By Xavier Kurian

Data centers are vital to today’s global, tech-centric economy. But as IT managers are keenly aware, there is a cost to this valuable service, both in terms of the budget required to keep up with growing capacity demand and in terms of data centers’ energy use. We have recently experienced the most significant energy price increases in five decades, so it’s no wonder we are also seeing a shift to energy efficient, sustainable (also known as green) data centers to lessen their environmental impact and reduce operational costs.

In this environment, energy is finite and availability of energy becomes more constrained while the need for compute and power to drive IT increases, with the aim of better utilizing these finite resources and optimizing where energy is spent organization are looking at a shift to the more sustainable, energy efficient data center while balancing the need for increasingly greater performance. As a partner to many customers on this journey, we recommend three key strategies: optimization, modernization, and consolidation. Build “Strategic IT” which can work for the business most efficently.

1. Optimize infrastructure

Poor IT asset utilization, including inactive or underused servers, is the single biggest waste of energy in the data center. Start by conducting a full audit of the IT environment to identify the most power-hungry and inefficient equipment. Replacing this equipment and implementing modern, more energy efficient solutions can drive greater efficiency, optimize thermals and cooling, and consolidate space requirements.

Another way to optimize a data center is to squeeze more work out of your current infrastructure. In particular, capacity utilization, power and thermals are areas that can oftentimes be improved through high-performance hardware, effective device power management, efficient hardware configuration and smart data center power management.

2. Modernize for energy efficiency

Optimizing data center energy efficiency requires careful planning and a more thoughtful and sustainable deployment of other components, which also consider advanced power, thermals, and cooling. For example, across our portfolio, we continually strive to make our technology more efficient and allow our customers’ to do more with less in their data centers. Our products are designed to be denser, while simplifying data reduction, to minimize both our physical and our carbon footprint in the data center. We need to look at it though many facets

Reducing the energy consumed by IT equipment with more efficient IT and technologies that save power
Reducing the Power consumed to cool IT. By using Green datacenter technologies

Automation technologies and telemetry data are key, as they simplify and remove the need for human intervention in power management. Implementing these technologies can help to reduce power consumption in off-peak times and identify energy performance issues faster.

Knowing when to retire legacy equipment is also an important aspect of this analysis to ensure legacy systems are securely and responsibly recycled. It’s important to work with a partner that protects your sensitive data, looks for reuse and refurbishment opportunities to drive a more circular economy, and that is able to reclaim precious, recyclable materials at end-of-life.

3. Consolidate hardware to do more with less

Hardware consolidation is one of the best ways to reduce carbon emissions and the physical footprint of data centers. According to a recent Forrester study commissioned by Dell Technologies, businesses can reduce costs of planning and provisioning storage by 63% and 86%, educating a good number of customers to realize benefits through consolidation. By reducing data, increasing drive density, and decreasing excess hardware, businesses can modernize in a way that saves costs while supporting the environment.

When it comes to creating a more sustainable data center, every company has a unique environmental and maturity footprint. While each customer’s data center is unique, everyone can reap the benefits of cost and energy savings if they implement a comprehensive strategy and iterative approach that brings together the right partners, technologies, and processes.