Cooling Data Center Costs

See also: Business Value Powers Green IT, Inside an Efficient Data Center.

One of the hottest opportunities for greening the data center lies in cooling.

According to Booz & Co., roughly 40 percent of the energy consumed in data centers is a result of cooling systems, and that figure is rising. Here?s what Booz recommends to increase cooling efficiency:

? Optimize airflow in the data center to reduce the mean gradient temperature and reduce cooling requirements.
? Use a hot/cold aisle configuration, in which equipment racks are arranged in alternating rows of hot and cold aisles.
? Rely on air handlers to better control airflow within the data center and enable more efficient cooling.
? Deploy smart cooling energy-management systems with sensors to reduce energy consumption by as much as 40 percent.
? Increase cooling temperature targets to slightly above the data center baseline temperature. Every added degree results in an estimated
4 percent reduction in energy consumption.
? Install renewable cooling sources such as outside air during the winter?where practicable?to minimize usage of internal cooling systems.