A green datacenter refers to a repository for storage, management, and dissemination of data in which mechanical, lighting, electrical, and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency. With increasing adoption of IT, consumption of energy is also increasing. Off late, the expenditure on energy has surpassed the cost spent on IT gears by a company. To address this issue, APC has been advocating changing the legacy approach of data center architecture. In an interview with Dataquest, Subodh Tagare, of APC–MGE, talks about various aspects of green data centers. Excerpts...

Why this sudden hype for green datacenters?
Green is the essence of adding value to customers in an attempt to tie it with an underlined bigger trend, which is the concern for environment and climate. There are talks of environment-friendly technologies, but adoption is based on two objectives: first, the positive impact on environment, and second, it should have some value for decision makers, especially the IT team, which impacts faster adoption process.

What is driving enterprises to go for green data-centers?
Everyone recognizes that there are issues to be addressed in environment. Energy consumption is becoming the biggest issue in datacenters. Till last year, the cost of IT was more than the cost of energy. Now the cost of energy is far greater than the cost of computing and networking gear. In a way, economy has ensured adoption of greener data centers.

Subodh Tagare, Marketing Manager-India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, APC–MGE

Due to design elements of a data center, half of the energy consumed is wasted. Companies have to rethink the way they are designing datacenters. This has led to customers thinking of adopting blade servers.

One of the major constraints for adoption of blade servers is cost. What will drive customers then?
It is expensive, therefore, it is preventing adoption at this point of time. Since 2003, we have been talking about changing the architecture of data centers. Now it is a given thing and customers are recognizing it. The first stage was compaction that started happening with chips and the second stage was physical consolidation of data centers-India has gone through this phase. Now we see people talking about virtualization. It is after this stage that we see the takeoff of blade servers. This might take another two to three years.

How are vendors responding to green data centers?
Software people are looking at creating virtual servers. At chip layer, vendors are trying to deliver more processing capacity for each watt consumed. At the server layer, vendors have already developed, and adoption is taking place. The physical layer vendors, like us, are focusing on how the whole thing fits into the system. Instead of selling best-in-breed components, delivering the system to customers has become far more important. We are attempting to move away from components to system along with services.

Further, the legacy approach in designing datacenters has to be changed. We have changed the monolithic UPS to modular UPS, which is scalable. This eliminates waste and consumes less energy. This also reduces the usage of lead. Ensuring modular data center also eliminates waste.

Has going green become a compelling factor?
Yes. It becomes a compelling factor as it reduces the cost on energy consumption. By going green, energy consumption can be reduced by 70 percent. Significant adoption has been witnessed in the last two years. It is far more important for us to keep reminding people about it.

Dheeksha Rabindra
dheekshar@cybermedia.co.in