses energy.  Primarily, enhancing the power usage of IT equipment results in the overall improvement in power usage efficiency. Here are five steps data centre managers should stick to maximise efficiency, measuring and monitoring power usage to track progress.

Optimising IT Power

Data centre managers must make an effort to reduce the amount of power needed to power IT equipment (also known as payload power) since IT systems are ultimate what require a power supply. Servers use 60 per cent of the payload power, so it's critical to take the following measures to lower their power requirements:

• Optimise workloads and remove unnecessary processes.

• Bring together virtual machines

• More workloads should be virtualised

• Remove any servers that are still running but doing nothing useful.

• Replace outdated servers with the recent ones

Optimising Data Centre Space

Data centres built before the advent of server virtualisation may have been overbuilt for the equipment requirements of today, allowing for even deeper reductions in the space required for IT equipment and less IT power.

When constructing a new data centre, it is essential to take into account a modular design that divides the facility into separate modules that may be continuously updated as part of a more adaptable and natural data centre architecture.

Optimising Data Centre Cooling

Data centre managers should corroborate the adoption of primary data centre cooling to achieve a minimum efficiency level.

Install Economizers: An air economiser can significantly increase PUE in cooler regions. For instance, using air economisers allows up to 90 per cent of the cooling in most of North America to come from the outside.

Contain Equipment and Heat: Equipment and heat can be contained by isolation structures, which can also be used to heat other portions of the building or to house the data centre equipment that produces the greatest heat.

Optimise Air Conditioning Systems: There are two main ways to do this: either periodically turn off the air conditioner and use a different cooling source, such as an air optimiser, or continuously change the speed, which helps to lower the overall amount of energy the system uses.

Eliminating data Centre Power and Cooling Inefficiencies

PUE ratios can be negatively impacted by outdated power delivery systems, such as transformers, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), and power distribution units (PDUs). While it takes time and money to evaluate the existing situation, future requirements, and modern alternatives, it usually pays off in the form of improved PUE ratios and cost savings.

Utilising DCIM tools

With the use of data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software, energy efficiency can be further improved. DCIM software bridges the gap between the operational requirements of physical IT equipment and physical facilities (building and environment controls).