"Green IT" Data Centre initiatives - a practical rather
than a theoretical approach
Macquarie Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom is focusing on green technology and monitoring
IT energy consumption in our Data Centre to establish a Green Hosting environment.
We are:
- Measuring and monitoring what impacts power management and
metrics in our Australian
Data Center.
- Working to understand where the power is going and how to
better manage this – e.g. in some large Data Centres storage
uses 30-40% of the power consumption.
- Sorting through the "vendor hype" around "green IT" and
"green technology" in order to understand which technologies
actually make an impact – e.g.
enterprise virtualisation,
server architectures, rack and cooling options and impact of
perforated rack doors.
- Using SRA manufactured racks incorporating iPAMM technology to replace existing racks.
- Understanding what Green Servers actually mean
As an example idle processors consume power; and between the
hours of 1am - 6am most corporate server processors are idle. So
we focus on reducing number of idle processors at night (e.g. via
benefits of enterprise
virtualisation) and focus on vendor hardware that uses less
power when processors are actually idle ("Green Servers"), allowing
us to move toward a "Green Data Centre"
Macquarie Hosting is also placing a strong emphasis on working
with and educating customers on the considerations for energy efficiency
in the Data Centre and is helping them turn these considerations
into action and improve their energy efficiency, as we move toward
a Green Hosting environment.
For example:
- Educating customers on their power/cooling usage footprint,
the processes of green servers vendor selection, server virtualisation
and rack layout techniques
- Via the monitoring and measuring we have undertaken, educating
customers on which technologies and techniques make an impact
on green hosting
Improving energy efficiency and reducing Data Centre impact
on the environment as power consumption continues to climb
- Power consumption at the rack level has increased by a factor
of 8 in the last 10 years
- Today the cost of power/cooling is higher than the hardware
costs, and this is expected to double by 2008
- Rack Kw requirements have increased from 3 to 5, and Data
Centres are now being built to a 10Kw requirement
- Many Data Centres in the US (37% according to Gartner) have
run out of space, power or cooling capacity
Macquarie Hosting - A member of The Green Grid
Macquarie Hosting is also a member of
The Green Grid, a global
consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business
computing environments.
The Green Grid seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best
practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall
data center and
business computing energy efficiencies. By joining The Green Grid, Macquarie,
is helping influence both developers and end users of data centre technology.
Macquarie Hosting joins several organisations within The Green Grid
representing critical segments of the data centre ecosystem. The Green Grid
Board of Directors is comprised of the following member companies: AMD, APC,
Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems
and VMware.
Macquarie Telecom’s participation in The Green Grid further enforces the
company’s commitment to the management of energy and power usage in the data
centre and complements the work it has carried out in its hosting business to
reduce data centre energy consumption.
Our next Green Data Centre Initiative - Canberra
Read more about our next initiative - a
Green Data Centre in Canberra
|
Business Hosting
