We may be in a lean economy, but it's hard to ignore that we're in a green economy too.  Better utilising your Microsoft IT infrastructure means that you reap great green PR for doing so!  Rather than list the fads, in this post, I take a look at some of the sustainability benefits that result from running a lean infrastructure.

 

Less servers, less carbon

 

It's that simple, but few organisations are prepared to tackle poor utilisation of their server infrastructure.  In the economic boom years, running an empty fridge was not a big deal.  Today, however, it's different.  Take Internet Service Providers - do they run servers that do little or nothing?  I think not - they will provision new hardware when they absolutely have to and not before.  Doing so is exactly how they steer a course between operating costs and profits.

 

The average server power supply runs at about 800 Watts peak capacity.  That's having a home electric heater or vacuum cleaner on 24/7, procuding lots of carbon.  Now imagine the 300 vacuum cleaners being stored in a large fridge 24/7 and that's what you have in the average data center.  It just doesn't add up.

 

Storage Area Networks (SANS)are even worse.  These are intensively-packed units of hard disk drives that spin constantly, even when not in use.  SAN units (agregated into large collections) typically use 1500-2000 Watts EACH, meaning that the average implementaiton could use up to 40 Kilowatts of power - that's 40 electric fires (in a large fridge, don't forget) running 24/7.

 

Then consider the fridge itself.  Would you put a heater in a fridge?  Of course not - but that is exactly what a data center is and the only means of cooliing for most installations is to chill air and push that air in.  Doing so actually requires more energy than is actually being generated within the data center (simple laws of physics come into play here).  Wouldn't it be better to just regulate the temperature of the incoming air into a data center rather than trying to isolate it from an energy perspective?

 

So what do we do about this?  Microsoft and others are rsearching and implementing non-chilled data centers with remarkable results.  This modest effort has already shown that by allowing temperatures to rise in data centers, the need for high volume air conditioning has been substantially reduced.  Data centers are also located in dense urban or sub-urban areas where renewable energy is scarce.  Major new implementaitons are planned at more remote areas where Hydro-electric or other renewables are in good supply, reducing the carbon footprint for those facilities. 

 

Ulitmately, it's consolidation of infrastructure that will drive the most immediate benefits that are both Green and cashable and even this seems a long way from today for most organisations.