Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT infrastructure? A practical guide to more efficient data operations. Powering IT

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1 Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT infrastructure? A practical guide to more efficient data operations. Powering IT

2 Executive Summary Energy costs are expected to double over the next 10 years. In this time, the amount of energy consumed by data centres is also expected to double. This has serious potential to affect an organisation s ability, whether commercial or public sector, to grow its services, expand its reach or develop shareholder value through increased business activity. No surprise that IT energy costs are increasingly prominent in executive thinking. A recent British Chamber of Commerce survey of almost 3,500 businesses shows that: Nearly 40% of businesses feel that rising costs have adversely affected their growth - a clear signal that action is needed. Almost a quarter (22%) have experienced an unexpected increase in charges by their energy supplier over the past three years. Most businesses recognise the need to improve their energy efficiency, with 63% saying environmental concerns motivate them to reduce energy usage. Energy costs now equate to 25% of the total cost of ownership of IT servers and storage solutions. Minimising the energy footprint of IT infrastructure should now be a strategic priority for any business seeking to protect profitability and market competitiveness. Whether running an in-house facility, using a third party managed service or a colocation facility, it is vital that businesses address IT energy usage; understand how they can contribute to efficiency; and seek to minimise what can be one of the largest operational running costs associated with their business. 2 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

3 Energy Use Global data centre markets are expected to grow 50 percent by 2020 to $78 billion, according to Microsoft. Clearly, with the world already in an energy crisis, the high energy costs associated with data centres are no longer just an IT problem. Data centre energy consumption is an issue for everyone because its impact be it surcharges, taxes or lost productivity due to outages will affect all businesses. Data centres have large energy appetites, which will only increase due to our ever-increasing dependence on information technology and communication equipment to significantly improve our productivity and efficiency. The problem with many in-house facilities is that the responsibilities for managing energy resources can be fragmented and conflicting objectives may exist between different departments. Many IT professionals, while highly skilled, may not necessarily be trained in energy resource management. In addition, the requirement to operate high availability systems, capable of supporting global markets while backing up data in periods of lower activity, also challenges many businesses ability to make tangible energy savings. Measuring Efficiency Whilst there are many measures of data centre operational efficiency and environmental best practice management, one of the more referenced benchmarks is the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) calculation and data centre infrastructure management, or DCiM. These seek to confirm the conversion of power to a customer rack to the overall electrical consumption required to provide an appropriate hosting facility. According to the Uptime Institute s 2012 Data Centre Survey, the global average of respondents largest data centres is between 1.8 and PUE is a great metric and, when used wisely, it can help organisations easily improve energy efficiency, often by 20% and more. Unfortunately for data centre managers, the efficiency gains attained with a PUE focus are almost all on the facilities side of the equation and, while IT and the data centre may have gained some benefits (e.g. improved cooling), the lion s share of the operational savings are applied to the facilities budget. For many, the greatest effect still remains with the IT infrastructure as any reduction here creates a proportional saving in facilities costs. Understanding Where Energy Goes Some say that the headlong rush to better PUE s has done little to improve data centre efficiency. Having a facility with a great PUE is one thing, but if your data centre is highly underutilised, or if the resources are poorly managed, it has not solved the real problem of trying to get the most out of the resources you already have. The following pie chart reveals the main areas of power consumption within the data centre. Power Breakdown of the Data Centre Electricity UPS IT Equipment Air Movement Ancillary/Lights Cooling 3 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

4 A considerable proportion of this electrical consumption, typically 25-40% is focused on consistently cooling data centre equipment and ensuring an optimal temperature. This is easier in newer facilities, designed to maximise air flows and consistent temperatures from neatly cabled server and often homogenised equipment which is designed to be more efficient. For legacy computing environments and colocation providers, there are more significant challenges to manage disparate rack temperatures and air flows as well as less efficiently designed and operational IT equipment as rack densities continually increase. It is well understood that legacy data centres are much less efficient but a perception exists that new data centres resolves the energy issue. This is partly true in as much that a new data centre is able to take advantage of new technologies and infrastructure design; with the resulting PUE often closer to 1. But not all colocation data centres are the same. Organisations must thoroughly check energy utilisation as part of their selection criteria in order to make sure their environments are not only optimised for performance but providing the most cost effect use of power. The other major area of power consumption is IT equipment itself. The following diagram shows how this breaks down by component. Energy Required by IT Infrastructure Energy used to power Servers 45% Storage 29% Network 26% Network 26% Servers 45% Storage 29% Inside servers, individual processors are much more efficient, but consuming more absolute power. Source: Gartner estimate 2012 One of the biggest challenges for any data centre is running obsolete or old servers and IT platforms. Servers should be replaced regularly, at least every three years, in order to take advantage of new more energy efficient platforms as they become available. Although this may challenge IT capital investment or asset depreciation, it is imperative to take into consideration the operational costs to power equipment. Energy costs have increased so much over the last three years, that energy efficiency is now a prime feature for hardware manufacturers with newer and more powerful hardware now up to 58 percent more efficient than before. This is a more complex issue for third party commercial data centres where they do not control the equipment specification of their colocation customers. However, Pulsant believes that, in this case, they should provide regular audits and consultative guidance to help their customers to migrate up wherever possible. 4 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

5 Boosting Efficiency There are three key areas that ICT professionals can focus on to improve energy efficiency within their data centres server format and use; airflow optimisation; and heating and ventilation management. Top 10 Tips For Minimising Your IT Energy Appetite 1 Maximise server utilisation with virtualisation and consolidation Most physical servers today run at about 10% to 15% utilisation. Since an idle server can consume as much as 30% of the energy it consumes at peak utilisation. Businesses get more for their energy pound by increasing utilisation levels, using thin client provisioning or virtualisation. Virtualisation is a mature technology that works well to save energy and money, increase computing throughput and free up floor space. It also aids load migration and disaster recovery. Any virtualisation strategy should be seen as continuous improvement, with quarterly reviews of utilisation and consolidation options to drive increased efficiencies. 2 Remove obsolete or underutilised servers The energy consumption of a server is not a linear relationship with workload or the productivity output of that server. An idle server may consume more than 40% of the power that a fully utilised server does. If the typical server is running at 5% utilisation and the target utilisation rate is only 50%, then energy consumption could be greatly reduced by improving server utilisation and turning off unused servers. The Uptime Institute, a consultancy in Santa Fe, USA has studied this issue for several years and says that, between 10% and 30% of servers are dead and could be turned off. Just by taking full advantage of power management features and turning off unused servers can cut data centre energy requirements by about 20%. Again, as part of continual improvement, there should be monthly reviews of redundant equipment and associated removal. Immediate consideration should be given to deploying power management features on servers and storage, regardless of age and monitoring energy consumption. Last but not least, the greatest energy efficiencies are driven by optimising power supplies, processors, hard disks and internal fans. Monitoring utilisation and setting continual efficiency targets with staff incentives is an excellent way to drive these initiatives. 3 Purchase more energy-efficient hardware servers In today s data centre, any improvement in server power consumption can pay large dividends. The less power consumed by servers, storage and networking devices, the less heat generated, and the lower the losses for power distribution. This also reduces the cost of heat extraction at the end of the power lifecycle. Lowering and controlling server power consumption also allows you to deploy more servers per rack and still keep within a data centre s overall power budget. One way to measure the potential improvement is to enable power meeting software on selected units. This can be installed, without disruption, from open source sites. Measurements can then be compared against manufacturer efficiency data for newer specification servers to calculate return on investment. 4 Switch to more efficient power supplies With the less-efficient power supplies found in many commodity servers, efficiency peaks at 70% -75% at 100% utilisation but drops to 65% at 20% utilisation. If average server load is are in the 10% to 15% range, it means that inefficient power supplies can waste nearly half of the power before the power even gets to the IT equipment. The problem is compounded by the fact that every watt of energy wasted by the power supply requires another watt of cooling system power just to remove the resulting waste heat from the data centre. This needn t be the case. Power supplies are available today that attain 80% or higher efficiency even at 20% load however, they do cost significantly more often a 15% to 20% premium. Manufacturers are increasingly providing approved options to switch power supplies in existing storage, networking and server technologies with more efficient units. Installing these can yield a return on investment within 12 months. This is based on an average purchase price of 35, offset against energy savings alone. 5 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

6 5 Where possible implement hot aisle/cold aisle layouts Containment of hot/cold aisles and ducting hot air from cabinets helps to prevent cool/exhaust air mixing within server rooms. Generally rows of cabinets face each other so that cool air can reach the equipment air intakes at the set temperature point for the room. A more recent addition to the consideration of above floor containment is below floor air flow control. A range of under floor panels can be fitted within the raised floor plenum to create efficient cold air pathways direct to the raised floor vented tiles. Pulsant has deployed cold aisle containment across its data centre estate and has recognised significant efficiency gains of circa 30%. These savings are derived from reducing cooling equipment flow rates and set points whilst ensuring customer equipment operates at an optimal 22 Celsius. Customers are actively encouraged to replace caged environments with secure pod environments, coupled with our continued extensive thermal imaging analysis of data halls to target hot spots. Each degree of cooling change represents an annual KwH of 100,000 units which is a significant reduction in energy and cost. 6 Install containment enclosures Containment is generally implemented by physical separation of the hot and cold aisles, using blanking panels, PVC curtains or hard panel boards. Containment strategies may differ depending on various factors, including server tolerance, ambient temperature requirements and leakage from data centres. Pulsant continues to work with customers and provides blanking plates for racks free of charge. We also strive to minimise potential disruptions to air flow when racks are moved or vacated as this can create a negative effect on air circulation and row cooling. 7 Invest in variable speed fan drives CRAC (computer room air conditioning) and DFU (down flow unit) fans consume a lot of power and tend to account for 5% to 10% of a data centre s total energy use. Many energy-efficiency measures hot aisle/cold aisle, containment, free cooling depend on Variable Speed Fans (VSDs) being installed on CRAC and CRAH units to fully realise their energy-saving potential. To sufficiently cool equipment and provide more than one backup unit, data centres concurrently operate multiple CRACs around the clock. A reduction of 10% in fan speed reduces that fan s use of electricity by approximately 25%. A 20% speed reduction yields electrical savings of roughly 45%. The Green Grid recently completed an analysis of return on investment and power usage effectiveness at a data centre where payback for VSDs was calculated at 16 months on capital costs alone. Capital investment in cooling technologies may be considerable, requiring extended periods of depreciation. Manufacturers, therefore, often support retrofit modifications including VSDs to existing units to maximise efficiency. Pulsant has commenced a programme to retrofit our CRAC s and DFU s at scheduled maintenance windows with VSDs. 8 Pay attention to airflow Air flow management addresses the need to improve data centre computer cooling efficiency by preventing the recirculation of hot air exhausted from IT equipment and reducing bypass airflow. There are several methods of separating hot and cold airstreams, such as hot/cold aisle containment and in-row cooling units. Overheating of data centre equipment can result in reduced server performance or equipment damage due to hot exhaust air finding its way into an air inlet. Atmospheric stratification can require setting cooling equipment temperatures lower than recommended. Mixing the cooled air and exhausted air uses more power and increases refrigeration costs. Customers have their part to play as well by ensuring servers are exhausting hot air correctly and not directly into cold aisles, cooling equipment or UPS batteries, as this will affect overall data centre efficiency. 6 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

7 9 Make the most of Free-Air Cooling - but be aware of implications Some data centres in cooler climates can minimise PUE simply by using lower ambient air temperatures and moving this through the data centre and exhausting back to the ambient environment, albeit at a higher temperatures. However, using more efficient cooler air as input to the data centre, and then simply exhausting the hot air into our wider free environment will, over time, simply add to overall carbon footprint, even though it will not be registered through existing efficiency metrics. If the objective is to sustainably reduce global warming and average temperature increases, it needs to be coupled with heat recovery solutions to drive emerging cooling technologies, or low impact temperature management solutions. Do not rely solely on PUE as a measure of data centre carbon efficiencies as this is misleading. Sustainability will only be derived by tackling overall power consumption and reducing carbon production and heated air to protect the environment rather than moving the problem on. 10 Consider economisers to help temperature control Air-side and water-side economisers are definitely more efficient than condensing and chilled air based solutions but both may require careful consideration in terms of air quality and humidity fluctuations as well as external ambient temperatures throughout the year. There are many alternatives which are rapidly gaining acceptance in both commercial and domestic applications for reducing electrical consumption in heating and cooling technologies. From Thermal Storage, Direct Liquid Cooling, Heat Recovery and Evaporative solutions as well as Adiabatic technologies which all leverage to differing extents energy recovery from waste heat to drive cooling solutions. 7 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

8 Ensuring Future Continuity While most businesses appreciate that a cohesive energy policy is critical, many are unaware of the real and present challenge this places on their future operations. Energy Production It takes 10 years to build and bring online electrical generation capacity from gas, coal, tidal and nuclear plants. Solar, wind, biomass and geothermal may be faster but are more variable in terms of generation and maintenance also underlying energy policies dictate the proportion and planning consent which will support their future development. Recent media exposure has highlighted that in the UK, we simply have not invested in a timely manner to provision the replacement generation capacity as legacy units are decommissioned. The scope of the Kyoto agreement and carbon reduction commitments may significantly reduce the UK s electrical capacity generation from This means that it may only be 3-5 years before a significant amount of capacity is potentially mothballed. There is only one new gas power station project currently active. This will replace approximately 10% of the capacity being mothballed at a time when our consumption is ever increasing. In economies where electrical capacity demand is not met with supply, the consequence is initially rolling power cuts but the shortfall cannot be quickly met. No-one is denying the decision and commitment required politically is a significant one and given the extended return on investment profiles from such large scale infrastructure projects the private sector and utilities simply cannot support the scale of these projects in isolation. Power stations have an estimated operational lifecycle of 30 to 40 years; data centres have an operational lifecycle of years. In the UK, we have been provided with very high quality power supply and stability for many years and data centre operations have responded accordingly. Implications for Business In the future, the way we tool up and manage our data centres will need to change dramatically: Currently many UK data centre s deploy only standby rated power generation for diesel generators, eco-mode configured UPS s and quarterly/bi-annual darken site testing. The trouble with mechanical and electrical plant is that they are big ticket capital expense items, which are normally depreciated over 7 to 10 years. Changing these profiles is very costly. However, in the future we may have to design for an increased number of scheduled power disruptions - ones which last for hours not minutes, and which occur on a frequent basis. We may even choose to operate on a scheduled basis on standby generation to optimise energy costs. AFCOM s Data Centre Institute has predicted that more than 90 percent of companies data centres will be interrupted at least once because of power constrictions over the next several years. No matter how many precautions IT and engineering teams take, servers might fail from time to time, routers might delay, and switches might malfunction, which calls for more robust data centre designs, high-availability infrastructure and management systems, and fault-tolerant applications. We need to be prepared. 8 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

9 Design Considerations Data storage facilities will have to be designed and operated differently. Generators These will have to become prime rated, be serviced more frequently and will require more frequent re-fuelling and maintenance. UPS Devices Required to protect critical loads through power interruptions, UPSs will be used much more frequently than ever before. Recharging cycles and autonomy will, therefore, become critical considerations. Testing Monitoring will be required more frequently. To ensure continuity of equipment as well as power and cooling capacities to help IT professional make more informed decisions and manage risk. Temperature Management Many facilities now operate far more efficiently but with a lower tolerance in terms of temperature increases during power disruptions i.e. cooling solutions. Invariably, cooling solutions shutdown under UPS critical supply but restart on power failure when generator supply is activated. The challenge is that the startup sequence can take 5 to 10 minutes to regain fully effective cooling, yet the critical load has been continuously operating during this time and the ambient temperature has escalated a 1 degree per minute! Organisations will need to consider the strategy towards changeover cooling more carefully and have updated procedures to manage temperature control and fluctuations. Failover & Integrity When assessing a data centre, it will become increasingly important to understand the failover operational integrity and management of such events to minimise disruption. This will make integration with cooling solutions ever more critical in terms of optimising temperatures through the year and ambient temperatures. Where issues are experienced, how these are dealt with and the technical competence of the onsite team to manage them will become increasingly important considerations. Multiple Sites Separating solutions across multiple sites will become a necessity rather than looking at the Tier rating of each facility. Selection criteria will need to move beyond protecting against a simple unscheduled failover to managing solution availability through an increased number of scheduled workload migrations. Consider these points and begin to plan accordingly as changing solution design and testing, particularly where solution needs to be moved into new sites to meet site redundancy options from a systems and network perspective will require long term planning. Choosing a data centre provider like Pulsant, who operates facilities across multiple geographic regions and can certify the diversity of network communications and operations to deliver a single service level and outcome for your business will be increasingly important. Last Mile Configurations When considering data centre providers and redundant connectivity, how far do you currently investigate the last mile configurations of these suppliers? If there are more frequent power failures and the data centre provider carries on delivering services but the two independent provider exchanges the connectivity passes through are both impacted by the power loss, your solution may still be active but not reachable. You should consider the service chain really carefully when designing highly available solutions. Colocation SLAs For businesses who take the strategic decision to move some or their entire infrastructure to a third party colocation provider, finding the perfect partner can be a complex process. The myriad of players, solution types and SLA scopes can lead to much confusion and make it difficult to compare like for like. 9 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

10 Conclusion Adopting more effective IT energy management systems can deliver longer term and lasting benefits whilst adding agility to the data centre in its ability to respond to changes in business requirements. Small changes such as paying closer attention to server utilisation and architecture can dramatically impact energy use and associated costs. A watt saved in data centre power consumption saves at least a watt in cooling. Utilising other data centre energy saving techniques such as those outlined in this paper can extend this much further. For many businesses, however, this level of commitment, and the capital expenditure required to ensure operational focus on energy control, is just too great to embrace. When resources are tight and in-house IT departments torn between maintaining operational performance and balancing budget equations, then colocation services can provide an ideal solution. It must be stressed that not all vendors are the same and enterprises need to ensure they thoroughly vet their prospective partner before moving their precious infrastructure. To ensure they can offer a sustainable and energy effective solution, Pulsant advises that the following are included in colocation specification criteria: Virtualisation, Cloud and Migration Services To help you better utilise existing devices and to provide additional capacity as and when you may need it - so that your business doesn t have to oversize its kit to ensure rapid growth. Client Server Auditing and Consultancy Make sure support is available to help you assess the operational efficiency of your existing servers and provide a planned replacement pathway that minimises your capital expense without sacrificing your energy efficiency. Environmental Policy Make sure support is available to help you assess the operational efficiency of your existing servers and provide a planned replacement pathway that minimises your capital expense without sacrificing your energy efficiency. Multiple sites and Multiple Energy Suppliers Continuity will become more of an issue for many businesses. A colocation provider with multiple sites can not only help you find a location close to home but also with facilities to provide mirroring and redundancy sites for those with mission critical requirements. As well as reviewing their internal power plant, make sure they can guarantee external supply through multiple routes in the event of major outages. Commitment to Renewable Energy and Green Grid Membership Ask about your data centre s commitment to green energy and find out if they use sustainable sources. Pulsant, for example, has a 100% renewable energy target across all its ten UK data centres. This means every watt of energy it uses in its facilities, is offset with a watt of energy from a renewable source. Also make sure they are a Green Grid member and are, therefore, active in reducing the impact of their data centres on the environment. 10 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?

11 About Pulsant: Experts in cloud, data centre and infrastructure services, Pulsant specialises in highly resilient, high quality IP network, colocation, managed application and cloud hosting. Pulsant supports more than 3,000 mid-tier and enterprise customers from its ten UK-based ISO compliant data centres. We provide world class technology and exceptional people creating advanced and innovative solutions that optimise performance and cost effectively manage, store and safeguard data. Pulsant s Triple-A service models ensures the right Access, Ability and Action to deliver 24/7 support from multiple UK-based operation centres. 100% of the energy used within our data centres is from renewable sources. Pulsant is an HP Cloud Agile partner. For more information, please visit or sales@pulsant.com 11 White Paper: Can you afford to ignore energy costs of IT Infrastructure?