Digi-Data DPM: Addressing The Power Problem

Power, cooling and data center efficiency are increasingly becoming a requirement for many organizations today. From a pure technology perspective, increased server, storage and connectivity density are creating new power challenges for data center managers. While this challenge is still relatively binary today (organizations either have a problem or they don't), it will become increasingly widespread in the future.

The proliferation of dense and energy consuming server and storage systems is putting an increasing strain on power grids to the point that, in some data centers, servers are literally sitting idle because there isn't enough electricity to power them. Keeping these systems cool is also a big challenge for organizations. In fact, for some, it is a bigger challenge than actually powering the systems. Organizations with large data centers housing racks and racks of traditional servers and storage systems and organizations in metropolitan areas where space and power tends to be in shortest supply are feeling the greatest pinch—from both a power and cooling standpoint.

Power and cooling issues aren't just problems affecting large or metropolitan organizations. Rising power costs affect just about everybody on some scale. According to the Department of Energy, the average cost of power in the United States has increased 32% since 2000 to 9.28 cents per kilowatt-hour. As Figure One shows, the cost of power varies significantly in the US. It is highest in regions along the densely populated East and West Coasts (where power is typically in shortest supply and in greatest demand), as well as in Alaska and Hawaii. In these locations in particular, power costs are key considerations from an OPEX (Operating Expendatures) standpoint, accounting for an increasingly large percentage of the overall IT budget.