Earlier we saw how to greenify data centers and the impact of data centers on the environment, now I’m going to share the recommended best practices for data centers. If you are not sure about what a data center is, it is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components. These tips are also recommended by Google.
Best Practices For Data Centers
1. Manage PUE
By managing PUE we can reduce energy used for non-computing, like cooling and power distribution.
What is PUE?
Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a measure of how efficiently a computer data center uses its power.
A data center should use less energy to become efficient. PUE reduces power consumption and related energy costs.
Example:
If a facility uses 100,000 kW of total power of which 80,000 kW is used to power your IT equipment, then the PUE will be 1.25. It is calculated by total facility power divided by the IT power.
PUE = Total Facility Power / IT Power
You can easily calculate your data center’s efficiency performance by measuring energy consumption.
2. Manage Airflow
Good air flow is essential for an efficient data center operation. Airflow management is also called as Data center cooling. Thee cooling approach should be energy proportional and sized. This method also involves eliminating hot spots by using blanking plates.
Example:
Thermal modeling using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can characterize and optimize air flow for the facility without disruptive reorganizations of the computing room.
3. Adjust The Thermostat
You can save the Energy by raising your Data Center Thermostat.
What is a Thermostat?
Thermostat is a device that automatically regulates temperature, or that activates a device when the temperature reaches a certain point.
Temperature
Most of the data centers operate in a temperature range between 68 and 72 degrees. But some are as cold as 55 degrees.
Google recommends to raise the cold aisle temperature, which thus reduces facility energy use. Don’t try to run your cold aisle at 70F. Set the temperature at 80F or higher.
4. Use Free Cooling
By this we are going to remove heat from the facility without using the chiller.
What is Free Cooling?
Free cooling is an economical method of using low external air temperatures to assist in chilling water.
Free cooling is nothing but removing heat. This will be great for using an economizer system when your data center is located in a place where the weather conditions are favorable. Because they use outside air for cooling requirements and they provide free cooling cycles for data centers and computer rooms.
5. Optimize Power Distribution
Eliminating as much as power conversion steps possible. This will help you to minimize power distribution losses. The increase in high density computing creates additional power distribution issues.
Power distribution systems are required, but it depends on the size of the data centers. If you consider Google (again), they customise servers for efficient power use. They estimate an annual savings of over 500 kWh per server over a typical system.
Do you have any queries about data centers or any of these points? Do you want to share any other best practices for data centers? Kindly let us know in the comments below.
