Climate protection needs energy efficient data centers - Stulz GmbH

Solutions which automatically shut down serversand then restart them also offer great energy savingspotential. Many applications make only partial use ofservers during a given period – only during office hours,for example, or only Monday to Friday. Servers can besystematically powered down during periods where thecomputational load is known to be only minimal. Todaythere are already solutions available for achieving this,especially in conjunction with virtualization technology.Time management of server activities is another areawhich harbours opportunities for economizing on energyand costs. Energy demands can temporarily peak whensimultaneous server activities overlap, as standard settingsare not changed (e.g. certain services are executedon the hour, every hour). Temporal coordination of serverloads results in balanced energy demands.• 4.3 Storage solutionsData storage constitutes a relatively small proportion ofthe overall energy consumption in data centers. Nevertheless,it is worth considering energy efficiency optimizationmeasures in this department, too, for data volume is stillgrowing rapidly, and with it, the storage solution proportionof overall IT energy consumption (see Fig. 2).One apparently simple method of reducing data storagerelatedenergy consumption is the optimization of datamanagement: unnecessary and obsolete data should bedeleted.of information objects throughout their useful life. This isan optimization process, by which a rules engine based onbusiness policies and the assessment of storage hierarchycost structures, determines the most appropriate storagelocation for the managed information objects. Only thoseinformation objects requiring high availability are storedon expensive, high-performance disks with high energyconsumption. ILM helps to save energy because it alwaysselects the optimum - and thus the most energy efficient– storage solution and automatically deletes the informationobjects at the end of their life-cycle.Another energy-saving data storage approach is the useof tape systems to archive data. Unlike harddisks, tapesconsume no energy until the data is accessed. Energy-optimizedstorage systems, drives with high storage densityand other modern technologies such as de-duplicationand automatic powering down of idle hard disk drives canall help to minimize energy consumption.Table 3 shows the recommended sequence of steps forreducing data storage energy consumption.1. Optimize data management• Delete obsolete data• Delete unnecessary data2. Optimize infrastructure• Consolidation• Use ILM• Use tape systems3. Optimize devices• Apply state of the art technologyIn many organizations multimedia files such as mp3 orvideo files now constitute the majority of all data – evenif they are never required for business operations. In additionto this, files are often stored in multiple locations.Precise file-handling procedures supported by high-performancesoftware can drastically reduce the amount ofdata being stored.Table 3: Recommended steps for reducing energy consumption in datastorage environmentsIn this context, it is also worth considering the concept ofinformation lifecycle management (ILM). ILM is a storagemanagement concept involving the active management12