For SA the obvious answer to saving power as quickly and painlessly as possible is to consolidate data centre servers through virtualisation, says VMWare senior product marketing manager Martin Niemer.
"You can save anywhere between 70% to 90% power through cutting down on the number of severs used in the data centre and the amount of power needed for the air conditioners to cool them."
Overhead costs for things like generators and UPSes can also be a contributing factor to the power usage in a data centre. "UPSes store power and, for SA, it seems the logical answer to the power crisis, but they have to build up that power from somewhere. So when there is power, you can be sure the UPS is using it."
According to Niemer, installing a generator is also a costly exercise that has as much, if not more, environmental impact. "While from what I can tell, the problem within the South African context is that companies are not considering power saving as a green option. This is primarily why the first answer is to install a generator."
He says the best way to save power is to cut out the unnecessary equipment. "If you virtualise, you can cut down the number of servers to less than half of what is in the data centre now." There are other draw cards to the situation, he says. "Fewer servers mean fewer switches. These kinds of infrastructure ideas keep down costs."
Costs are not just in terms of power consumption. "Save on maintenance, infrastructure, and manpower," he states.
No best practice
"Companies around the world are just not following basic best practices when it comes to the data centre," explains Niemer. An example of best practice concepts that can really add to power saving is to partition the data centre.
"One of our clients did this with heavy plastic partitions. Essentially, server racks are placed "cool air in and warm air out" in all data centres. The partition just keeps the warm air from circulating back into the cool parts of the data centre."
According to Niemer, businesses can then increase the temperature in a data centre. "If you increase the temperature by just one degree, you can save up to 10% on your cooling power consumption. I'm sure that is a big number for all South Africans."
The example client of VMWare is a Nordic country company, and Niemer admits there will be a different figure for a hot country such as SA.
However, with South African citizens being forced to drop consumption by 10%, just by checking the best practices of power consumption worldwide can make the difference for businesses with data centres, Niemer concludes.
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