VMWorld Europe focuses on the power problem ORDERS BY THE GOVERNMENT and Eskom for South Africans to start saving power have made discussions on best practice in data centres a highlight in the industry. VMWorld Europe 2008, held in Cannes, France, recently pointed out that power has become a global worry.

According to VMWare senior product marketing manager Martin Niemer, the world needs to shape up in the data centre department, because power "is becoming increasingly hard to come by and definitely more valuable".

"Companies around the world are just not following basic best practices when it comes to the data centre," explains Niemer. He says in the UK companies can no longer source extra power for their ever-growing server rooms and are looking at ways to save.

Besides the power needed to actually run the servers, the air-conditioning systems used to cool them gobble power too.

Niemer says case studies conducted by VMWare show that by increasing the server room air-conditioning by just one degree could save up to 10% in power costs.

With South Africa business being tasked to cut back on its electricity consumption by 10%, this figure is one to note. "IBM in Europe use a best practice model that really works. They have partitioned their server room to accommodate cool air in and hot air out." Several industry players agree that on the whole, server rooms in SA are simply just too cold. "At best practice, a server room should generally be cooled to around 23 or 24 degrees."

IBM uses heavy plastic partitions between the front and back of the servers effectively separating the warm and cool air used by the hardware. The partition essentially keeps the warm air from circulating back into the cool parts of the data centre."

Niemer admits the savings in a best practice solution like this may differ in a warmer country such as SA, however, he is adamant that the solution is worth implementing. "And the effort in doing something like this is minimum."

A second best practice often ignored, particularly in the South Africa data centre, is the overuse of double floors for packing cabling. "The more open the double layered flooring is, the more likely there is to be good air circulating through the room. IT often packs it to filling with cabling and other connectivity devices."

He says these basic best practices could make the difference between over or properly powered sever rooms.

VIRTUALISATION SAVINGS

For SA, one answer to saving power as quickly and painlessly as possible is to consolidate data centre servers through virtualisation, says Niemer.

"You can save anywhere between 70% to 90% power through cutting down on the number of severs used in the data centre and the amount of power needed for the air conditioners to cool them." At rule of thumb, a system like this according to VMWare, will save between 250 and 300 kilowatt hours per year.

Overhead costs for things like generators and UPSs can also be a contributing factor to the power usage in a data centre. "UPSs store power, and for SA it seems the logical answer to the power crisis, but they have to build up that power from somewhere. So when there is power, you can be sure the UPS is using it."

According to Niemer, installing a generator is also a costly exercise that has as much, if not more, environmental impact than electricity. "While from what I can tell, the problem with the South African context is that companies are not considering power saving as a green option. This is primarily why their first answer is to install a generator."

He says the best way to save power is to cut out the unnecessary equipment. "If you virtualise, you can cut down the number of servers to less than half of what is in the data centre now." There are other draw cards to the situation, he says. "Fewer servers means fewer switches. These kinds of infrastructure ideas keep down costs."

Costs are not just in terms of power consumption. "Save on maintenance, infrastructure, and manpower," he says.