People generally have a question about good host, very few of the clients are really eager to know about the Datacenter where the servers are stored. This is also very important.
Lets have a look of the some of the aspects of the Datacenter:
Datacenter spends a lots of amount on the hardware, license, and maintenance, however the most of the cost is spend on the power that it needs.
Power consumption: It needs power consumption to keep the servers running 24x7x365. Hence as the power is consumed non stop heat is generated. There is a need to keep them cool as well. It takes a big amount of power to cool a single server.
How it becomes Inefficient?
Traditionally datacenters are thought to be inefficient environmentally. As compared to older days, power was the lowest cost of the expense, computing was precious, if a little amount of power wasted a large amount of computing was needed. This was in early 70 and 80 where power was never a problem, ample of amount was available. This is not the case in 2009. Power has become more expensive and less is amount. Although this is the case some of the datacenters do not take care of the power consumption. According to the report in 2008, it says that only 6% of server capacity is bielng used and the data centers facilities to run at no more than about 56% capacity.
Can we cool it in a cheaper way?
The answer is yes. Some ways can help you in this concern.
Virtualization, resource management and physical server consolidation are three methods which you and your hosting company must follow to save the power consumption and increase the data center efficiency.
Virtualize the servers:
Virtualize comes into picture when you think of getting every bit of power out of each bit of piece of hardware. This can conserve a great amount of energy. It help you in consolidate your server requirement onto some fewer physical machines. The virtual machines consume only 1/50 amount of the power. E mail servers, web servers and applications will just act as if they are running on individual boxes.
Using Grid Grid and the EPA, make the datacenter more efficient and greener datacenter. The products such as Vmware provides some of the highest consolidation rates on a secure and reliable platform. With this technology the unused severs can be powered off and turned back when needed.
This VM ware’s hardware based virtualization also offers a great application access for users, faster installation of new servers and better uptime. This helps the server to reduce the carbon footprint and save the money for you. It also increases the companies competitiveness.
Resources : DRS and DPM.
Cost can be reduced through virtualization by using two more technologies.
DRS: It is a short hand for Distributed Resource Scheduler. It helps to monitor the clients and company’s utilization and can intelligently assign the resources as needed.
DRS allows to assign the resources on the priority basis, you can ensure that it gives priority to the critical applications first. It provides the dedicated environment to the business units, without keeping the resources idle.
DPM: Distributed Power Management, helps in optimizes the power consumption by continuously monitoring power usage and automatically consolidating workloads and power off the resources that are not needed. When the load of the server is less the DPM shifts the server workload to the optimum number of physical servers and turns off the others. When the load increase the original server is back online.
Consolidating Servers with blades:
Energy footprints can be reduced by using the blades, it allows multiple servers to be consolidated on one chassis. There is one management interface per blade and adds more advanced management features.
Green Datacenter : Power and heat generation problem is been encountered all over the world. Many of the organizations and projects are working for the cause to address the problems.
By using above techniques you can certainly save some of the power consumption in the organization. When it comes to the heat generation , the heat generated in the datacenters is wasted, there is a research going on the recycle the heat generated in the Datacenter.