Strategies for optimizing energy consumption in the data center

Businesses running data centers are forced to spend a healthy slice of their budget on meeting IT utility demands. Servers, fans and other cooling system components are huge draws on the power grid, and keeping these costs under control is one of the chief responsibilities of a company's IT staff. Thankfully, there are several approaches to optimizing the performance in the data center and bringing down utility costs. Review these go-to performance enhancing strategies before deciding which solution would be the best fit for your company's storage facility.

Embrace virtualization when possible
Data Center Knowledge pointed out that the largest source of energy consumption in the data center is caused by the activity of countless spinning hard drives. Thankfully, virtualization has created opportunities to improve data storage capacity without maxing out a facility's utility bill. For instance, businesses can costs by shifting certain files to virtual environments that consume less energy - there are several physical-to-virtual solutions available on the market to make this transition smooth and easy. By consolidating the content stored on a company's physical servers to the cloud, IT staffs can greatly curb the amount of space being consumed in the data center.

Make sure growth stays under control
IT teams can prevent their facilities from becoming over-stuffed with servers in the first place by taking a more controlled approach to data center growth. Now that purchasing additional servers is just one of many solutions for expanding storage capacity, IT teams can be more selective about when they choose to fill up a facility's floor space with additional hardware. In addition to expanding through virtualization, teams can deploy creative solutions, like the use of remote console servers, to expand accessibility to company files without building a new facility.

Don't overlook facility management
When it comes to reducing energy consumption, many IT experts take facility management for granted. However, efforts to improve the efficiency of the building that houses the data center can help to reduce the company's utility costs. Upgrading old light bulbs and changing air filters, for instance, helps to offset a data center's massive utility bill. That's why The Data Center Journal recommends that facilities take proactive steps toward managing energy consumption when they can.

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