'Going green has become a compelling factor'

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