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IT managers are at the crossroads today. The economic scenario is squeezing them from all sides. On one hand, the number of IT hands-on-deck are being rationalised or downsized as some would say. On the other hand, the CIO and his team are now under greater pressure to make wise decisions about IT infrastructure planning so as to make the best use of their existing resources.
However, demands from the business and mission critical business applications are nowhere slowing down.
On the data centre front, the IT manager can control costs by juggling a variety of variables. Some of these are delay in capital expenditure, reduction of total cost of ownership, reduction in risks associated with remote disaster recovery and lowering of maintenance expenditure.
Besides, the IT team also has other option to cut costs as wellfrom introducing efficient cooling systems to decreasing server and storage footprints, managing data growth efficiently without additional headcount and storing more data within the existing infrastructure.
But the adoption of any one or a combination of these is riddled with huge challenges. And these challenges have also seen a tectonic shift in the recent years. For instance, till about a few years ago, the key challenge faced by a data centre manager was that of space and availability. Today, with technology becoming robust and efficient and mean-time-between-failures nose diving, availability is among the last of an IT managers worries.
With the Green Revolution taking an entirely new meaning, it is not surprising that the IT manager is swayed by this strong gust of change. Environment consciousness and business profitability are no more conflicting objectives and thus the IT managers focus on greater energy efficiency from data centre operations is a logical extension of this.
Energy efficiency, power density and cooling density are the top issues facing todays data centre manager. This is rather rational too considering the fact that nearly 45% of the total cost of ownership for a typical rack in a high availability 2N data centre is contributed by power and cooling equipment.
Going after cooling equipment can actually serve a two-pronged purpose. It can create energy efficiency that directly translates into cost savings thus converging the objectives of green IT with that of business, says Bhairav Kulshrestha, Manager (IT) at Atul Group of Companies.
Planning, or sharpening the axe, is a great tool to generate cost efficiencies. Like all other asset classes, data and applications should be identified and accordingly classified into categories that then deliver an associated level of service. For instance, not every type of data needs the same level of data protection, replication, disaster management and recovery services. Hence, savings and efficiencies can be gained by identifying and classifying data sets into their associated levels of service. Certain technologies are helping IT organisations get there faster.
Understanding usage patterns
Most data centers are sized for peak conditions that rarely exist. According to a study by Emerson, in a typical business data centre, daily demand progressively increases from about 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. and then begins to drop again at 5 p.m. However, server power consumption remains relatively high even as server load decreases. In the idle mode, most servers consume between 70% and 85% of full operational power.
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