Future Proofing Your Data Center for 2020
With 2019 coming to an end, it’s a good time to tackle some of the low hanging fruit to ensure your Data Center is ready to start the New Year stronger and more efficient. The end of year often brings a reflection on the past twelve months and planning for future improvements. While it’s also a difficult time to fit in additional projects, there are a number of simple items Data Center operators can implement that will make a huge impact and have the potential to save money.
Stem to Stern Data Center Evaluation
Conducting a comprehensive review of your operations can be a great way to find problem points and address them. By analyzing your systems – UPS power, air conditioning, cabling, monitoring and reliability, a Data Center or Facilities Manager can develop a snapshot of how effective Data Center operations are. To make this process easier, DSI created the Data Center Report Card, a tool that enables IT and Facilities personnel to quickly see a full picture of their Data Center setup and systems. If you’re still feeling bogged down with your regular day-to-day activities, DSI will dispatch one of its professionals to your site to conduct a complimentary assessment and provide you with a report on how to take actionable steps.
Along with a comprehensive review of systems, operators should conduct a specialized Energy Audit. This is an important step for Data Centers to understand how much energy they use and are taking. From it, operators can evaluate simple steps such as hot and cold aisle containment and blanking panels. The Energy Audit provides a more complete picture of energy consumption and can identify specific changes or upgrades to systems or equipment to save energy and reduce costs.
Related to Energy Audits, an item that is often overlooked by operators is lighting. In addition to controlling a Data Center’s lighting, operators can look at upgrading the Data Centers’ lightbulbs. Existing traditional or halogen incandescent bulbs can be replaced with more efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), which use a fourth of the energy of incandescent bulbs. Or the existing bulbs can be replaced with LEDs, which use 20-25% less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and 25-30% less than halogen incandescent bulbs and last up to 25 times longer.
In the coming weeks, DSI will be providing information on other initiatives operators can implement to start 2020 strong and gain a competitive advantage on the competition. Please stay tuned to this blog and the industry trade publications to see our experts weigh in. And definitely reach out if you would like us to provide a Data Center well-being check.