DevPlug.net

Managers of data centers are finding themselves increasingly under pressure to improve the energy efficiency of their facilities. Existing data centers present the greatest challenge because of their older infrastructure and restrictions on downtime to make changes. However, there are proven strategies that can enable a data center to increase energy efficiency without jeopardizing availability.

Before considering those options, it’s important to define the kind of data center that might benefit from those measures. These are data centers in which infrastructure availability meets the owner’s needs and reducing availability is not a viable option. What’s more, in these data centers the existing electrical and mechanical infrastructure will remain in service and will not be replaced. These data centers distribute cool air through a raised access floor. Finally, the discussion also assumes that the data center uses large double-conversion UPS systems.

If all of the above apply, facility executives have two options for saving electricity by turning things off: shutting down excess component redundancy or switching off lights.

Shutting down redundancies — This tactic applies if the facility has a single UPS system with more than one redundant module on line. In that case, all but one redundant module can be shut down. When using this practice, offline modules should be rotated to maintain storage battery charge.

Consider a facility that has a UPS output load of 500 kW with three 675 kW modules online. Each module operates at about 25 percent of rated capacity (500 kW/3 modules/675 kW per module); at this percent rated capacity, each module operates at 88 percent efficiency. If one module is shut down, the other two modules will operate at 37 percent of capacity and 91 percent efficiency. At $0.10/kWH for purchased electricity and 8,760 hours per year; this generates annual savings of $17,520. If the facility has redundant…

More: continued here

Related News

Future Energy: Improved, Sustainable and Clean Options for our Planet (Hardcover) newly tagged “programming”

Future Energy: Improved, Sustainable and Clean Options for our Planet (Hardcover)By Trevor Letcher Buy new: $64.76 First tagged "programming" by GERARD LA TOURNERIE "Lone Star Citizen" Customer tags: energy, statistics, mathematica, climate change, renewable energy, environment, programming, mathematics, mathematics software, global warming, nuclear power

FFVA Mutual Leverages Akorri BalancePoint for Proactive Management of Capacity in Virtualization Data Center

Akorri announced that FFVA Mutual Insurance Company has begun using Akorri's BalancePoint software for proactively managing its virtualized data center infrastructure. FFVA Mutual Insurance is leveraging BalancePoint as a communications hub across IT disciplines for monitoring, analyzing and optimizing all resources within its data center to ensure their performance meets application needs.read more

Minimize XML Performance Challenges and Boost Productivity

Today's applications rely on data feeds from many sources, using technologies that are based on the use of XML. XML data descriptions can be complex often creating performance and scalability challenges for the enterprises. Efficient XML processing is the cornerstone of almost every Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployment, regardless of the language or data center environment.read more

Dell Aims To Become One-Stop Virtualization Shop

Dell is moving forward into the growing virtualization market, with the announcement Wednesday of a major new initiative. The company said it is seeking to help businesses "become more efficient" through its flexible and modular virtualization and data-center consulting services, "business-ready" virtualization configurations, new PowerEdge servers, and EqualLogic PS4000 storage arrays.'Differentiated Solutions'Dell said "the expanded lineup attacks cost and complexity for two key areas of enterprise computing -- virtualization and high-performance computing (HPC)," with "differentiated solutions" for small to midsize businesses.Its virtualization consulting services, the company said, are intended to "help holistically optimize data centers." The services are aimed at reducing the cost to plan and operate data centers, and include platform optimization and virtualization, data-center planning and management, disaster recovery, data management, and facilities efficiency.Consulting services also include ready-to-go virtualization hardware and software configurations.The data-center virtualization configuration includes Dell PowerEdge M-series blade servers, EqualLogic PS6000 iSCSI storage, Cisco Catalyst networking switches, and VMware vSphere 4. The other configuration is designed for small and midsize businesses. It uses the PowerEdge R710, Dell PowerVault MD3000i, and Microsoft's virtualization suite. The company is also introducing the EqualLogic PS4000 storage array and PowerVault NX3000 network attached storage device to help small- and midsize businesses and remote offices. The PS4000 is intended to address such customer requirements as server virtualization, consolidation, data protection, and data recovery.Other Dell virtualization solutions include support for VMware vSphere 4, Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.0, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. The company said it is supporting VMware vSphere 4 across 37 Dell PowerEdge platforms, which will help "customers of all sizes transform their data centers into private clouds."Looking for 'Something Distinctive'The Round Rock, Texas-based company is also offering services to help decision-making for virtualizing applications, using Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server. For management needs, Dell is offering...

Google-Yahoo Deal Put on Hold

Yahoo’s life-saving revenue-enhancing alliance with Google, supposedly set to kick off in a week and substitute for a Microsoft buy-out, has been put on hold while antitrust regulators at the Department of Justice continue their investigation. The companies issued separate statements late Friday saying they had agreed to a "brief delay in implementing the agreement."read more