How to decrease your Data Center Costs?

Are you struggling to find ways to decrease your data center costs?

Would you like to learn techniques to minimize your data center costs?

Operating and maintaining a data center is certainly not a cheap or easy task. There are however, a handful of ways, some simpler than others, to significantly decrease the overall costs of your data center.

Techniques to Decrease Data Center Costs:

• Decommission Comatose Servers : Far too often data centers run every server in the facility even though certain servers aren't doing any computing. An easy way to reduce electricity costs is to put unused servers to sleep.
• Consolidate : Whether Servers are 85% full or only 5% they still pull full power. Since servers typically only utilize 5% to 15% percent of the total capacity, consolidating lightly used servers can substantially reduce electricity costs.
• Organize : Large organizations often find duplicated files and data within their servers. With some simple organization, storage utilization can lead to further consolidating and possible decommission of additional servers.
• Energy Efficient Technologies : Newer and more efficient servers use up to 30% less power than older more traditional servers.
• Arrange : If your servers are arranged to all face the same direction this is an easy fix! By arranging servers in a front facing front (cool-cool) followed by back facing back (hot-hot) manner, airflow is more evenly distributed and servers on the perimeter are not absorbing any additional heat.
• Structured Cabling to Increase Airflow : In comparison to unstructured cabling, structured cabling makes all the difference. Increased airflow keeps your servers uniformly ventilated and often reduces the need for aggressive cooling.
• Adjust Temperature : In 2008, the ASHRAE established a new range of temperatures ideal for data centers. Although many data centers are regularly kept at a mere 55° the recommended range is now between 65° and 85°. By adjusting temperature you can save up to 5% on each 1° temperature increase.
• Variable Speed Fan Drives : Variable speed fan drives constantly vary speed to the necessary power and cooling settings to keep your data center right where you want it to be.
• Virtualize Servers : Cloud solutions are continually gaining respect and popularity in the industry. Security has been the biggest concern in the past for Cloud storage and although no storage solutions are immune to security risks, the Cloud may now be even more secure than many in-house data centers.

What do you think about these techniques? What other techniques are you using to decrease your data center cost? Share your thoughts and new techniques in the comment.