Visiting a general practitioner for our annual checkup is an important
routine for maintaining health and well-being. Occasionally, seeing a
specialist is even required. However, humans aren’t the only ones who
should be receiving this type of attention each year — your data center
should be too!
What are assessments and upholding
best practices worth?
A typical 5,000 square-foot data center uses approximately 10 million kWh a year.1 The
Environmental Protection Agency concluded that best practices can eventually reduce data
center energy consumption by 50%.1 That would save the typical data center 5 million kWh –
enough to power a 2016 Ford Focus2 to drive approximately 15.6
million miles. It could drive around the earth 627 times!3
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STRONG HEART
SHARP BRAIN
Start your checkup at the heart of the data
Just as the human brain keeps each piece of the
center — the power system. UPS, capacitors
body working harmoniously, a comprehensive
and batteries all work to sustain critical
DCIM solution helps keep your data center
operations and can’t afford to flatline. UPS
running at peak efficiency—delivering real-time
equipment failure accounted for 27% of data
information allowing you to make the best
center outages in 2013, and the average
decisions to operate and maintain your
UPS-related failure costs $687,700.
infrastructure. Data center consolidation,
4
Gartner’s 2012 Data Center forecast
virtualization and cloud computing seem to
determined that there are approximately
be driving this solution – Gartner predicts
492,000 data centers worldwide. If 27%
that the market penetration for DCIM
of those data centers each lost $687,700,
products will grow from the current 12%
that would be more than $90 billion lost
to 60% by 2017.9
5
to power outages. You could buy a 16GB
iPad Air for the entire population of
France, Germany and Spain with that
kind of money! 6
EFFICIENT AIR INTAKE
& CIRCULATION
Check the air pumping through your data center.
Keep temperature and humidity in the ASHRAE
recommended range. Cooling accounts for 40%
of total energy use for the average data center
(approximately $2.96 billion).7 That would buy
you enough Ethernet cable to stretch from
Earth to the moon and back – about 4 times.8
Prevent wasting money by ensuring proper
airflow and cooling.
Sources:
1: Energy Logic: Reducing Data Center Energy Consumption by Creating Savings that Cascade
Across Systems (2008)
http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/other/Energy_Logic_Reducing_Data_Ce
nter_Energy_Consumption.pdf
2: 2016 Ford Focus: 99 MPGe Highway (32 kWh/100 miles)
http://www.ford.com/cars/focus/trim/electric/
3: Circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles
4: 2013 Study on Data Center Outages
http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/documentation/en-us/brands/liebert/documents/w
hite%20papers/2013_emerson_data_center_outages_sl-24679.pdf
5: Gartner’s Forecast: Data Centers, Worldwide, 2010-1016, 2012 Update
DIET AND EXERCISE
Proper diet and exercise are the best proactive
steps to a healthy body. Similarly, a proactive
approach to service and maintenance in the data
center can extend the life cycle of IT equipment
and delay major capital investments. To date,
preventive maintenance combined with
remote monitoring has resulted in zero
system outages due to failed batteries,
which normally account for 37% of all
system outages.10
6: A 16GB Apple iPad Air retails for approximately $400 dollars
http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipad-air
7: Energy Star’s Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Efficiency Opportunities
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/downloads/EPA_Datacenter_R
eport_Congress_Final1.pdf?3faa-d508
8: Average distance from the Earth to the moon is 238,857 miles.
9: Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) Report on Data Center Infrastructure Management
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/09/24/gartner-tackles-data-centermanagement-with-dcim-magic-quadrant/
10: Protect Power System Availability with Preventative Maintenance, Liebert Services
http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/en-US/Documents/Preventive%20Maintenance%2
0Slick.pdf