As the IT sector and global enterprises tend to embrace the ‘Go Green’ approach worldwide, we come across terms like green computing and green storage. It is said that a single, short email generates about 4 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent. In a way, zillions of emails with attachments contribute in increasing the carbon footprints on the earth. The green data center comes as a technological answer to reduce the carbon footprint and keep our planet free from the hazardous impact of increased carbon.
Green Data Center- Introduction and Importance
Energy efficiency and minimum impact on the environment remain in the core of a green data center. A repository for storage, management, and dissemination of data, where all the systems including mechanical and electrical systems conserve the energy, is known as a green or sustainable data center. It emits fewer carbon footprints thereby saving a huge cost and increase efficiency.
These eco-friendly data centers assist modern businesses in saving electricity consumption and reducing carbon emissions. Globally, their usage is increasing among large enterprises and SMBs alike. From the collection to processing and evaluation to distribution- such data centers can effectively serve the objectives for a plethora of corporate data.
The green data center market is expected to grow in networking solutions at a CAGR of around 27% by 2024. This enormous growth is largely attributed to the exponential growth in the Asia Pacific region in the recent years. This region is poised to show the consistent growth over the years because of emergence of startups and industrial boom in the countries like India and China.
Factors responsible for the prevalence of green data center
- Paradigm shift from non-renewable to renewable energy sources in the US and Europe
- Government’s push for reducing PUE in the UK and Singapore
- Rising electricity tariffs across Europe
- Growth in data and increased awareness about the environment safety
Apart from these macro aspects, some micro factors are also responsible for the emergence of green data centers globally.
Top Benefits of Green Data Center
- Next-gen Storage Experience
The BFSI sector and other industrial sectors have recorded a tremendous growth in data over the recent years. This rapid growth in data leads enterprises to find a sustainable and virtual data center. Such data centers are advanced and more cost-effective than traditional data centers to meet the company’s ever-increasing data requirements. Virtual data centers are capable of offering the futuristic data storage facility irrespective of business model and size.
- Reduced Impact on Environment
The green or sustainable data centers reduce the energy consumption and exert less impact on environment as compared to the traditional ones. What’s more, the new equipment and newer techniques to save energy can be implemented in the sustainable data centers with ease. This implementation contributes a lot in reducing the carbon footprints and adverse effect on our environment.
- Consumed Less Energy
The virtual data center has increased efficiency in energy consumption. Virtualization enables the IT staff to monitor and control the equipment from a remote location. It enables the data center management to keep the optimum temperature along with a minimal lighting. Even the minor increase in the temperature can reduce the energy cost significantly, and the virtual data center enables the operators to maintain the temperature for consuming less energy.
- Turning Off Unused Servers
The traditional data center allocates specific storage space on the basis of the client company’s requirements. After some time, as the need increases, the data center allocates additional space automatically. Now, this process often creates dead server space. As per the estimate, up to a fifth of all servers are idle or unused mainly due to this reason. These servers consume power and other resources though to increase the capital expenditure. The green data centers can turn these servers off and reduces the energy consumption and cost.
- Decreased Capital Expenditure
One of the major reasons why you have to pay a lot of bucks for using data centers is the power consumption is very high at traditional data centers. Now, green or environment-friendly data centers use the minimum amount of power thanks to continuous monitoring and effective data management services. Also, such data centers can reclaim unused power to use it for different applications. In a way, these data centers consume energy very efficiently thereby reducing the capital expenditure.
Both virtual and dark data centers are highly efficient and utilize much less energy than traditional data centers. The data center management can help your business to make the most of such eco-friendly data centers.
Concluding Remarks
If the proper data center management is implemented, the green data center can offer up to 60% savings in hardware cost and a 32% increase in PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness). Also, the green data centers can reduce the carbon footprints significantly by providing efficient energy consumption. In a way, your business can contribute to protecting the environment while saving different costs. Giants like eBay, Amazon, Facebook, and NSIDC rely on green or sustainable data centers for their operations.
As a VMware and Microsoft Gold certified partner, we offer the best-in-class server virtualization solutions. We provide data center management services and enable your business to leverage the benefits of virtualization. Our green data center is capable of improving energy efficiency and save the cost on energy consumption.
