BSES' attempt towards Green IT

BANGALORE, INDIA: “Data centre power and cooling costs are the hidden enemy of any IT department,” says Prasenjit Mukherjee, DGM (Head-IT infrastructure and operations), BSES. In an interview with CIOL, Mukherjee shares the company’s plans towards Green IT.

Excerpts:

CIOL: What are the measures being taken to improve data centre's energy efficiency and reduce power consumption?

Prasenjit Mukherjee: It is a real fact that we cannot make improvements if we do not measure it; hence the plan involves some easy and inexpensive ways to improve our data centre's energy efficiency and reduce power consumption.

The old hot-aisle and cold-aisle: A hot-aisle, cold-aisle layout of data centre equipment is the best method for assuring that it is properly cooled. According to the layout, cool air flows through the aisles where it is taken in by the servers and other equipments. 

The hot air is then exhausted out of the back of the system to the hot aisles and to the air conditioner return ducts. Hot air is exhausted through the top of the equipment. 

Racks must also be positioned perpendicular to the air conditioning to allow the unobstruction flow of hot air.

Set go airflow: We have to establish the right set points in configuring data centre temperature and humidity. The placement of temperature sensors on equipment can help us to determine correct set points for temperature/humidity levels. 

Most of the equipments are warranted to operate at a maximum temperature of 95 degrees fahrenheit. Thus we can reduce their energy costs by at least 4 percent for every upward set point change.

Server virtualisation and optimisation are other means to achieve energy efficiency. 

CIOL: How is the energy consumption inside a data center being measured?

PM: Metrics to measure:

Power Usage effectiveness (PUE)” and “Data Center Infrastructure efficiency (DCIE)”: These metrics are used to compare the amount of electricity a data centre consumes for power and cooling with the amount of power used by the data centre's IT equipment.

PUE = Ratio of total facility power and IT equipment power. This should be less than 2; the closer to 1, the better.

DCIE = IT equipment power x 100 Total facility power. DCIE is calculated in percentage. Bigger the number, better the scenario

CIOL: What are the steps taken towards data center consolidation?

PM: BSES Delhi data centre hosts 40 servers and greening the same has become one of our main and crucial activity for this year. Aligning data centre infrastructure with the business, while improving asset utilisation, lowering capital expenditures and decreasing energy consumption with consolidation technologies as well as services are the core activities towards the data center consolidation.

The Steps planned immediately for the same are:

SAN virtualisation

Automated patching

Common OS

Improved utilisation

Policy based management

CIOL: So what results are being expected once they are put into practise?

PM: We are only in the initial stages of the project. But at the same time we are assured of its positive outcome. The cost optimisation results shall be:

Annual storage cost saving

Improved business resilience

Increased asset utilisation

Less data centre downtime

Faster service deployment

Data centre footprint reduction

Easier Management