Allaster Finke, Contributor

There is a strong inclination in today’s fragile economy, for businesses to streamline their operations and eliminate unnecessary expenditure. While some of the cost savings are easy to identify across the business, others may not be, But when it comes to data centres, the simplest of solutions may reap the biggest benefits.

To increase efficiencies and reduce costs in the data centre, it’s essential to understand what is there and how it currently works. This puts the business in a commanding position when measuring efficiency. To do this, a physical and logical inventory of all systems should be undertaken, especially by mid to large environments. This may sound easier than it actually is, and can take a considerable amount of time, but the rewards can be massive.

Once this information is harvested, it’s important to ensure that a centrally administered ‘single point of truth’ maintains the data which can be updated within a defined and structured process. Alternatively, it’s possible to make use of a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which maintains the authorised configuration of the significant components of the IT environment and can be easily managed.

Amongst other benefits this knowledge will give a base to measure against, and enable, full understanding of costs for both operational and capital expenditures. Combine this with the use of intelligent rack and environmental monitoring to gather consumption statistics, and you have a great base to start your analysis for implementing a more efficient data centre environment.

Environmental Monitoring and Hotspots

One of the quickest wins is to check the positioning of the grated floor tiles. Over time and through continuous work within the data centre, these can be displaced and reduce the effectiveness of the hot and cold aisles. Check that the AC outlets under the floor are not blocked by cable trays, cables, discarded items or badly placed infrastructure. Make use of air channels to direct AC flow more acutely; these can be picked up relatively cheaply and can be very effective in drawing your cold air towards the warmer areas of the data centre.

It goes without saying that legacy systems (those above three years old) tend to consume more power than the current equivalent hardware. Identify whether these can be virtualised, thus reducing the overall number of physical systems your data centre needs to provide power and cooling for (not to mention reducing the required time to maintain and administer these systems). If virtualising the system is not an option, consider taking advantage of newer technologies to lower the dependence on power and cooling. If there are only a couple of these systems, it probably won’t make too much difference. However, if you are operating 10, 15 and more, then the potential savings could be very worthwhile.

Being smarter with data can also offer significant benefits. Introducing an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) style strategy to reassign data to less costly and more appropriate tiers can reduce year-on-year spending as the environment grows. Combine this with the use of de-duplication and archiving, and the total amount of ‘live’ data that is being stored can be a fraction of the current environment.

In conjunction with using smarter technology to streamline operations, try using your current technology smarter. Examine the utilisation of current systems - if this is too high, then there is the potential for system failures, performance issues and the like. Conversely, if utilisation is too little, then there is a good chance that the potential return on investment isn’t being realised.

I tend to think of the following equation when considering introducing a more effective strategy to data centre and systems management:

Increased utilisation + better configuration = less effort to manage and increased return on investment

Being more efficient is about knowing your environment; using what you have to better effect, and making strategic use of newly available technologies.

Allaster Finke is a senior consultant for GlassHouse Technologies (UK), a global provider of data centre consulting services, and a Contributor to SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.uk. Allaster has over 8 years experience in the design and delivery of IT solutions, with a particular focus on SAN, Storage and Backup technologies.