5 MINS READ
Highlights
- Companies need to ensure that their business and sustainability goals go hand in hand.
- They can take four steps to implement sustainable, green data centers.
- The primary focus is to build green data centers with innovative technologies to expand manifold benefits.
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Sustainability focus
With expanding data center footprints, companies need to balance their business and sustainability goals.
Fast-paced digital transformation and the rising adoption of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), machine learning (ML), virtual reality (VR), and blockchain have led to an exponential rise in data generation, resulting in expanded data center footprints across the globe. It is estimated that by 2025 175+ zettabytes of data would be generated, stored, and processed.
The data center market is growing rapidly, underpinning the digital economy. While this is promising, it’s estimated that data centers will consume as much as 1% of global electricity, leading to an increase in greenhouse emissions. There is a compelling need for organizations to strike a fine balance between supporting business requirements and fulfilling their sustainability goals.
Governments across the world are implementing new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. Some have put in place financial incentives and subsidies that encourage businesses to adopt environmental-friendly practices. Europe’s Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, signed by 100+ European data center operators and associations, outlines aggressive data center efficiency and renewable energy goals. The involvement of these firms that account for over 90% of the data center capacity available in Europe represents a significant endorsement of the pact and the industry's commitment to becoming climate-neutral by 2030.
Barriers in transition
Companies are often fraught with multiple challenges during their transition to green data centers.
Although companies are taking steps towards net-zero goals, many struggle when upgrading to green data centers. From a dearth of expertise to the lack of clear regulations and standards, the challenges make it difficult to define and measure strategic green data center practices and technologies. Some of the key challenges are:
In many enterprises, there are only incremental changes to existing technology. These changes revolve around hardware upgrade rather than a holistic vision that can drive green DC adoption. This adds to the complexity in DC management.
Adopting a policy of green IT sourcing requires changes from the top down. With the exponential surge in data volumes, there are challenges in devising the right energy policy and strategy. What is more, the fear and anxiety of downtime due to dependency on a sole source makes adoption of green DC a non-starter.
Going green
Steps to green data centers
Making data centers greener is now an imperative with increasing pressure on companies to become more sustainable businesses conscious of their impact to the environment. Here are four steps to do that:
Implement power management systems that automatically shut down or reduce power usage of idle servers and other IT equipment. This will reduce overall energy consumption.
Monitor energy usage to identify areas for improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon footprint.
Deploy energy-efficient technologies—such as low-power servers, light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, and efficient cooling systems—to reduce the energy required to support IT operations.
Use renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, to meet energy needs and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
For companies that don’t own data centers and depend on colocation datacenter or cloud services provider, they should choose the providers that use renewable energy sources and greener data centers.
Innovative technologies
Harness the power of emerging technologies for green data centers.
The objective of building green data centers is to create more sustainable businesses and a brighter future for all. Reducing dependency on power, energy, and cooling resources is key. Here, utilizing innovative technologies to support operations can go a long way in creating a greener environment.
Server and storage virtualization: Allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server, reducing the number of physical servers and hardware required to support operations. This helps improve the utilization and efficiency of existing hardware, and reduce energy consumption and environmental impact.
Containerization: Containers deploy applications faster, reduce data center space and improve operational efficiency.
Cloud computing: Provides resources with on-demand access without the need to own and maintain physical infrastructure. This reduces the energy and resource requirements of IT systems and associated costs.
ML and intelligent monitoring: Optimizes data center performance through analysis of energy consumption management and infrastructure including cabling, power and cooling infrastructure and prediction of energy consumption needs and scheduling of timely maintenance.
Edge computing and IoT: Boosts energy efficiency as data can be stored and processed closer to users, reducing latency and improving performance of DCs.
By adopting green data centers, companies can reap significant benefits. For instance, Google has implemented a few of the green data center practices, which have resulted in energy savings of up to 40%. The larger benefits that companies can realize include cost savings, improved efficiency through the effective utilization of IT resources, increased productivity and reduced waste. What’s more, these changes can enhance a company’s reputation, brand, and public image while also attracting incentives from the government in developed countries.
Get ready to go green and tread the path to sustainable data centers of the future.
