How green is your data centre?

Tagged with: green it, data centre, efficient it, csr

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At companies that have made a serious commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), information technology is increasingly coming under the spotlight.

That's because the average data centre is a voracious consumer of energy and a major contributor to a company's carbon footprint.

According to figures from IT market research company Forrester Research, a data centre with 2,500 servers - relatively small compared to many out there - will devour enough electricity over the course of one month to power 420,000 homes for a year.

It's not just today's power-hungry servers that are to blame. Other data centre elements such as storage devices, networking controllers, uninterruptible power supplies and the air conditioning systems that cool these machines all guzzle prodigious quantities of electicity.

That's bad news for the environment - and it also takes its toll on a company's bottom line. Analysts at IT market analyst firm Gartner calculate that energy expenditure typically accounts for about 10 per cent of the IT budget, and is likely to rise to as much as 50 per cent over the next few years, as energy prices continue to soar.

Costs like that are unlikely to escape the attention of the finance function. And as many businesses increasingly break down their energy costs by department, the IT manager is left with two choices, says Chris Gabriel, head of solutions at Logicalis.

"They can carry on consuming power and wait to get found out -- or they can take positive action now to reduce energy consumption in the data centre and be regarded as ‘carbon champions' within their company," he says.

The good news is that it's not difficult to control both the costs and environmental impact associated with the data centre, and it doesn't require any huge investment in new technology, he says.

The main culprit, he says, is under-utilisation of existing servers and storage machines. "As prices have dropped and performance levels have increased, companies have tended to acquire machines that are now running way below capacity, " he says.

Smart companies, he says, get better performance out of fewer servers using technologies such as workload balancing and server virtualisation. "In many data centres, if you know what to do, you could take out half the equipment without any discernible impact on performance," he says. "You might even end up with a data centre that not only performs better, but is more environmentally friendly and more cost-efficient, too."

Your Comments and Questions

chris gabriel, 11 months ago

All, I think we are a little way off companies having a 'tech csr' rating as such, but, figures show that something like 60% of cooling required in a normal office is due to office technology, the overall rating of a businesses energy consumption will be dictated to by their technology strategy -- so it is a subliminal rating for real estate at least. We have a relationship with Global Action Plan who work with companies on environmental strategy, and they are in the process of working on a Technology orientated environmental review. I will post more info as I have it, and will ask Trewin Restorick their director to provide some feedback on here.

Radio 2000, 11 months ago

try http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Information%20Technology%20Report/index.htm not really uk specific company rankings, but it has some useful ranking stuff

Caspar Craven, 11 months ago

thanks guys - thats helpful - do you know if there is any UK data out there?

Edward Charvet, 11 months ago

Although the full link takes you to a 404 error - Thanks to Neil for introducing the research faculty at Berkeley. www.haas.berkeley.edu/responsiblebusiness

neil macarthur, 11 months ago

Try University of Berkeley in California who have a CSR rating system for technology companies or BSI with the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard

neil macarthur, 11 months ago

Try the University of Berkeley in California - they have a rating system for technology companies CSR policy and are currently carrying out a study http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/responsiblebusiness/csrtechsectorstudy

Caspar Craven, 12 months ago

thanks for the steer..not really what i was after, but interesting all the same - any other thoughts on how different companies rank in this area is what I need - ideally an index ranking different companies green credentials re technology