Green operation, data center still depends on automation

Power is the lifeline of data centers, and electricity bills are one of the main expenses for data center operators. Currently, the annual electricity consumption of data centers around the world is estimated to be 200 terawatt hours (TWh), and it is still increasing. Therefore, it is not surprising that the IDC industry is also looking for ways to effectively meet power demand through renewable energy and monitoring power consumption.

Automation: The backbone of data center operations

In order to improve overall operational effectiveness and meet business needs, data center process management must be automated. Manual management is too slow and difficult to respond to emergencies, and business decision makers often have to rely on assumptions rather than real-time equipment indicators to solve problems.

Today’s enterprise data centers operate a massive number of devices deployed in their networks, and it’s difficult to improve efficiency without the help of automated tools. In fact, a recent survey showed that planners responsible for manually managed processes spend only 40% of their time on capacity planning and forecasting each month.

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But this need not be the case. Data center managers can monitor power and rack thermal data in real-time, without manual intervention. With these tools, IT teams will be able to track energy consumption by individual servers and racks, providing a comprehensive view of data center operations. Tools such as data center management software enable organizations to receive critical insights in real-time and provide predictive insights into the causes of thermal events, component failures, and underutilized equipment.

By adopting automation technology, not only will routine tasks be streamlined, but IT teams will be able to focus on speed, efficiency, and cost reduction. Instead of wasting time on manual trial and error processes, data center managers can now act on real-time recommendations to keep operations running and thriving.

Automation helps data centers achieve sustainable development

By monitoring the performance, energy consumption and cooling levels of individual devices, data center operators can gain insights into the health of subcomponents, such as memory, power consumption and CPU utilization. These are key components to eliminating costly downtime and responding to any potential problems or failures. Instead, servers can be turned off and on as needed, while the server room environment can be tracked to remotely control the system.

An example of a data center management solution is after a natural disaster, such as the Osaka earthquake in June 2018, which affected the normal operations of Kyoto University's data center. The damage to the local power company caused a 50% increase in electricity prices. With the support of the data center solution, the university was able to gain actionable insights to reroute workloads to servers with the most efficient CPUs and shut down idle servers. These efforts enabled them to reduce power consumption at critical times of operation.

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By implementing power capping policies, IT teams can identify inefficiencies during peak and off-peak hours and automatically send alerts about stressed or underutilized equipment. It can also help data center staff determine higher temperature set points and safely increase room ambient temperatures while monitoring equipment health.

Sustainably improve IDC efficiency

Energy management can be viewed as a kind of money management. Organizations can't always control what's being done, but they can control what's being spent. They can look for ways to prioritize and reduce what's not needed. The same is true for data center managers dealing with operational efficiency. With real-time monitoring tools, IT teams will gain full visibility into their power spending and, in turn, control spending.

Currently, adoption of alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal is an isolated measure that is progressing slowly. The good news is that when organizations can adopt on-site renewable energy solutions, data center operators now have tools to save power, improve server health and reduce energy costs.

Sustainability shifts operations from labor productivity to resource productivity. By automating processes that are done manually in the data center, IT teams can reduce workloads, significantly improve results, and save costs on process expenditures.

As 2019 approaches, data center operators and managers have a lot to look forward to. At the same time, adopting the right tools and implementing sustainable efficiency practices can significantly reduce operating costs and achieve green operations in data centers.