Ozone layers are depleting, glaciers are melting and sea-level is rising. It’s an alarming point that humankind needs to cut down on power consumption, reduce burning of fuels and control global warming. IT and ITes industry accounts for a major portion of carbon footprint, but the good news is that now data centers around the world are taking green initiatives to save energy and minimize the carbon footprint. Moreover, environmental laws and regulations are becoming so strong that going green is a must, and no more a choice.
What are the major green methodologies adopted by data centers?
Virtualization Technology: Virtualization consolidates the capacity of many servers into one. It optimizes the resources, saves power, cost, space, and minimizes heat emissions.
Data deduplication: It’s a data compression method which eliminates the duplicate content saving the storage and power needs.
Right Sizing the infrastructure: You should assess the future requirements of the data center and accordingly plan the infrastructure.
Energy monitoring systems: Unless it’s measured, it can’t be controlled. Therefore, it’s important to regularly monitor the energy consumption at data centers to take measures to control. Even a small percentage of improvement in power efficiency means a significant energy and cost savings for the data centers. Meters can be installed to monitor the actual power usage in the facility which can be used by management to manage the energy more efficiently.
Retrofitting: Installing the data centers with newest technologies, upgrading power sources, UPS, chillers, cooling systems and other machines will optimize the capabilities in the facility. Eliminate the obsolete equipment and replace them with the latest technologies, organize the cable systems and rearrange the hot aisle/cold aisle in the data center for the longevity of the facility.
There are many other innovative approaches being followed by the data centers in order to maintain the right ecological balance and save the nature.