Power, cooling, space issues set to escalate

Increasing server sales will escalate data center power, cooling and space problems, says Gartner.

Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner, said “Virtualization and consolidation projects will help offset some of these issues, but with the snowball effect that these issues tend to create within an organization, users need to act quickly.”

Mr. Kumar explained that while servers consume only about 15 percent of the direct energy in data centers, there is a cascade effect. The more servers that exist, the more heat is generated and, therefore, the more cooling equipment is needed. Hence, if the data center power, cooling and space problems were causing such headaches in a very depressed IT market, they will become significantly worse in an expanding market.

Gartner says users can manage these problems with following measures:

Do not underestimate the issues.
Quantify the problem. In all cases, accurate modeling and quantification are key to addressing the problem in a controlled manner.

Use monitoring tools.
The use of monitoring tools remains low but is readily available as part of core server management tools or as separate, server-independent tools for organizations.

Accelerate consolidation and virtualization projects.
The benefits of these multiyear projects particularly accrue toward the end of the project, so users should accelerate the speed of adoption and change.

Assess the benefits of delaying new server purchases.
In some cases, it may be beneficial to delay the acquisition and use capacity that is freed up from consolidation and virtualization projects. The equation is complex, because new servers typically use less energy than older ones.

For more details, please visit Gartner web site