Green Data Centre, Eco-friendly and energy efficient

Macquarie Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom is focusing on green technology and monitoring IT energy consumption in our Data Centre to establish a Green Hosting environment. Understanding what Green Servers actually mean Macquarie Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom is focusing on green technology and monitoring IT energy consumption in our Data Centre to establish a Green Hosting environment.

We are:

• Measuring and monitoring what impacts power management and metrics in our Australian Data Center.
• Working to understand where the power is going and how to better manage this – e.g. in some large Data Centres storage uses 30-40% of the power consumption.
• Sorting through the "vendor hype" around "green IT" and "green technology" in order to understand which technologies actually make an impact – e.g. enterprise virtualisation, server architectures, rack and cooling options and impact of perforated rack doors.
• Using SRA manufactured racks incorporating iPAMM technology to replace existing racks.

Understanding what Green Data Center actually means

Avoids creating ‘hot spots”

High-density servers can create hot spots in data centres for some high-end systems. In some circumstances this can lead to maxing out the power utility's ability to deliver additional capacity to that location.

Energy efficiency savings

Energy efficiency savings can add up. A watt saved in data centre power consumption saves at least a watt in cooling. IT managers who take the long view are already paying attention to the return on investment associated with acquiring more energy-efficient equipment

• Green data centers don't just save energy, they also reduce the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades to deal with increased power and cooling demands.
• A Green Data Server infrastructure will optimise server-based applications towards virtual machines. Increasing utilization level improves efficiency.

As an example idle processors consume power; and between the hours of 1am - 6am most corporate server processors are idle. So we focus on reducing number of idle processors at night (e.g. via benefits of enterprise virtualisation) and focus on vendor hardware that uses less power when processors are actually idle ("Green Servers"), allowing us to move toward a "Green Data Centre."

Macquarie Hosting is also placing a strong emphasis on working with and educating customers on the considerations for energy efficiency in the Data Centre and is helping them turn these considerations into action and improve their energy efficiency, as we move toward a Green Hosting environment.

For example:

• Educating customers on their power/cooling usage footprint, the processes of green servers vendor selection, server virtualisation and rack layout techniques
• Via the monitoring and measuring we have undertaken, educating customers on which technologies and techniques make an impact on green hosting
• Improving energy efficiency and reducing Data Centre impact on the environment as power consumption continues to climb
• Power consumption at the rack level has increased by a factor of 8 in the last 10 years
• Today the cost of power/cooling is higher than the hardware costs, and this is expected to double by 2008
• Rack Kw requirements have increased from 3 to 5, and Data Centres are now being built to a 10Kw requirement
• Many Data Centres in the US (37% according to Gartner) have run out of space, power or cooling capacity

Macquarie Hosting - A member of The Green Grid

Macquarie Hosting is also a member of The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing environments.

The Green Grid seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center and business computing energy efficiencies.  By joining The Green Grid, Macquarie, is helping influence both developers and end users of data centre technology.

Macquarie Hosting joins several organisations within The Green Grid representing critical segments of the data centre ecosystem. The Green Grid Board of Directors is comprised of the following member companies: AMD, APC, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems and VMware.

Macquarie Telecom’s participation in The Green Grid further enforces the company’s commitment to the management of energy and power usage in the data centre energy consumption.