Do you know the environmental impact your current Data Center has? Are you concerned with sustainable infrastructure that has a greener community-centric focus? These questions and more are becoming more and more prevalent as businesses look for the perfect Data Center.
Environmental Impact and Cost are two monumental pieces to consider when looking for your next Data Center provider. It is important to not only keep costs low, but to have an eye for the environment – knowing how to reduce energy consumption without sacrificing performance.
With a lifespan of between 10-15 years, it is important for a Data Center to get things right at the very beginning to offer long-term cost savings, improved resiliency, and better performance – where the alternative is a poorly designed center that can result in ongoing challenges like frequent outages, which let’s face it, offers a much lower return on investment.
So how can you ensure that your Data Center selection is not only Environmentally Conscious but also Cost Efficient?
The secret is in the EF&I and here are three tips to look for to ensure that you are picking the right place the first time.
BETTER DESIGN AND LAYOUT
You should be able to decipher if a data center has a good design from the moment you enter the premises. Structured cabling, proper labeling, and efficient use of space are just some of the signs of a well-designed data center. For example, the layout of the racks impacts power and cooling. If the layout is not mindfully constructed – enterprises can easily overload power outlets.
Experience and expertise are two critical elements for understanding where these racks should be placed – and how the rest of the design of the data center should appear. Infrastructure is critically affected by density and must be scaled as businesses evolve.
This upfront planning for design by your data center will only benefit you in both environmental impact and cost, as the center will sustain longer and more efficiently if it is designed for optimal success.
SIMPLIFIED UPGRADES AND MAINTENANCE
Something to consider when thinking about sustainability and the data center, is how data centers enable simplified upgrades. Due to the fact that upgrades are solely known to be the primary means of advancing a center’s capabilities. While there are many benefits that come along with upgrades, there is also great risk for oversights and mistakes that can lead to ample downtime, disruptions in service, performance interruptions, and even security gaps.
Therefore, you don’t want to select your data center on looks alone, you also want a center to provide tangible benefits which ensure that maintenance and repairs, and upgrades of equipment can be handled in house – keeping costs low. This way, if something does go down in the tangled mess of cables that often occurs, the organization and up-to-date documentation of the entire system provides clarity for the pieces, their energy consumption, and what can and cannot be altered, or removed.
LOWER OPERATING COSTS AND BETTER PERFORMANCE
The prior two points directly contribute not only to the sustainability and reduced energy usage to lower environmental impact, but they also provide benefits to increased reliability and lower costs – which is paramount because data centers can consume as much as 200x the electricity of an office space. Therefore, energy usage is one of the largest ongoing expenses. According to the Uptime Institute Annual Global Data Center Survey 2021, PUE and power consumption are among the top tracked sustainability methods. With often preventable outages costing data centers anywhere between $100,000 and $1 million per outage, it is no surprise that fewer outages means lower costs and a better customer experience. To lower PUE and get the ratio closer to 1.0, look for a center that has some of the following systems in place: virtualizing servers, optimization of cool air production, energy-efficient uninterruptible power supply, energy efficient lighting, and replacing insufficient hardware.
Knowing the basics when looking for the right Data Center that has environmental impact and cost effectiveness at the forefront is critical when establishing a connection with an IT Services provider that you can trust.
At Sphaera we ensure that all of your needs can be addressed in house, and as such your carbon footprint can be reduced in the process.
