Electricity is Your Network Lifeblood
Today, there is a huge difference among how devices plugged into your networks consume and manage energy. IT best practices do already dictate that inventory be kept on the IT assets of the organization. What’s likely missing is the power consumption and efficiency of each device. This is largely because IT administers all the wares, but the electric and cooling requirements are generally handled by Facilities. IT doesn’t normally pay the electric or other utility bills. So performance metrics are the gap and according to the Department of Energy (DOE), data centers account for 1.5% of total US power consumption, which is significant and still growing.
Some may still doubt as to why energy matters:
An organization can’t make the broad claim that it is green or energy efficient without knowing what and where it consumes energy. Lack of numbers and usage data negate any energy plan. You can’t have an effective energy plan without numbers. So, the lesson is: it (energy) can be measured internally from local devices and workstations all the way up to the data center or network operations center. Developing and understanding energy benchmarks for the data center are imperative.
For the enterprise IT spaces: server virtualization, data center cooling, flywheel UPS, dc data center operations, and moving some applications to the cloud are immediate big hits in conserving energy. Some of these opportunities may reap a rebate from PG&E if your data center is located in California. PG&E has bragging rights to be the first US utility to offer such a program and as far as I’ve heard, the only one doing so.
However, organizations shouldn’t dismiss the little savings in power that are attainable by eliminating Phantom Loads as unimportant, because they do accumulate to one significant amount of energy. These loads are low hanging fruit but your long-range goal is to achieve efficiency and optimal performance whether or not you adopt alternative energy now or later. The concept to remember is when you do generate your own power that there is a cost associated with it- cost per kW (kilowatt). This is where and when numbers mean everything and do make huge differences especially in economies of scale. Smaller power plants currently bear higher costs. In solar PV (photo voltaic) markets, prices are expected to drop by as much as 40% by 2010, due to: thinner film used for PV, increases in world production, improved manufacturing processes and other technological improvements.
The EPA recognizes that data centers including the SMB/E servers and server farms account for a significant share of power consumption. They are developing an Energy Star program for servers and there are numerous resources available from their online library.
The effort to “conserve as a first resource” must be inclusive to your energy plan and overall strategy. Electricity is the lifeblood flowing through data centers and networks. Networks aren’t designed to be shut down and turned back on again on a daily basis, so scaling back power to the network isn’t viable, but the opportunities listed above--including reducing peripherals and converging wares that ride on the network--do make sense.
Now, stop and ponder about all this and after you’ve implemented all the above solutions, then take a look at the TDM PBX if you still have one or at the IP-PBX. What does it cost to power it 24x7? My bet is that the IT energy-optimized enterprise will be the one to provide the industry-first enterprise Energy Star-compliant telephone system, ever. Energy Star servers will pull more (not all) enterprise users' voice applications away from the PBX or IP-PBX and onto the server. This type of energy benefit is a grand slam that reduces heat (less cooling), lowers energy consumption (less cost, GREENER) and takes up less space (facilities footprint). Who will be first?
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