Smarter Data Centers to Reduce Energy Costs

The article by Dana Gardner discusses computer power and its increasing energy use and what two executives from HP are using to decrease energy use and costs. Doug Oathout, Vice president of green IT energy servers and storage at HP, discusses the problems of energy capacity in data centers. John Bennet, director of data center transformation (DCT) solutions, discusses that customers want to build out data center and infrastructure that correlates to their business plans and objectives.

What first caught my eye is that Oathout states that IT professionals and managers never see an energy bill from utility that they never focus on solving energy consumption. In my opinion if one works directly with technology that uses energy they need information on how much capacity they are using, how much space is left for new projects.

Through reading the article HP is moving forward on going green through information technology infrastructure. “You can deploy a particular workload onto an IT infrastructure that is optimally designed to run efficiently and optimally designed to continually run in an efficient way, so that you know you’re getting the most productive work from the least energy and the more energy efficient equipment infrastructure” (Oathout). He is discussing the idea that Bennet discusses DCT, it is an integrated system of data-center project that is consolidated and continuous such ahs virtualization and automation. HP is changing the way data centers are setup. In my opinion why not reduce energy costs while increasing computing capacity and capability with their new views on the centers it is a gain not just for the company but also the planet. If a company’s goal were to be as economically friendly as possible looking at energy costs and attempting to reduce them would be my first choice of action after recycling.

Bennet also states that in order to reduce energy costs and with new energy regulations, they have found that they have to look at infrastructure and facilities management. Oathout states that “few clients have deployed comprehensive software strategies or facility strategies to corral this energy consumption problem… software, hardware, and people need to come together in a process as an energy audit or energy management”. They are looking within and finding ways to reduce costs and increase capacity eventually the clients will have auditing capability built into the software. HP’s use of information and data on how much energy is being absorbed by different equipment they then can make decisions on what software to use, such as, HP SiteScope to do performance analysis. In my opinion this point of view and information not only saves the business money but also helps the planet companies cannot do wrong by implementing this strategy.

To sum up my opinions if a company can consolidate information, see where they are using the most energy, analyze it, and constantly audit it’s equipment performance to not only reduce costs but also help the planet why would a company not want to reduce fixed utility costs and gain more computing capacity and revenue.

Gardner, Dana. Smart Grids for Smarter Data Centers. http://www.technewsworld.com/story/69443.html 03/03/2010