2014/06/02 16:01:38

Green Data Center (global market)

Experts predict that the market of "green" data centers by 2016 will grow almost 3 times to $45.5 billion. Among the main reasons is the desire to achieve the optimal ratio of cost, efficiency, reliability and capacity of the data center.

Catalog of TAdviserDate centers of Russia and technologies for date centers.

Content

2014:20% of all IT equipment just warms the atmosphere
2012
- Energy conservation and ecology - main trends
- Strengthening Media Image
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2014:20% of all IT equipment just warms the atmosphere

According to the Uptime Institute, 20% of all IT equipment does not perform any useful functions and only 'warms the atmosphere' (spring 2014 data). So those data-processing centers (DPC) which go for dismantling of such equipment try to obtain significant economy.

In order to draw attention to this problem (which is sometimes called the problem of 'servers - phantoms'), Uptime held a special competition. Within its framework, she invited the managers of the data center to share information about the events that they carried out in order to increase the cost-effectiveness of their facilities. The results were very impressive.

Barclays, which took first place in the Uptime ranking, in 2013 removed 9,124 servers from its fleet. Their total power consumption was 2.5 MW and they occupied 588 server racks. If this equipment were to continue operating, the electricity bill that the company would have to pay would be $4.5 million more.

In addition, Barclays saved an additional $1.3 million on maintenance of dismantled legacy equipment and freed up more than 20,000 network ports and 3,000 storage area network (SAN) ports.

In second place was Sun Life Financial, which dismissed 441 servers. At the same time, 54 of them were replaced by newer and more efficient models, and 75 were turned into virtual servers. Thanks to this event, the company hopes to reduce power consumption by 115 kW in a year, which corresponds to savings of $100,000. Another positive consequence was the release of the useful area of the data center.

2012

Energy conservation and ecology - main trends

The main trend in the construction of data centers for several years to come will be ecology and energy conservation. According to the forecast of Pike Research, the market for green data centers by 2016 will reach $45.5 billion compared to today's $17.1 billion.

In the fall of 2012, Pike Research experts said that almost 3 times the market growth is due to large-scale changes that are taking place both in the field of energy and in relation to business to data centers. Data centers of the future should be energy efficient, adaptable for new business needs and new technologies. Another important trend is virtualization, which maximizes the use of IT resources, data center space, and its energy.

One of the main reasons for the transition to green data center technologies is the desire to change the balance of cost, efficiency, reliability and capacity of the data center for the better. Concern for the environment does not contradict business: the energy efficiency of the data center is equally useful for both the environment and the customer. Thus, the customer can get serious savings and increase the efficiency of the data center by drawing attention to new technologies in the field of cooling and energy management in data centers.

"Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons for the popularity of green data centers is the reduction in the cost of their operation. All equipment manufacturers also began to focus on the wishes of customers and introduce "green products" into their equipment line. For example, high-efficiency uninterrupted power supplies, diesel stations with low fuel consumption and high environmental performance. The last trend is DIBP (dynamic uninterruptible power supplies). At the same time, applying the latter, the customer receives significant savings in their costs in the future of 5-10 years, "explained Sergey Dvoinov, executive director of the Solutions in Energy branch of the Hyted (Hited) group of companies.

Strengthening Media Image

The second equally important reason for the transition to environmentally safe equipment is the media image. Not so much the fashion for "green" technologies is important, but sharp criticism from the press, to which environmentally damaging companies are exposed. For example, an article published in 2012 in the New York Times became a serious damage to the reputation of Microsoft. It said that the tech giant installed 40 large-scale diesel generators in the suburbs of Washington and refused to take measures when electricity consumption went beyond the permissible limits.

In the domestic data center, environmentally friendly and energy-saving solutions are used only to improve economic performance, said Alexander Blinov, senior manager of the marketing directorate of the company's business segment. VimpelCom"Green technologies will come Russia to only in 3-5 years," he said.

Experts agree that the growth of the market for "green" data centers is a matter of the near future.

"It is difficult to predict the growth dynamics of the construction of" green "data centers, but growth is inevitable. Firstly, today the discussion in the media on this issue gives positive results. Secondly, a number of steps of server equipment manufacturers, for example, reducing the requirements for the range of operation, automatically increases the "green" data centers. And thirdly, all major manufacturers of engineering equipment focus on energy efficiency. In addition, the time is running and advanced technologies are getting cheaper, respectively, the construction of a green data center is becoming economically attractive, "said Konstantin Zinoviev, technical director of the engineering systems center of the IBS system solutions department

One of the main trends in the development of concern for the environment is cloud storage technologies. So, Microsoft representatives, in response to attacks by journalists, said that "our company is extremely concerned that in an evolutionary way it is necessary to develop the infrastructure of data centers and software that is used for their operation. We are confident that cloud technologies will ultimately help improve efficiency and utilization. "