Energy costs are a significant portion of a data center’s total operating costs. With these costs surging in the last few years, IT departments are under pressure to use intelligent power, cooling management tools and data center sustainability solutions to drive efficiencies.
Organizations can then invest the savings in expanding data center capacity for use in innovative new technologies like AI. Also, increasing stakeholder demand for sustainability insights and upcoming reporting regulations are causing many IT teams to focus on sustainability initiatives.
In my last post, we announced the launch of our ProConsult Advisory Services for Sustainable Data Centers to help customers develop a sustainable roadmap and strategy. These services are designed to support IT teams with best practices for a sustainable transition.
While developing a long-term sustainability strategy and roadmap is a great first step for customers on their sustainability journey, what comes next?
The Journey Towards a Sustainable Data Center
Organizations need to operationalize that roadmap and ultimately design and implement solutions that address the growing regulatory obligations and work towards their specific sustainability goals.
To support our customers in this, today we’re launching our Implementation Services for Sustainable Data Centers. This service, available as a Dell AI Factory services capability, is designed to help our customers design, plan and implement sustainable data center solutions based on their unique needs.
Let’s look at just a few of the areas our sustainability services experts advise on and implement for our customers.
Look Under the Hood
As data centers proliferate and sprawl, we often overlook things we don’t maintain or change on a regular basis. A detailed site assessment survey by our services experts is a crucial first step in assessing and diagnosing areas of improvement. It brings a fresh set of expert eyes that can help identify and uncover issues that have built up over time.
Good examples of issues include cabling under raised flooring impeding airflow, not using blanking plates in racks to prevent hot and cold air mixing, and water leaks that need to be detected and mitigated.
Measure to Improve
As I said in my last post, having visibility into a data center’s energy usage is key to understanding inefficiencies and where to focus on improvements. We help customers implement tooling that can report on key sustainability metrics, including carbon emissions, energy consumption and water usage. These metrics are key to informing the roadmap of projects going forward and reporting back to business stakeholders.
Optimize Everything
Our consultants, with decades of data center expertise across verticals, can provide insights on a variety of use cases and circumstances to optimize for greater efficiencies.
For example, the layout of data center racks can be optimized to utilize a hot aisle/cold aisle layout. This technique is not new. But, as organizations have grown their data centers organically over the years, they often end up with inefficient rack layouts. Utilizing a hot aisle/cold aisle layout is an easy way to save energy by optimizing the airflow and reducing the need for cooling.
Here’s an example of a simple optimization to boost data center efficiency. Many organizations operate servers (hypervisor hosts) at low utilization rates, often around 30-40%. By increasing the server utilization rate, fewer servers are required, which reduces power consumption. Additionally, replacing older servers with more powerful, energy-efficient models can drive further efficiency gains.
Our services experts can help uncover these inefficiencies, including recommendations around new technology purchases and sustainable retirement of aging technologies.
Location, Location, Location
Organizations can’t control whether the power they’re consuming in their existing data center is generated by renewable energy like hydro, wind and solar, or more polluting methods like coal. In our new service, we’ll advise on optimal power sourcing to utilize as much renewable energy as possible.
We have helped customers choose optimal data center locations for years with our Data Center Modernization and Migration Services. We extend that with this new service to focus on locations where the mix of energy sourcing is more sustainable.
Utilize Modern Cooling Technologies
Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) systems, like to those found in high-performance gaming PCs, offer superior cooling with lower energy consumption. Dell’s DLC solutions for our PowerEdge servers provide efficient cooling, reducing the energy demand associated with traditional setups. This technology not only enhances performance, but also serves as a critical step in sustainable data center management by reducing the overall energy footprint.
DLC can offer better cooling performance with lower energy consumption than traditional air-cooling technologies. Our services teams advise customers on these advanced cooling techniques based on their unique needs.
Partnering for Sustainability Success
Our customers have told us that they want a partner that will stay engaged with them throughout their sustainability journey. Thats why today, we’re also launching Advisory Subscription Service for Sustainable Data Centers.
This subscription will provide versatile, cost-effective access to Dell sustainability experts on a part-time basis to help customers stay on track towards achieving your goals. These experts offer guidance on defining and updating KPIs, reporting data center sustainability metrics to leadership and updating dashboards and reports, along with other sustainable data center practices.
We’re excited to offer these new services to support our customers at every stage of their sustainable data center journey. Contact your sales representative today to learn how these innovative solutions can benefit your organization.
