Page 58 -

2: The Basics of Green IT 23

between 5 percent and 15 percent. Direct-attached storage utilization
sits between 20 percent and 40 percent, with network storage between
60 percent and 80 percent. Virtualization can increase hardware utiliza-
tion by five to 20 times and allows organizations to reduce the number
of power-consuming servers. Such figures show why virtualization has
become a significant topic at all computer conferences. For example, at
the Interop 2008 conference, keynote speakers predicted that next-
generation data centers will take virtualization far beyond servers in a
bid to expedite application delivery. Data center consolidation and the
shift from virtualization at the server to implementing it throughout the
network for accelerated application delivery were threads running
through several 2008 Interop keynotes and conference sessions.

Build
Going green is easiest if you build a new data center. First, you make
a calculation of your server and other IT requirements for the foreseeable
future. Next, you plan a data center for modularity in both its IT ele-
ments and its power and cooling. Then you use data center modeling
ptg
and thermal assessment tools and software—available from vendors such
as APC, IBM, HP, and Sun—to design the data center. The next step is
to procure green from the beginning, which partly means to buy the lat-
est equipment and technologies, such as blade servers and virtualization.
After you have the equipment, you integrate it into high-density
modular compute racks, virtualize servers and storage, put in consoli-
dated power supply, choose from a range of modern cooling solutions,
and, finally, run, monitor, and manage the data center dynamics using
sensors that feed real-time compute, power, and cooling data into mod-
ern single-view management software that dynamically allocates
resources.
Over the next five years, the proliferation of 10 gigabit Ethernet will
enable a migration of IT to the new data center technology and better
delivery of applications. Also, we should see a complete move to virtual-
ization at the server, as well as the router, the storage network, and the
switches—basically throughout all network components. In that
process, new issues will arise, including how to ensure security and com-
pliance. An overview of an energy-efficiency strategy for data center
facilities is shown in Figure 2.2.