Ensure Data Center Efficiency

Are you a data center provider, and your energy bills are increasing with each incoming invoice? Then you need to adopt new ways of running it to ensure efficiency. If you’re wondering how to do it, this article will advise you accordingly. Follow through to find out more.

Adopt Energy-Efficient Equipment

For a data center, there are many ways of going energy-efficient. As you purchase server equipment, ask if they have an energy-star rating. Energy star ratings depict the amount of energy consumed by a machine. If it has more stars, it shows it consumes less electricity to run. Energy-efficient servers will consume less energy to run, reducing your energy bills by a significant amount. 

Consider adopting light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for your lighting systems instead of the traditional halogen bulbs. Halogen bulbs emit more heat as they run, which isn’t conducive for a data center. On the other hand, LEDs emit less heat, consume less power, have a longer lifespan, and only use 10 to 15% of your total energy. This makes them quite efficient for your data center.

To allow for further efficiencies, purchase LEDs with motion sensor features. This way, they’ll only light up when they sense movement in the data server. When there’s no one, they automatically turn off. This eliminates inefficiencies experienced where the light stays on throughout the day, yet they aren’t being utilized. 

It’s good to note that making this transition is often relatively expensive for any business, mainly if most of your equipment utilizes old technology. Consider outsourcing a data center provider if you have a limiting budget that can’t allow these upgrades. They’ll run your server room operations for you, lifting off the burden of high energy bills and inefficiencies. You may click here for data center consulting services near you. 

Eliminate Redundant Equipment

With new technologies arising, you might often find yourself acquiring them for better efficiencies and outputs. Most of these technologies take over functions previously done by existing equipment. This way, you often forget the previously existing ones. What makes it worse is that these equipment are still powered, even though you no longer utilize them.

Often, your IT team is always reluctant to unplug them since they have no idea of the repercussions. Invest in equipment monitoring tools to inform you of an equipment’s efficiency, functions, and power consumption. With such data, you can know what machinery to power off and unplug to allow for data center efficiencies. 

Adopt Proper Insulation Practices

For a data center, using an air conditioning system to control its temperatures isn’t questioned. Your server room needs to be well-insulated for the conditioning unit to serve you efficiently. Any gaps that cause air leakages can lead to the inefficiencies of your HVAC unit. With air leakages, your unit will supply heat or cold air, only for it to escape to the outside. This makes it work extra hard to maintain the temperatures of your server room, increasing its energy consumption rate.

Be sure to inspect your data center to identify gaps, especially around your openings, such as windows. If there are any, seal them properly.

Also, it’s essential not to put your equipment too close to each other. This often leads to overheating of your systems or them fighting for the cold air emitted by your conditioning unit. There will be unrestricted airflow with spaced storage, ensuring each team gets sufficient cool air without unnecessary competition.

Consider Virtualization

For your organization to run efficiently and for sufficient backup, you have to invest in several servers. These servers consume much energy to run, increasing your energy bills.

To counter this, embrace digitization and virtualize all your processes. By doing this, all your operations run on one virtual software, allowing you only to need one server for your business. One server consumes less energy compared to having several servers. This reduces energy consumption allowing for efficiency.

Invest In Environmental Sensors

As a business, you might find it difficult to control the temperatures of your server room, especially if the external temperatures are constantly varying. Environmental sensors enable you to make informed temperature controls instead of second-guessing each action. It will also allow you to identify the hotspots of your data center. This gives you the chance of rearranging your server room to work around the hotspots. It will also show you where to position your conditioning unit for maximum efficiency. 

Incorporate Hot And Cold Aisle System

Regulating the temperatures of your conditioning unit might become quite the task, especially if you have to adjust it to suit the prevailing conditions regularly. 

Embrace the hot and cold aisle system to counter this. There are many setups to achieve this. One of them works by letting each aisle have different temperatures. One row can have hot temperatures, with the adjacent one cold temperatures. Do this alternating until you cover all of them. Partition each aisle with a blanking panel or partition to prevent the cold and hot air mixing.

With a hot and cold aisle system in your data center, you’ll have a controlled temperature setting, eliminating any inefficiencies that arise from your conditioning unit.

Conclusion

As a business owner, data center efficiency doesn’t require much from you. As discussed, your only focus should be on ensuring less energy consumption in whichever technology or practice you adopt. Implement the tips given in this article for an efficiently running data center.