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Is your data centre up to speed? |
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Data centres are set to come under unprecedented scrutiny, as
governmental and non-governmental bodies seek to contain and reduce the
IT industry’s prodigious appetite for electrical power. A strong
catalyst has been last year’s report to US Congress by the US
Environmental Protection Agency. This revealed that in 2006, North
American data centres consumed about 60bn kilowatt-hours, roughly 1.5
per cent of the country’s total consumption of electricity. The report
went on to say that existing technologies and strategies could cut
typical server energy use by 25 per cent and that new technologies
could reduce the burden even further.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Joint Research Centre of the European
Commission is at work on a voluntary code of practice for data centres
aimed at reducing “electrical consumption in a cost-effective manner
without hampering the mission-critical function of data centres”. All
of this is turning a harsh spotlight on the data centre, traditionally
the less-than-visible powerhouse behind corporate and government
computing and, in particular, on those older data centres hampered by
design weaknesses and technology failings. Liam Newcombe of the British
Computer Society’s Data Centre Specialist Group noted recently: “As
more pressure is applied to data centres to become more efficient,
their operators will soon be targeted, measured, grouped or labelled by
the efficiency of their facility.”
Osca St Marthe, of the Morse consultancy, points out that while there
are no statutory guidelines or codes of best practice for constructing
data centres, a number of organisations are building up a body of
knowledge to assist centre operators make the best of their existing
facilities or create new ones. He advises: “Before spending a
significant amount of money on a new data centre, there are
housekeeping activities which will ensure you maximise the assets in
your existing centre.”
The US-based Uptime Institute, which provides consulting services to
more than 100 data centre operators, specialises in tracking centre
energy costs to provide industry benchmarks, while the Green Grid, a
global consortium of hardware and software vendors is developing
methods of measuring data centre performance. The heart of the matter,
according to Steven Salmon, a principal adviser specialising in data
centre management at the consultancy KPMG, is that data centres
commissioned in the late 1990s or early 2000s followed different design
rules from those which would be applied today, now that power
efficiency and resilience are at a premium. In those days,
single-server technology was king. Today’s high density computing
environments – racks of blade servers – are hungry for power which the
design of the centre cannot sustain. “To change the design would
require significant investment,” he says. “I know of data centres with
plenty of space but which have run out of power.”
It means that centres only a few years old are already past their
prime; indeed, some experts would argue that a centre that is more than
four years old represents a threat to the health of the organisation. A
survey in the US carried out by the market intelligence group Aperture
Research Institute (ARI) suggests that more than a third of the
companies it canvassed are in this position. It argues that these older
data centres are ill-equipped to cope with the intense power and
cooling demands of modern hardware: “This problem can only get worse,
as the enterprise continues to adopt high-density hardware. For
example, a recent ARI survey showed that one in five of new servers are
blades. Blade servers, in particular, cause problems for data centre
managers, as they are forced to contend with significant power
consumption and intense heat generation.”
The ARI found that only one-third of the organisations it surveyed was
beginning to plan and build new centres; leaving two-thirds fated to be
more than two years away from operating a new facility even if it was
already in the planning stage. Not everybody would agree with the ARI’s
more pessimistic conclusions. According to Dr Albert Esser,
vice-president, data centre infrastructure for Dell Global, there are
two things operators of ageing data centres should not do: “One is to
rip and replace the entire infrastructure and the second is to build
new facilities.“With the current uncertain economic climate, combined
with the need to be energy-efficient, the best approach is for
customers to consider ways to prolong the life of their data centres –
not replace them.“By making the right decisions with regards to their
IT infrastructure, customers can ‘reveal a hidden data centre’ within
their existing facility. By taking a comprehensive approach and
evaluating everything from the component level to the facility,
customers can increase synergy between equipment, power utilisation
rates, cooling and software solutions such as virtualisation.”
Virtualisation – running more than one application or operating system
on each server – remains the technology of choice for reducing power,
space and cooling requirements. Sandor Chandon of Interoute, the
networking group, argues that virtualisation is the key to “greening”
the data centre.
“Virtual server technology will be the most effective way to run
services within the data centre. A data centre using physical machines
rather than virtual servers would require 10 times more rack space and
significantly more power.” The difficulty of updating existing data
centres leads to some ad hoc practices, he says. “It is hard to move
and change equipment in a room that requires a constant temperature and
still meet service-level agreements,” he explains. “This can lead to
haphazard, short-term solutions: portable air-coolers and back doors
left open to aid cooling are not unheard of. Racks are placed under
general office desks because of lack of space in the data centre.”
Alastair McAulay, IT systems specialist with PA Consulting, has
witnessed similar horror stories, where IT infrastructure has been
exploited “until it is squeezed dry”. “With this type of mindset, data
centres – if they can be called that – end up relegated to basements in
head office or slotted into a few spare disconnected rooms scattered
around an existing building,” he says. “And somehow or other, the IT
department makes this work. “It is not unusual to find facilities where
electric fans bought from a nearby shop are positioned around the floor
to maintain an adequate airflow. If the thermometer rises to a certain
point, servers are switched off.” He says such arrangements can never
meet the demands of modern business flexibility and that alternatives
such as outsourcing have to be considered: “Whether outsourced or
implemented internally, data centres are big cost-items with long lead
times. “Understanding the options for moving data centres and deciding
if it is the right thing to do and how best to do it requires a
combination of clear strategy and excellent execution.” But that
presupposes an understanding of the existing situation and the evidence
is that too few companies can list their IT assets or assess their
efficiency.
An international survey carried out by Quocirca, the consultancy, on
behalf of Global Data Centre Management (GDCM), the London-based
software group, shows that just under a third of data centre managers
do not know how many servers they own or what devices are attached to
the network. Some 55 per cent of centre managers do not know how much
power they are using or how much it costs, and less than half measure
server utilisation: the rest guess their utilisation is about 75 per
cent, while the industry average is known to be below 25 per cent.
Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist with BMC Software, thinks that
skills such as capacity planning and impact analysis, neglected during
the years of free spending on IT, will have to be relearned. New
technologies such as virtualisation promise huge savings but present
great risks. “The question is: how do I manage this implementation in a
controlled fashion, so that somebody cannot simply throw up a virtual
image of the system, log on and do irreparable harm to the company,” he
says.
His colleague, Leah Anathan, European business manager, believes that
finding extra physical space and getting more power into centres has a
new and welcome cultural dimension: “The line between facilities and IT
is breaking down. At one time, there was no common language, as if the
two functions were totally unrelated.” Now, she contends, both have to
be represented at discussions on the future of the data centre.
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