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Data centres continue to be the black sheep of IT, consuming more than their fair share of dwindling energy supplies. According to Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Britain’s data centres, home to 880,000 servers, are generating an unnecessary 1.2 million tones of CO2 yearly because they are poorly configured -- with under-utilised servers and over-stressed air conditioning systems. This amounts to more than the total annual CO2 emissions of Norwich (942,000 tonnes) and Oxford (981,000 tonnes).
The computer company has created a funky little game and calculator so that you can see just how much of a energy guzzler you are.
Obviously Fujitsu Siemens also has a solution -- a virtualisation and automation strategy that it claims will cut more than 40 per cent of the costs of power and cooling, making you greener and wealthier to boot. It is so confident it can achieve these savings that it has promised to donate £10,000 to environmental charity The Climate Group on behalf of any FT350 company that fails to demonstrate savings of at least 40 per cent.
Virtualisation is definitely a hot topic among data centre managers. Symantec’s recent Green Data Centre report concluded that around 90 per cent of the businesses surveyed were at least talking of server virtualisation as a key solution to rising energy costs in the data centre. Of those actually doing something now, server consolidation is the most common 'green' strategy being considered or already carried out by 51 per cent of respondents, followed by server virtualization (47 per cent) and replacement of old equipment with energy efficient alternatives (44 per cent).
And for those on the bleeding edge, Gartner ranks Virtualisation 2.0 (which is the combination of common or garden virtualisation with automation) as one of the top 10 technologies for 2008.
So take heed. Facilities managers, corporate social responsibility (CSR) officers, IT directors and CFOs, for once, your stars are aligned. Cut the power and cooling demands and the electricity bills will tumble. This is good news for those people who actually pay the bill. Last year the BroadGroup estimated that the average UK corporate data centre energy bill exceeded £5 million and would double in the following five years.
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