Why We Need to Keep Power Services For Data Centers Optimized
As success for technological companies increasingly depends on the management and processing of enormous amounts of data, a closer look needs to be taken to the power services that support data centers and keep them functioning.
Data centers are one of the biggest energy-consuming units in the world. They need huge power systems backing them. The proliferation of data as a solid source of information for decision makers means that the installment of data centers is on the rise. If we are committed to try to keep energy consumption as low as possible, we must address the issue of data centers and how to avoid a huge power demand.
Why we need sustainable power services
Even if your company doesn’t have cash flow issues and you are not concerned about having to pay gigantic energy bills, you have a responsibility to cut down as much as possible on your energy use.
For every kilowatt of electricity that society uses, there is a source where it is generated and we must be aware of its cost to the environment. The energy bill can look cheap in the eyes of your company, but it is never that way for the planet. Even though optimizing energy use is a way of keeping your finances healthy, the ethical reason for doing it is much more compelling and human.
Time
If your company owns a data center or is thinking of installing one, power services should be at the core of it’s planning process. Keeping the unit fully functional 24 hours a day through Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) is a major energetic challenge.
The first thing to realize is that the energy consumption of data centers depends on the speed with which information is processed. This means that the amount of time it takes the system to go through a piece of data will obviously directly impact how much power is allocated to the processing of that bit of information.
If your data processing is done by systems that are outdated or inefficient, it will take a lot more time than it should (and therefore, energy). Investing in modern and lean data centers is a great way to save a lot of money and electricity in the long run.
Cooling
Big units that consume a lot of power tend to overheat quite easily. Therefore, you need efficient cooling systems to protect your data centers. But again, we run into the energy consumption problem: air conditioning and other artificial cooling systems also require a lot of power to function. So creativity becomes important: can you think up a way to use natural cooling for your data center?
According to a non-profit dedicated to improve data center energy efficiency (the Green Grid), half of the US data centers now use natural cooling systems. This is very encouraging news, and we should all take notice that not only can this be done, but it has to be a priority in the planning process.
If you are still not convinced to create a natural way of cooling your data center, listen to this: companies that installed them claim to have reduced their energy bills by 20% and their maintenance cost by 7%.
Excess energy consumption is not just an economic issue, but also a moral one. We have the means available to make data centers and their power services as lean and efficient as possible and we should take advantage of them.
