Tooling Up to Go Green

By Jeff Feinman

June 16, 2008 —  (Page 4 of 7)
The Green Grid was founded in 2007 as a global consortium to promote energy efficiency in data centers and business computing. Some of its members include AMD, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun and VMware.

The Green Grid said that to save data center power, people should identify the servers that are using alarming amounts of power and enable server processor power-saving features, like the ability to remotely turn off servers when not in use. New technologies like Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) can remotely power down servers into a sleep state. SMASH, developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), is a Web services-based suite of specifications with architectural semantics and industry standard protocols for data center management. Back in February, the Green Grid formed a relationship with the DMTF to make sure that all information on power and processor utilization is easy to gather, Bumpus said.

It is also important for organizations to develop an air management strategy for cooling, according to the Green Grid. A few simple tips from the Green Grid to conserve energy include moving cooling closer to the servers, maintaining higher operating temperatures, and utilizing dynamic controls and higher specification.

“A lot of cooling levels that people have in place today are based on equipment of a generation or so ago, and a lot of the equipment today can run at higher temperatures. Doing that can save quite a bit of cooling energy,” Bumpus said.

Some companies say the flow of air can be crucial in effective cooling. BlackMesh, a Herndon, Va.-based managed technology company, alternates the back of its data center racks so the hot sides of the rack get equal cooling, which the company said is a 40 percent decrease in the electricity being drawn to cool the equipment. Jason Ford, CTO of BlackMesh, compared this method to baseboard heating of rooms with a circular rotation, allowing the flow of hot air to return to the system and the cold air to be sucked into the server.

Related Search Term(s): Cooling, data centers, green computing, HVAC, power, virtualization, Avocent, BlackMesh, Force10 Networks, IBM, Novell, Tideway

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