Chill out: Five ways to cut back on data-center power consumption

Cutting back on the amount of power a data center consumes isn't necessarily tricky, but it does require a holistic approach that considers the IT, cooling and power infrastructures. As Kfir Godrich, CTO for EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a data center consultancy, says: "If you are not looking at your data center from the utility input down to the chip, and then back to the power and cooling, you are missing the target." These five tips - some for the here and now and others for longer-term strategizing - will help you curb power use in the data center.

How storage and network gear can help reduce the data-center power requirements

1. Don't overlook the obvious.

Seal holes in the raised floor left by equipment that's been moved or uninstalled. Install blanking plates in empty portions of racks where network gear or servers ordinarily would go. Relocate perforated floor tiles from hot to cool aisles. Enable the energy-saving features of servers and computers. If possible, turn off the lights in the data center.

Such efforts can help offset rising utility rates, users say. Facing rising rates, "we replaced our old monitors with Dell Energy Smart LCDs; we turned on all the energy-saving technologies in the PCs that power down drives and put them in sleep mode; [we changed out] any printer that didn't support power-save functions," says Tim Sander, vice president of IT at Applied Systems, an insurance-agency management-systems company in University Park, Ill.

Carmine Iannace, IT director for The Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., says he has done likewise. "We've used blanking plates in our empty racks to direct airflow. We move around servers to balance the cooling load in the data center. In addition, we keep an eye on the servers that are in development - if they are not in use, they get shut down." Iannace also uses the energy-saving features of desktops and laptops, plus he mandates that employees shut down their computers at the end of the workday to save electricity. Further, he turns out the lights in the data center when no one is working there.