Best Practices for a Green Data Center

Rising energy costs are at the forefront of most IT decisions, and impact operational expenditures considerably.  Green initiatives vary widely in data centers and colocation providers. Having green initiatives is a start, but acting on them and having tangible results from them to demonstrate cost savings can often times be a different story. Embarking on a path to reduce costs and your carbon footprint starts with knowing the right questions to ask.

This eBook from Internap acts as a guide for discovering the best practices for a green data center, to make sure the colocation provider selected is truly green.  Beginning with the green founders, it discusses the key public and private organizations, research and standards that allow evaluations of providers to be fair and accurate. They set the standards for green best practices.

No discussion of accurately comparing the ability of providers to be green is complete without the primary factor in operating a data center; the power. A colocation provider should be very mindful of power-related costs and follow industry best practices such as using a highly efficient UPS, and implementing  hot/cold aisle design and containment. Another leading ingredient in a green data center is energy used to power the cooling systems. With as much as half of the total data center energy being allocated for cooling it is important for providers to incorporate essential elements such as variable speed fans in CRAC units, temperature management, and rack management.

Many other approaches and technologies can set a provider apart and can assert their commitment to operating a green data center. Modular data center designs can offer more predictable energy usage, the location a provider selects can leverage environmental attributes, and monitoring and management tools empower a provider to have greater visibility into overall data center energy usage, while maximizing operational efficiency. For more energy saving ideas download this guide to green data center.