The First Facility Management Blog

Emerson Network Power has released results from a recent industry survey that provides insight into the actions some data center operators have taken to increase the efficiency of their facilities and identifies the challenges organizations face in driving additional improvements.

The survey was conducted by the Data Center Users’ Group(DCUG), a group of influential data center, IT, and facility managers formed by Emerson Network Power. It was completed in coordination with the U.S. EPA and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs to support the EPA’s recently released “Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency.” More than 150 DCUG member companies and non-member Fortune 500 companies participated in the survey, which covered a variety of data center topics including power management, precision cooling, energy efficiency, technology implementation, and consolidation.

According to the survey, the majority of respondents have made operational improvements to increase energy efficiency. Seventy-seven percent have their data center arranged in a hot aisle/cold aisle configuration to increase cooling system efficiency, 65% use blanking panels to minimize recirculation of hot air and 56% have sealed the floor to prevent cooling losses. The survey also shows the growing popularity of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to identify hotspots and optimize airflow within the facility, with 25% of respondents having already conducted a CFD analysis of their facilities.

“We have been promoting the value of best practices to optimize the efficiency of existing systems for the last several years, so it is gratifying to see these tactics being widely adopted in the market,” said Bob Bauer, Emerson group vice president and Liebert Worldwide president. “They are among the first – and easiest – steps in optimizing data center efficiency. Now, we as an industry have to address the challenges of taking efficiency initiatives even further.”

According to the survey, challenges that data center professionals face as they try to reduce energy use include “lack of management priority” (40%), “not clearly understanding the cost/benefit relationship” (36%), “not wanting to risk reliability” (35%) and “lack of communication between IT and facilities” (33%).

Other survey results show that, on average, 60% of the data center electrical load is used to power IT equipment, with approximately 56% of that being used to power servers, 27% for storage, and 19% for network equipment. In addition, 41% of survey respondents said their data center electrical usage is not metered separately from the rest of their facilities. Forty-one percent of respondents also noted that they did not have a dedicated facility for their data center.

Additional results include the following:

• Eighty-one percent believe that by 2012 they will need additional data center capacity, despite the fact that 64% have built or upgraded their data center in the last five years.

• More than a quarter (27%) of respondents believe that despite consolidation and the use of virtualization, their server inventory will increase throughout the next five years.

• The average power density per rack is approximately 6.5 kW, while the maximum power density in any one rack averages approximately 12.9 kW.

Founded in 2003, the DCUG contains approximately 1,000 members; the group meets semi-annually to collaboratively discuss the most relevant issues affecting the reliability, availability and cost of operation for mission-critical installations. The group’s membership comprises executives with a wide variety of IT and facilities management expertise from an assortment of companies, including board member companies Capital One, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions, JPMorgan Chase and Meijer, among others.