Efficient Data Centers Thanks to Sustainable IT
According to recent studies, the energy demand of data centers is increasing with advancing digitalization. The study ‘Data Centers in Germany‘ shows that local data center capacities have increased by 84 percent in terms of IT performance from 2010 to 2020. By 2025, another 30 percent increase is expected. Blockchain, cloud computing, or streaming are just a few examples of IT trends that require high processor performance. At the same time, the total amount of electricity consumed by data centers is gradually increasing due to the rising IT load.
“Data centers can be operated more energy-efficiently through more efficient server hardware and the use of modern air conditioning technologies,” explains Jerome Evans, founder and managing director of firstcolo GmbH.
How Does a Data Center Become a Green Data Center?
However, before any suitable method for saving energy can be implemented, an analysis of the energy consumption of all devices must first be carried out. Because those who want to set up their IT in a contemporary and resource-conserving manner need valid and reliable measurement values. “Only those who know the current situation can decide where there is potential for improvement. Thus, those responsible must continuously collect and archive important consumption data for an objective representation of energy and resource requirements,” Evans explains. Based on the data series obtained in this way, it is possible to deduce what consumption looks like and where savings potentials are hidden.
But is it enough to capture the energy consumption of IT? “Unfortunately not, because there is also a large energy demand besides IT equipment. Here, air conditioning in particular is a major factor, which is an indispensable prerequisite for the highly available operation of IT infrastructures,” says Evans. In addition, there are usually redundancies, up to the complete overload of supply, distribution, and cooling systems. These overcapacities – especially in UPS systems – run far away from their optimal operating point in the nominal load range during normal operation.
Air Conditioning Technology as a Central Energy Guzzler
As a rule, the biggest adjustment for higher efficiency lies in the optimized air conditioning of the server rooms. There are several starting points here: A simple measure is the strict separation of cold and warm air, as it results in improved air circulation in the data center. This allows minimizing the speed of the recirculation cooling units, which saves electricity. Warm air is drawn in, cooled, and supplied to the cold aisle at the appropriate temperature.
“Another measure is raising the room temperature or supply air temperature in the cold aisle of the data center. This approach shortens the time for forced cooling and extends the time for free cooling using ambient air,” Evans explains. Therefore, many cloud providers are now building their data centers in northern and rather cool regions like the Scandinavian countries, as they don’t need forced cooling here. But even in Germany, the climate allows temporary operation without compressor power in the air conditioning cabinets during the cold season.
Cloud and Sustainability - A Contradiction?
The cloud can also help to act both sustainably and profitably. “With flexible and scalable cloud services, companies can quickly respond to changing requirements. The Corona pandemic has shown: Businesses switched to cloud-based collaboration tools in no time, so that employees could access company applications from their home office,” the expert explains. Of course, cloud data centers also consume energy. However, leading cloud providers rely on modern, energy-saving systems and IT components as well as optimized cooling.
In contrast, the in-house operated data centers of many German companies work with partially outdated hardware and thus have a high PUE value. This indicates how effectively the supplied energy is consumed in a data center. Additionally, the virtualization technology behind cloud computing resources allows for a much more flexible use of physical IT resources. As a result, no dedicated server is maintained per customer that remains underutilized most of the time. Instead, IT resources in the cloud data center are distributed across different customers, optimizing the utilization of each individual hardware component. What is not needed is automatically turned off. “A central point, because reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions is one of the most important sustainable environmental goals for many companies,” says Evans.
