The demand for more computing services across communities and enterprises continues to rise in parallel with the continuous growth and expansion of data and information. This, in turn, has led to exponential growth of cloud and storage services, and that has led to a significant increase in power consumption to meet all these demands.
The resulting environmental impact and increased pressure on energy sources due to inefficiency is a significant problem in today’s IT environment.
The Computer Operations Department (COD) has long kept an eye toward employing green strategies in operating its corporate IT computing data centers, remaining alert to the carbon footprint of their managed services and hosted facilities, as well as the operational efficiency of Aramco’s businesses.
what COD does to achieve a green data center
A green data center is defined as a server facility designed with energy efficiency and low environmental impact in mind, i.e., one whose operations produce only minimal emissions of carbon even when running around the clock.
How is this achieved? First, obsolete servers, storage appliances, and network devices should be replaced with newer, more capable and efficient ones in terms of power consumption. COD has always granted the highest priorities to such projects when it comes to upgrading and optimizing data center facilities.
Conducting a periodic baseline audit for energy efficiency is another practice to assist in improved efficiency in running devices. This will provide an excellent overview of future capacity planning.
Meanwhile, riding on cloud services is considered to be a milestone toward achieving the green environment initiative, as it enables running multiple applications that are used to run in 12 servers on top of one server. This reduces the number of running facilities and allocated space for devices, resulting in a major reduction in cost, and wise usage of energy deriving utilities.
Cooling optimization is another main factor behind draining power sources in data centers, and it has always been challenging to find alternative cooling sources that contribute to more efficient data center operational cost, as it significantly impacts power use.
an endless pursuit of improvement
Researchers, analysts, and specialists consistently pursue advancements for more efficient and cost-effective cooling solutions, and the IT industry has always looked into ways to green up data centers. It has done this over the past few decades by adopting more energy efficient equipment, thereby reducing adverse environmental factors.
But more importantly, organizations that embrace “greening up” data centers are able to create less expensive infrastructure, as well as wiser energy consumption methods, creating a greener environment for everyone.