Rising energy costs coupled with growing computing and storage requirements, new advancements in data center technology, and changing attitudes towards the environment are causing enterprises to rethink their data center strategies. Key topics discussed include:
- The rising cost of energy and energy inefficiency in data centers.
- Data center cooling capacity and heat density.
- Emerging energy standards.
- Best practices for achieving a more efficient and cost-effective data center.
As energy costs begin to compete with the cost of maintaining the underlying hardware, traditional thinking around power consumption, heat distribution, and server hardware will change. The new paradigm calls for maximizing efficiency and “greener” thinking.
This note is optimally focused for those enterprises on the “larger” end of the small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) demographic. These enterprises do not have dedicated data center facilities and are more likely housing server racks in a shared facility or room within the enterprise's corporate offices. For truly “small”
enterprises with only a few servers, there are still some great value nuggets, but realistically, power and cooling issues don't
really become an IT priority until the enterprise has at least a couple of server racks. Spending wise, this note targets those
enterprises with an IT budget of $1 million or more.