Today the biggest issue for IT organizations worldwide is the increasing demand for energy as cost of operating datacenters is increasing due to growing use of computing devices and rising energy costs. In fact, even those datacenters that were considered state-of-the-art just five years ago are now lagging behind in energy efficient technologies. A recent IDC report says that power accounts for 40 percent of the operating expenses of a datacenter and the cost of this power has doubled in the last five years. The report goes on to say that by 2012, the cost of power at datacenters will be equivalent to capital costs.

High Consumption
Known to consume an incredible amount of power and also with the overall proliferation of technology and Internet usage worldwide, it is not hard to imagine the reason for this stupendous growth in consumption. There has been a manifold growth in e-mails, instant messages, searches, financial dealings, video downloads as more and more communities are getting connected.

Companies not only need to measure power consumption by accelerating green IT initiatives in India but also need visibility of power usage, statistical data over a certain period. It is known that there are some solutions that IT managers must have in order to get a full grasp of their datacenters carbon footprint and power bill. A computing environment that utilizes resources efficiently has less impact upon people and the environment. The challenge today lies in how datacenter can use energy more efficiently. Various reporting functions such as tracking and reporting carbon footprint information, and the changes over time are crucial for managing energy usage in datacenters.

According to Sameer Mishra, Regional Manager-Advanced Technology Channels, Cisco India and SAARC, "The next-generation datacenters have started playing a vital role in the essential process of services being delivered and can now accelerate SPs' efforts to make themselves key participants in the emerging world of virtualized cloud services." He also opined that the sheer size and growth of cloud/datacenter-delivered services opportunity have started attracting a variety of players from adjacent markets.

What is a green datacenter?
It is important to understand that going green or becoming energy efficient actually makes business sense and vendors also need to touch upon the need to safeguard the environment.

It makes sense to create an environment of accountability for every bit of resource used. So what is a green datacenter? According to Mishra, "A green datacenter is a repository for storage, management, and dissemination of data in which mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Sandeep Nair, MD, Emerson Network India said, "In order to be truly green you have to start from the processors and work your way upwards to see how much heat is generated and how you can efficiently bring down the power that is used to run these equipment and the cooling used to keep them running."

Building a green datacenter
The important points that the SPs should keep in mind while building green datacenters are that they should be aware of the best practices in the datacenter efficiency across all over. This will indeed insure a reduction in operational costs from energy use in the physical infrastructure. Often 40 to 50 percent of the inefficiency inside datacenter is linked to lack of best practices deployment. Therefore, there is no doubt that the savings accrued from adopting best practices can be further fed into the business, either for expanding the physical infrastructure or offering more services. The second and most important thing is to adopt an innovative approach. For instance, with power draw options coming down, there are companies like Netmagic Solutions which are seeking alternatives for generating more power including investment in biomass. According to T Srinivasan, MD, VMware India and SAARC, "Datacenters are essentially a larger collection of higher-level subsystems, which contain the same components that perform the exact same functions-only more frequently."

The Government of India has formed a national policy group to focus on datacenter energy efficiency and to develop a national design code for energy conservation in datacenters. The key for understanding energy consumption at an individual equipment level is executing any energy and/or greenhouse gas emissions reduction program in a datacenter.

Minakshi Shetty
minakshis@cybermedia.co.in

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