The Significance of Green IT in the Data Center

Essentially green IT focuses on the use of Information Technology in an efficient manner that concentrates on energy savings. Going Green can be both environmentally responsible and cost efficient for the enterprise. A successful green initiative not only increases the availability of IT infrastructure but also helps reduce costs for the enterprise. True green IT focuses on reducing the carbon footprint and goes further to educate and engage the community in the ways of green computing to give back to the community and the environment. It can also be a platform to bring in a new level of discipline in IT provisioning and management. Green IT has tremendous significance, whether you're looking at specific practices from power management to virtualization or taking a top-level look at corporate sustainability goals.

The Green Data Center

Data centers represent the starting point for green IT initiatives in most companies. Data centers are found in nearly every sector of the economy, including financial services, media, high-tech, universities, and government institutions. An efficient, well-designed datacenter is important for every organization as it can reduce down-time, enhance output and reduce operation and maintenance costs. Perhaps the biggest benefit is that a properly maintained datacenter can save significant capital expenditures by eliminating the need for upgrades.

The key aspect to achieving a Green Data Center is power management. A green data center is a repository for the storage, management, and dissemination of data in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical, and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. As companies spend the same on cooling in the data centre as they do on electronics, there is a need to optimize and take the green initiative. Among the other widely reported practices, companies are using to green their IT departments are power management and the adoption of cloud computing services, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) projects. Looking at more long term solutions, the data center footprints can be transformed more sustainable strategies like consolidation and virtualization.

Is virtualization the answer?

By virtualizing, a single piece of hardware functions as multiple pieces. Different user interfaces isolate portions of the hardware, and make each one operate as a separate entity. In data centers, installing virtual infrastructure allows more operating systems and applications to run on fewer servers, which reduces overall energy use and cooling requirements. Virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012, according to Gartner, as it has the potential to play a much larger role in the quest towards Green Information Technology (IT).

Data center managers will not replace their existing management tools and vendors will have to work to cover more platforms and help customers manage heterogeneous environments. An enterprise must look at all the aspects of the environmental impact to achieve energy efficient and clean IT.

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Essential Aspects to Achieve Green IT

It is said that India has the potential to come up as the center for datacenter hosting services for close by markets. However, the biggest challenge lies in the shortage of energy supplies in the country. Mulling over on the scenario, Gartner recommends that Indian companies should now adopt the concept of Green IT and move towards IT transformation such as virtualization and other innovative technologies.

Research and reports highlights the potential of the Indian datacenter capacity. As per the Gartner projections, the overall datacenter capacity would reach to approximately 5.1 million square feet by 2012. This capacity is expected to increase in the next two years, with hosted as well as captive data centers flourishing at comparable charges. It is a fact that IT has remained unsustainable for quiet some time. There are massive data centers that feed on electricity and cases where numerous computers burn up the processor power while carrying background methods. All this leads to piles of documents and mails that are unnecessarily printed off but hardly read.

Factors such as these are paramount enough to opt in for a Green ITsystem into work along with other reasons. There are numerous EU and UK campaigns and regulations opt in for a greener business. Today employees are becoming extremely “Green aware”, wants to look at their organization as a solution provider than pondering for long hours at a problem. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate a more organized work culture and IT infrastructure that would help an organization to contribute environmentally.

The best way to define Green IT is by following methods and procedures that would increase the energy efficiency of IT Datacenters and IT hardware and other systems. Owing to the fact that IT consumes huge quantities of renewable and non-renewable sources, for instance platinum and silicon, a greater part of Green IT includes minimizing the electronic parts wastage. Simply put Green IT refers to the reduction of datacenter footprint over environment.

Datacenter virtualization is one of the means to work towards Green IT that most companies are adopting. IT experts and practitioners accept the fact that Datacenter Virtualization enhances the performance as well as the IT efficiency, helps in quick disaster recovery and brings down the cooling and power expenses. In addition to that, Datacenter consolidation is yet another step towards Green IT when your organization is not equipped enough to launch a virtualization project. In such a case, you can simply consolidate your present server and can attain a Green IT workspace.

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The Green IT Environment Era

Much has being talked about Green IT these days. To begin with, let us try to understand the concept. Unlike popular opinion, Green IT is not at all about purchasing a suite of jazzy green hardware and or other IT paraphernalia. Rather the concept is all about holistic efficiency and that is what leads to more sustainable IT transformation.

In the recent past, there have been several concerns about global warming, corporate social responsibility and energy conservation issues that are resulting in an unmatched amount of media coverage about the importance and requirement of a Green environment. Apart from heavy press coverage, environmental protection concerns are gaining prominence even with the IT managers.

Therefore, adopting Green IT measures would mean to be environmentally accountable as well as adopt a cost-effective approach. A successful and efficient Green initiative increases the accessibility of IT infrastructure as well as minimizes the enterprise expense. Furthermore, it can be a platform for generating a fresh level of discipline in IT management and provisioning.

 The Why of the Green IT concept 

According to researchers and IT experts, IT has been thriving on an unsustainable path for some years. There are massive data centers that are feeding on electricity and millions of computer burn up processor power conducting background processes most of the time when users are in discussions. All these result in excess of documents and emails printed unnecessarily that remains unused.

 These above mentioned causes are the reasons as to why there is a need for Green IT infrastructure today. Other than this, there are other reasons too. Majority of EU and UK campaigns and regulations demand greener business. Today employees are becoming “green aware” and aims to see their respective organizations playing an active part in any solution than deteriorating any problem. Eventually, there will be someone or something, for instance a client, your boss or a government body, who would demand you to be aware of what you are practicing to comply with, advance or assist your organization’s attempts in becoming more environmentally accountable.

 Today there are numerous service providers offering Green IT solutions by increasing the efficiency of the IT hardware, IT Data Centers and other allied fields. Datacenter virtualization and Datacenter consolidation are two essential elements contributing towards a Green IT environment. In fact, it is estimated that virtualization is going to be the most influential trend-changing infrastructure throughout 2012. For the ones not prepared to undertake virtualization the best option is to consolidate the existing server.

However, the key in being able to address and manage the various aspects of a Green Datacenter is to adopt a holistic approach. The organization needs to take into consideration of all the environmental impacts rather than concentrating only on the obvious factors.

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