Indian technology expert proposes greener data centres

Indian data centre technologies expert Shekhar Dasgupta has presented a new set of measures that go well beyond raising efficiency of IT infrastructure paving the way for leaner and greener data centres.

These measures could improve performance and revenue besides reducing costs and environmental impact, he said speaking at the Data Centre World meet in Las Vegas last Friday.

Asking chief information officers (CIOs) to look beyond IT infrastructure, he urged them to treat power, space, cooling and networks as an integral part of Data Centres, which are home to mission critical applications and data.

Data centres are designed to be fail-safe with multi level back up in power, computers, networks and air-conditioning virtually turning them to be energy guzzlers.

It is estimated that data centres consume over 2 per cent of utility-produced electrical power in the United States and European Union.

A new breed of multi-tenant data centres, set up to address the Cloud infrastructure environment, together with tens of thousands captive data centres is leading to an unprecedented 15 per cent power consumption each year, Dasgupta said.

As large consumers of power CIOs have a role in mitigating risks to the environment.

Dasgupta proposed a Digital Services Efficiency (DSE) measure for data centres that works well with Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Software.

This alone, he said, could lead to optimisation of power, space, cooling, networks and IT infrastructure requirements in a Data Centre and mitigate environmental impact.

Kicked off in Las Vegas on April 28, Data Centre World is the premier global meet for data centre managers.