Going IT Green

On 1 July 2007, the Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) came into force requiring computer manufacturers to take responsibility for the disposal of their products in the UK. Although the Directive was first passed into law in 2003, the UK Government has been engaged in extensive consultations with manufacturers and the IT industry at large as to how to implement the EU-driven legislation.

One of the measures which the environmental legislation put in place is a Distributor "Take-back" Scheme, which involves facilities across the country where people can drop off old equipment to be disposed of in an environmentally-sound way. The producers of the equipment have to finance this scheme.  IT managers have to ensure that they comply with these regulations when disposing of any IT equipment.

In addition to complying with the law on disposals, there are things that IT managers can take to help businesses improve their environmental presences and reduce their carbon footprints.

According to research by BroadGroup, data centres are one of the UK's biggest energy consumers. The research found that in 2006, an average UK data centre used more power in one year than the city of Leicester. There are at least 1,500 data centres operating in the UK alone. There are also estimated to be over 200,000 businesses and pubic sector organisations in the UK with dedicated server rooms that require some form of atmospheric control. These numbers translate into large, and growing, carbon emissions.

IT managers have to think about the technology driving their data centres and server rooms and the impacts they have on the environment. It is unrealistic to expect IT managers to rip out their existing IT infrastructure and start from scratch. However, businesses should consider the benefits of running a more energy efficient data centre when replacing components or looking to save costs. This can be achieved without affecting operating service levels for users. Here are some ideas.

Server Cabinets and Racks

Studies by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (“ASHRAE”) show that around 50% of the energy used in data centres and server rooms powers hardware equipment, over 20% is used for cooling systems and around 2% is used for lighting.

While air conditioning has traditionally been the preferred method for cooling data centre hardware, some recent technology has arrived that uses water-based cabinet cooling, as opposed to fans, to help cool cabinet racks. Although the front-end cost of these systems is relatively high, there are major long term energy savings and cost benefits for businesses willing to invest.

The ASHRE research shows that water is around 3,500 times more effective at cooling air by volume. The studies also show that 70% air cooling power is lost before it even reaches racks as much of the cooling is expelled into the data centre itself. The study shows that, statistically, there are more hardware failures at the top of server cabinets due to the circuit in which air flows through and around hardware when it is driven by fans - resulting in 'hot spots'. Water cooled racks do not suffer from this problem as the technology enables even cooling all of the hardware in a cabinet. 

Cable Management

For those organisations unwilling to invest in new cabinets, IT managers can look at a shorter-term, cheaper alternative, namely intelligent cable management system. These systems use cable management software to help IT managers to route and store cables neatly in cabinets and racks ensuring that cooling vents or ducts are not restricted by stray cabling. This ensures maximum cooling efficiency and better energy consumption, ultimately translating into reduced or minimised energy costs.

Lights-out IT Rooms

Creating “lights-out” data centre, where few or no people work can help reduce the lighting power bills. However, care is needed to make sure that adequate remote environmental sensing technology is provided. The costs and benefits case needs to be worked out carefully to make sure of a payback on any investment.

Remote Server Load Monitoring

Keyboard, video and mouse (“KVM”) systems provide the data centre manager with remote access to their servers to monitor the performance and power consumption of their hardware, which makes environmental planning decisions on when to run specific applications much easier. For example, if high volumes of users log onto mail servers first thing in morning then the servers will heat up quickly. However, at off-peak times, the mail servers stay relatively cool. These fluctuations can result in performance degradation.

Remote server load monitoring allows IT managers to study usage patterns and schedule server usage to ensure maximum performance by, where possible, requesting users not to simultaneously run multiple systems that require high levels of processing power. In a medium-sized business, this might mean asking the HR department not to run the payroll system at 9.00 am when most employees are also logging onto the server and opening numerous applications, such as email.

KVM remote management tools also enable IT managers to make server performance modifications remotely, thus lessening the environmental impact of having to travel to a data centre to make such changes physically.

Networked Computers

In managed networks, IT managers can use network management configurations to cause networked computers to close down and start up outside normal office hours.  Even small businesses with no IT managers can use time-clocks on the computers' power supplies to switch off computers, monitors and printers.  These changes are easy to make, relatively low cost and the resulting savings in electricity costs can be significant.

IT managers have a vital part to play in developing greener data centres and server rooms and by selecting from the variety of greener technologies already available they can quickly begin to reduce their carbon footprint. Although there may be increased short-term costs in selecting greener IT technologies, these are far outweighed by the longer-term costs, performance and environmental benefits.

If you would like to discuss our report, Sandy Pratt would be delighted to hear from you.  You can contact him by emailing him at  Sandy.Pratt@4-consulting.com

Sandy is a director of 4-consulting, click here to view his profile.