Few companies are immune to the economic downturn. Business executives seek smart ways to reduce costs - and the data centre may present a golden opportunity to save.
The key is knowing where hidden costs lie, and how to eliminate them without compromising performance.
Businesses need a solution for a range of issues:
Under-utilised systems that limit business growth
Energy costs draining the bottom line
The difficulty of managing a sprawling IT infrastructure
Add to this the ongoing demand for business continuity and agility - where disaster recovery planning is non-negotiable and downtime is not an option. How can you cut costs in the data centre?
Having helped businesses across the globe alleviate cost pressures in the data centre, Sun is at the forefront of data centre efficiency.
Sun delivers three strategies to maximise data centre efficiency
Advances in server and storage technology have dramatically improved the ability to optimise your data centre.
The challenge for IT managers is to carefully plan where to start, how to move forward and how to measure results.
Sun has identified three key strategies to deliver data centre optimisation:
The need for a modular, flexible design
Best power practices
Cloud computing as a problem solver
Modular, flexible designs to support the business
A modular, flexible data centre reaps significant business benefits, including efficiency and support for long term growth.
In the past too often have data centres become redundant because they aren't flexible enough to scale and adapt to changing business practices.
It is important to have flexible data centres that can respond quickly to the changing business, support growth and adapt to the constant change in infrastructure.
To support this need, Sun has created a customisable design strategy based on modular compute building blocks.
This innovative, simple technique makes it easy to manage both space and IT requirements with flexibility.
Revitalise your data centre
More and more it is not the cost of purchasing IT infrastructure that is dictating the budget but rather the operating expenses such as power and cooling.
When evaluating power efficient technologies it important to remember that the entire system design contributes:
Processors - the CPU is one of the largest power consumers in today's servers
Memory - as processor speeds have increased, dual inline memory modules have become faster and draw higher power
Cooling - a server's internal cooling systems can have significant impact on power consumption
Sun has designed its offerings with efficiency in mind. For example, Sun's UltraSPARC processor enables a single microprocessor core to multitask and radically increases throughput without increasing clock speed, or consuming more power.
Sun has identified several ways to improve data centre power distribution systems without compromising performance:
Reduce power conversions
Use appropriate tier levels
Remove PDUs from the data centre
Make cooling system improvements - need to create a strategy where heat is moved efficiently from servers to an outdoor cooling tower
Cloud computing as a problem solver
The next step in optimising the data centre lies in the cloud computing environment. While cloud has been a part of Sun's business for many years, the concept is still new to many.
Access to software, services and infrastructure is scalable and dynamic allowing businesses to meet their specific needs.
Cloud holds the promise of significant cost savings, greater consolidation of resources and in turn increased efficiency and business agility.
Figuring out what you need as the first step is essential to implementing effective cloud computing. It all depends on the type of business you are running and what type of functionality is required in order to get jobs done.
To learn more about Sun's approach to cloud watch Chief Technologist, Angus MacDonald's video in the last issue of EDGE.
Sun proves itself in data centre efficiency
Last year Sun launched its green data centre in Broomfield, Colorado, which is just 23 per cent of the size of the data centre it replaced. It is the largest data centre consolidation project undertaken in the company's history.
The Broomfield facility incorporates the latest in Sun's portfolio of energy-efficient systems and expertise, including breakthroughs in innovative data centre design and power and cooling technologies.
With this project, Sun estimates it will save more than $1 million in electricity costs and 11,000 metric tons of CO2 per year in Broomfield and will help Sun reduce its carbon footprint by 6% in the U.S.
