Reduce data centre operational cost even through power crisis

BANGALORE, INDIA: Data centres consume a large amount of electricity. About 60 per cent of this is used to just keeping lights on, to let its chillers run 24*7 and so that its servers do not stop humming. It is only obvious that if there is a power crisis or increase in power tariff, it will directly hit a chief information officer's operational budget.

Manish Bahl, vice president and country manager, India, Forrester, says: "The biggest expense when running a data centre is power, which accounts for approximately 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the overall cost of running a data center facility. After power, staffing is the largest expense associated with running a data center and will cost in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, depending on location and staffing levels. With increasing power rates and increasing staffing salaries, we estimate that data centre operational cost will go up by 15-20 per cent in 2013."

A S Rajgopal, managing director, NxtGen DataCenter & Cloud Services Limited, also agrees. He says: "There has been an increase in power tariff across the country and considering power is 65 per cent of the DC operations, any increase impacts the profitability."

Apart from increasing power tariff and labour charges, there are several other reasons which cause spike in data centre operational costs, ranging from data volume growth, shortage of conventional power, cost of real estate. Owing to these reasons it is obvious that data centre operational costs are not going to come anytime soon, and instead will keep rising year after year.

There are certain ways in which it can be brought down. Unlike new data centres, where we can design ground up an efficient data centre, it is difficult to bring efficiency on similar lines in an existing facility. However, there are some simple things which when followed can lead to about 10-15 per cent reduction is energy cost. It is always advisable to let go old IT equipments. New ones will definitely cost you initially, however, on a longer run maintaining them will prove easier and cheaper than their older counterparts. '

"Storage consumes somewhere between five to 15 per cent of the total power consumed in a data center, and with a data growth rate of between 25 per cent and 50 per cent each year, the explosion of data growth will impact on data center capacity," adds Bahl.

However, instead of keep on adding new servers or storage as and when demand arises, it is always better to virtualise IT assets so as to increase their utilization capacity or opt for cloud storage. Because new devices result in additional cost of the device as well for its maintenance.

Some habits die hard, like the habit of maintaining data centre temperature between 14-18 degree centigrade. It has been proved over and again that servers are capable of sustaining higher temperatures and can operate smoothly at up to 24-26 degree centigrade. Moreover, by doing so one can save a lot upon electricity bills, which would be otherwise spent on coolers and chillers to keep systems inside a data centre cold.

Some other measures would be to adopt aisle containment inside data centres, plug open spaces between servers with blanking panels etc, check out for other sources of energy such as water or wind.

DD Mishra, managing consultant, CIOSpecialist, says: "CIOs can choose modular design of data centre and on-demand ramp-up and ramp-down flexibility. Moreover, since labour charges are going up, CIOs can go for automation, remote management, shared infrastructure."

"Now, if you are looking for long term investment for additional 20-30 per cent energy savings, CIOs ahould adopt the virtualisation, so that more applications can be run on same hardware. They should replace old UPS and cooling systems more efficient systems and buy servers with platinum grade power supplies and embedded green technologies," adds Rajgopal.

Another option would be to lease out data centre operations to a third party who is an expert in it. Check out for data centre service providers in Tier- 2 cities since they will be comparatively cheaper than their Tier 1 counterparts.

"Leasing a data centre presents an attractive operational expenditure model, better access to space and power, and the ability to expand faster," notes Bahl.

However, they should be asking themselves a few questions before making that final decision of either owing or leasing one.

"CIOs should ask themselves whether owning and operating a data center a strategic differentiator for thier organization? An important question to ask yourself is whether you want to be in the business of running a data center. Can you operate a data center facility as well as, or better than, a third-party provider?," notes Bahl.

Questions such as 'How effective is my organization's capacity planning capability?' and 'What is my organization's risk tolerance and culture?' can help a CIO to understand whether he/she is ready to take up the risk of leasing a data center facility, as it involves risks of losing control of every aspect of a facility, inlcuding data.

However, leasing out is not always an option, especially for large enterprise, due to various reasons such as loss of control over operations, security of data and compliance to name a few.

"Data center is a strategic asset and there is no question in near future large organisations will give up the idea of not owning it. This is purely from control, compliance, SLA and security perspective. The control on downtime, outage etc for critical business services needs to be controlled," Mishra adds.

However, they can always try and bring down the operational costs so as to make it a win-win situation for IT as well as business. At the same time, whether you like it or not, CIOs keep your CFOs on loop because 2013 is going to be expensive.