Technology Case Studies
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Cutting Data Centers' Carbon Footprint
| Servers Learn to be Lean | |
| posted 02-25-2009 |
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 Of all the machines that make business tick, the digital computer has long stood out—indeed, it has been revered—as perhaps the cleanest and greenest of them all. Quiet, smokeless, unobtrusive, this compact box of microchips hums away, adding efficiency to all that it touches. And year over year, it does more work per dollar and more work per dollar’s worth of electricity, too. Who could complain? Yet, the last few months have seen Chief Information Officers awaken with a jolt to a dirty, long-ignored fact: Information technology’s carbon-footprint is remarkably large and it’s growing rapidly. According to McKinsey & Co., the greenhouse gas emissions generated by data centers’ use of electricity are currently on track to surpass those of the global airline industry by 2020. Likewise, computer hardware itself is chock full of toxic materials, most of which end up polluting landfills somewhere when the gear gets thrown away. In response, IT managers in enterprises and government agencies are taking dramatic steps, both to save hard dollars and live up to their organizations’ obligations as socially responsible players on the global stage. From building eco-designed data centers to using “virtualization” techniques that slash the number of servers and disk drives installed in large data centers to adopting innovative cooling methods to disposing of obsolete hardware with extra care, the greening of IT has become a vibrant stand-alone industry. Improving the energy-efficiency of IT operations can be a challenge, however, especially as enterprises increasingly rely on technology to automate critical business processes and maintain competitiveness. Eco-consciousness and profits aren’t always compatible. Opportunities abound for greening IT operations Fortunately, says Sam Newman, an energy and resources consultant at Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, Colo., today’s data center is particularly ripe for greening. Inherently, efforts to save energy there unleash what Newman calls knock-on, or multiplicative, effects: Reducing the number of servers, for instance, means a smaller power supply is required, and in turn, less floor space, less lighting and best of all, less energy-intensive cooling. “We’re not talking merely about low-hanging fruit,” Newman says. “This is fruit that has fallen onto the ground and is waiting to be picked up. It’s getting mushy around your feet. We wish we could see this situation everywhere in the corporation.” How big is the problem? With hundreds of millions of desktop and laptop computers in use, millions more smart phones, and centralized data centers expanding to handle every kind of financial and business transaction and fuel the rapidly growing web, IT as a whole is consuming massive amounts of energy. According to a widely-influential report released in 2007 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), stand-alone servers and data centers in the U.S. used a total of 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006, or upwards of 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption that year. Total bill: $4.5 billion. This consumption, EPA concluded, will nearly double by 2011, requiring an additional 10 large power plants to be added to the nation’s power grid. Easily the most effective approach to taming IT energy costs is the obvious one: Employ fewer pieces of hardware, or, at the least, power-down systems when they’re not in use. That’s easy enough with desktops and laptops, which can be remotely controlled to shut down overnight and on weekends. On average, this can cut power consumption by a third for desktops, for a yearly savings of around $50. Advanced software helps reduce hardware In the data center, typically required to run 24/7, a different tack is required. As the EPA and many IT analysts point out, servers traditionally have been run, on average, at a small fraction of their full capacity—often at just 10 percent. But by consolidating workloads onto underutilized servers, it’s often possible to use many fewer machines. What’s more, a layer of specialized software is now available that harnesses anywhere from a dozen to several hundred servers into what appears to programmers, administrators, and end-users as a single, massive computer that can run any number of applications at once. As part of its green IT initiative, Highmark, a Pittsburgh-based health insurer, has managed to decommission 100 servers by consolidating their workloads to a pair of IBM mainframes running a virtualized software environment. Soon, Highmark says, it will start virtualizing its data storage, too, with similar savings in mind. At Monsanto, the agricultural chemicals and seed producer in St. Louis, virtualization has enabled just 16 servers to take over from a previous “farm” of some 334 servers. Surveys by Enterprise Management Associates of Boulder, Colo., have found that virtualization is the now the most popular move in green IT, cited by 64 percent of IT users as either in the works or planned for the coming year. After that, users cited moving to newer hardware, such as blade servers, which package multiple processor boards into a single rack, thereby saving space and making cooling more efficient. All told, companies that are focused on green IT, EMA reports, are showing an average annual savings in electricity costs of 19 percent. Says Steve Brasen, an EMA analyst who tracks the green IT phenomenon: “I used to hear a lot of skepticism, with CIOs asking, ‘How am I going to sell this to my executive staff?’ Now, that has changed because companies recognize that there is real business value in implementing these [green] solutions.” Another big, untapped opportunity for saving significant energy is in rethinking the distribution of electricity within data centers. As it is, transforming incoming current from 230 volts to 120 volts incurs losses of around 30 percent while also generating significant heat. By feeding server racks with 230 volts and replacing bulky copper-wire transformers with semiconductor-based devices called IGBTs (insulated gate, bi-polar transistor), overall efficiency can be raised by five to seven percent, says R. Stephen Spinnazola, vice president at RTKL Associates, a Baltimore-based architectural and design firm. “There’s less cooling needed, too, so savings are amplified,” Spinnazola says. RTKL is one of several architectural firms that has found success in designing greener data centers. “We saw the first blip about energy savings in the data center back in 2001,“ says Spinnazola. “Now, it’s paramount. Green is all anybody talks about. There’s a huge build-out of data centers going on worldwide. It’s a $10 billion market.“ Data centers can even be LEED certified In 2003, RTKL began working with Highmark on what was then a somewhat daring concept: a data center designed to meet so-called LEED certification. (LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is promoted by the U.S. Green Building Council. A building’s LEED rating reflects its use of recycled and recyclable materials and how well it conserves energy used in heating, cooling, and lighting, for instance.) For Highmark’s 90,000-square-foot facility, RTKL came up with many innovations, including a now-patented scheme for air-cooling server racks and a rainwater-collection system, with a 100,000-gallon underwater holding tank, that supplies the center’s air chillers. The latter has reduced water usage by 22 percent a year. “It’s very easy and very inexpensive,” says Spinnazola. Highmark opened its new facility in 2006 and has been showered with attention ever since. In Feb. 2008, trade newspaper ComputerWorld named Highmark the year’s No. 1 green IT company. More important, even though the green data center is three times the size of the one it replaced, its total electric bill is the same: $45,000 a month. Corporations wishing to pursue their own green IT strategies won’t be short of company. Several consortia have sprung up to help firms share ideas and work together on the problem: The Green Grid, the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Savers Computing Initiative, and Silicon Valley Leadership Group. It isn’t only large companies that have a chance to make their IT operations greener. Those that host their servers with outsiders can choose from a growing list of co-location providers that will make the effort on their behalf. San Francisco-based 365 Main has been working closely with the EPA in monitoring energy usage and figuring out best practices in conservation. “We were the first to join EPA’s Energy Star program,” says Miles Kelly, 365 Main’s vice-president of marketing and strategy. At its Chandler, Ariz., data center, clients can have their gear powered entirely by renewable energy sources. IT is far from the ultimate goal of carbon-neutrality, but step-by-step, the industry and customers are working to make a difference. ______________________________ Green IT: hype or happening? The benefits of server virtualization ______________________________  COMMENTS“Green IT” is as much about saving money as making a good impression with environmental groups: how green are your company’s IT operations? Leave your response in the comments below |
