Efficient Data Center
– Natalie Lehrer, a senior contributor for CloudWedge, says:
Private Data centers require meticulous planning and a coordinated effort that will satisfy clients needs while also adhering to local, state and federal regulations. The measurement most commonly used acronym to express data center efficiency is PUE. PUE stands for Power Usage Effectiveness and the number describes the relationship between the amounts of power used to power IT equipment versus the amount of power used to cool the equipment. The closer a PUE is to 1.0 essentially means that more power is going towards the actual operation of the datacenter as opposed to the cooling of the equipment.
Unless you are a data center architect, you most likely won’t need to worry about PUE. You will just need to focus on a solution that satisfies the local laws and regulations. Most reputable vendors brag about their PUE. For example, Google boasts that it could measure its PUE at as low as 1.06. It’s helpful to keep the PUE measurement in mind when making a decision about which public cloud you should select when building a hybrid cloud. Your organization may be energy conscious and knowing these numbers will be helpful to keep in mind when your executive management questions you about it.
The biggest data centers in the world have come up with innovative ways to reduce the amount of energy that is used overall. Depending upon the size of your data center, it’s certainly possible that you can find small ways to save your organization big money on efficient data center power consumption costs. Your location can help dictate the amount of cooling equipment needed to run an efficient data center. Fewer cooling equipment on site generally means lower costs overall for your data center.
The next tip which will save you a lot of money is to virtualize your infrastructure. If your ultimate goal is to build a cloud, it may be possible to only have as much infrastructure up and running as needed when you are operating a private cloud. Server virtualization and private cloud are the two the biggest drivers in data center technology. Innovation in these two sectors can equate into savings on your datacenter’s utility bill that will more than pay for the costs of licensing involved in building out these infrastructures. You could always use an open source project or one of the freely available hypervisors on the market to cut down on costs. Regardless of which route you decide to go, we’re confident that these tips will help you design an efficient data center that only uses as much power as it needs.
Author Bio
Natalie Lehrer is a senior contributor for CloudWedge. In her spare time, Natalie enjoys exploring all things cloud and is a music enthusiast.
