2010 Prediction: Michael Rowan, Viridity Software
The Future of Data Center Energy Management
Today's data centers are running out of power, cooling and space, as they struggle to keep pace with relentless change.
Traditionally, power, cooling, and utilization have been monitored and managed separately by three primary groups in the organization – IT/IS management, facilities management, and the C suite (i.e., CIO, CFO and CEO). While each constituent is dedicated to maximizing the data center and its assets as well as managing its expense, each comes at it from separate corners with very little – if any – intercommunication. Energy consumption has become a priority; it is expensive and it is limited. But even the most sophisticated organizations have no idea how much energy headroom remains and whether or not they are living on borrowed time. Consequently, businesses often target the data center as an obstacle to growth because it might shortly be out of power, cooling, or both. Perhaps worse, organizations unwittingly make significant equipment and application investments that the data center cannot accommodate because these resources are now in fact depleted.
This paradigm has seriously impacted both operational and capital expenses. First of all, in virtually all data centers, operational energy costs are now approaching and will exceed capital expenses, within the next few years. Secondly, most data centers are managed with tools designed for either facilities or IT asset management. These poorly integrated tools lack cross functional comprehension and insight to how their IT equipment and applications really consume power. Last – but certainly not least – enterprise organizations frequently build full data centers years ahead of need, in order to keep pace and adjust to business growth. This over-provisioning of energy on day one of operations leaves companies unsure of how to access their full power potential safely on day two. Of course, this has far-reaching implications outside the data center too. Utility companies work to prevent future energy shortages and build new power plants that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and that cost hits not just the data center, but every common consumer as well.
In the future, expect to see actual data center power costs and the budget for the data center to be moved explicitly under the CIO, and expect the CIO’s MBO’s (managed business objectives) to include power efficiency. While regulatory requirements are inevitable, the sheer magnitude of energy costs and their impact on virtually all businesses’ bottom line will make this a reality well before governmental regulations makes it a legal requirement.
Because, the power cost for running a server exceeds the actual cost of the server (usually within two years and shrinking!), expect power cost to not only be part of a detailed business-unit/application charge-back system, but that power cost will become a primary driver in procurement and solution architecture.
