{"id":7017,"date":"2021-06-16T21:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T19:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/?p=7017"},"modified":"2021-06-16T21:22:10","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T19:22:10","slug":"datacentre-energy-efficiency-is-the-time-now-for-a-big-switch-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/datacentre-energy-efficiency-is-the-time-now-for-a-big-switch-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Datacentre energy efficiency: Is the time now for a big switch-off?"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 6<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

The clock is ticking on sustainable IT and energy use, and much more can be done to save energy, power and reduce emissions at a datacentre level. So why isn\u2019t it happening?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Fleur<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Fleur Doidge<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Datacentres represent a growing share of global power consumption and emissions. An average user PC consumes\u00a01.3 kWh\u00a0of electricity every three hours, without even going online; transmitting a million static webpage requests per second has been\u00a0estimated at another 11.610 kilowatts per hour (kWh) \u2013 or enough to power 13 US households\u00a0for a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Peter Hewkin, founder of UK edge computing company\u00a0Smart Edge Data Centres\u00a0(SEDC),\u00a0many countries at peak times are already facing limited capacity, with the next wave of data-hungry digital growth on the way. But he also estimates that at least 85% of data stored by UK limited companies, and therefore 85% of data now kept in conventional datacentres or server rooms, could be switched off when not required \u2013 and kept in \u201cwarm\u201d storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCurrent year\u2019s accounts should be accessible all the time, but not the remaining six years\u2019,\u201d he points out. \u201cIf a datacentre currently consumes 1MW every hour, only 150kW every hour might be required to support the critical data.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Consumption of 1MW of energy 24 hours a day at \u00a380 per MWh might work out at around \u00a3700,000 a year. With warm storage making data accessible on business days only (excluding bank holidays) or 252 days a year, savings already reach 30%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If data access can be restricted to a named two hours from Monday to Friday, that works out at just 506 hours a year \u2013 less than six percent of the current global standard of 8,760 hours. \u201cSome 15% of data needs to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we still only come to a figure of 1,820 hours,\u201d says Hewkin, adding that better pricing might be negotiated with suppliers for staying out of \u201cred\u201d peak times, for instance after 4pm and before 8pm. \u201cThis represents nearly an 80% saving on total consumption and CO2<\/sub> emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For green and orange band pricing, he believes a price of around \u00a360\/MWh could be realistic, with even \u00a320\/MWh potentially achievable if only two hours a day at green band pricing are required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUsing 150kW 24×7 at \u00a380\/MWh our annual electricity charge will be around \u00a3105,120. The remaining 850kW are only used for 506 hours a year at \u00a360\/MWh, equating to \u00a325,806. The annual total is \u00a3130,926 compared to \u00a3700,800 currently. This represents a saving of 81%,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electricity consumption<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

John Booth, managing director of consultancy\u00a0Carbon3IT, estimates datacentres, including colocation facilities, account for at least 12% of UK electricity consumption, or 41.11TWh a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cisco has previously\u00a0forecast\u00a0global cloud IP traffic to exceed 14.1 zettabytes (ZB) by the end of 2020; IDC\u2019s Seagate sponsored\u00a0Data Age 2025 report<\/em>\u00a0projects overall data growth of 30% a year to hit 175 ZB \u2013 with data stored of 7.5ZB, up from 1.1ZB in 2019. Hyperscaler growth alone is expected to continue at a CAGR of 2% a year until 2025,\u00a0according to ResearchAnd Markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Datacentre efficiency: a work in progress<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sustainability innovations of all kinds do continue to increase efficiency in datacentres, but there\u2019s clearly still scope for other approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

French researchers Issam Ra\u00efs, Anne-C\u00e9cile Orgerie and Martin Quinson, writing in peer-reviewed journal\u00a0Concurrency and computation practice and experience,<\/em>\u00a0quantified the likely impact of various shutdown techniques in the datacentre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Operators have often been reluctant to reduce their number of switched-on servers because of worries about reactivity and hardware failures, and misjudgements about energy gain, they suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team simulated various production infrastructures and machine configurations under different shutdown policies and workload predictions. These include actual server switch-off and hibernation modes, and suspend-to-disk and suspend-to-RAM techniques, heterogeneous processing, and boot-up costs in time and energy as well as server lifetime, as well as looking at energy-aware algorithms (in related work).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShutdown techniques can save at least 84% of energy otherwise lost to power idle nodes. This remains true for prospective energy-proportional hardware and even aggressive shutdown policies do not impact hardware lifetimes,\u201d they write.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

SEDC\u2019s Hewkin notes that some forecasts still estimate that datacentre power consumption could devour 20% of UK generation in the next few years if current trends continue. Yet most data generated is only used a few times, sometimes only once, and then stored forever \u201cjust in case\u201d, such as bank accounts or a company\u2019s trading accounts. Banks have already started moving older consumer data into \u201ccold\u201d inaccessible storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warm datacentres<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, he anticipates that \u201cwarm\u201d datacentres might cost half as much to build as traditional datacentres, with less plant equipment and no backup generators. Existing datacentres could be repurposed, concludes Hewkin, for emerging data-driven use cases from automation to AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New technologies and strategies across hardware, media, software and architecture can continue to reduce data traffic and storage requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief among these are software solutions, including active archiving, that control access to data \u2013 as \u00a0a major challenge to a big switch-off at server level has been\u00a0how to efficiently provision resources dynamically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On-demand workloads are highly variable, with no well-established taxonomy that defines them as they cross the cloud. Inter- and intra- migration of virtual resources can be a problem even as IaaS, PaaS and containerisation continue to advance alongside prediction methods such as regression or time-series techniques.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Tony Lock, distinguished analyst at\u00a0Freeform Dynamics, agrees that suitable software solutions are beginning to emerge. Approaches will likely select from and combine the mix of media types available and increasingly cost-effective \u2013 from Solid State Disk (SSD) to tape, disk and \u201cperhaps even non-volatile memory in future\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, if datacentres are to start switching off customer data, they had better be sure those customers are not going to want to use it or even look at it, he says. A big switch-off \u201csounds wonderfully simple in theory \u2013 the problem is that in practice, it\u2019s an absolute nightmare\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole area of data accessibility is full of pitfalls that are likely to cause massive friction between customers, IT providers, IT teams in the enterprise, and datacentre companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really difficult to actually classify that data. Yes, you can go through it and maybe try and look at when was the last time it was accessed,\u201d says Lock. \u201cSay that was some time ago, so maybe you can move it to a cooler, cheaper form of storage, or eventually switch it to something which doesn\u2019t consume any electricity at all until you want to restore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data discovery investment needed<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An investment in data discovery and analysis, which obviously takes time, effort and resources too, is required \u2013 and will probably be ongoing. Only after analysis should data be moved offline to a cold, or even warm, storage alternative according to specific business needs and requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to be absolutely certain the user of that data isn\u2019t going to go looking for it very quickly,\u201d says Lock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnless you can start using some sophisticated form of quasi-archiving software, not only knowing what data they\u2019ve got but understanding how valuable it really is to the business, and what are the politics involved in doing something about moving it elsewhere, achieving that is complicated.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But Lock points to emerging developments in autonomous data management software for multiple storage platforms and cloud by many \u201cvery large\u201d incumbents and \u201cextremely well-funded\u201d new entrants, as well as supplier-neutral organisation the\u00a0Active Archive Alliance\u00a0(AAA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AAA promotes automated policy-based migration that frees up primary storage as data ages \u2013 although it focuses on actively archived data that remains retrievable and searchable, somewhat sidestepping the question of changing people\u2019s expectations of data availability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u00a0believes that\u00a0at least 60% of the predicted 7.5 ZB stored by 2025 does not need to be on expensive, higher performance tiers and can be archived after 90-120 days of low activity \u2013 unchanging and rarely overwritten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot all this data should be archived. But much of it should be, thanks to strong retention policies and the new-found ability to gain value from archived data,\u201d an\u00a0AAA report\u00a0states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Factoring in the user<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lock notes that end users will typically complain when immediate data availability is removed. This is perfectly understandable in behavioural science terms \u2013 it is their data, so they want access and control, whenever and however they want it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enterprises and users \u2013 the politics and\u00a0policies\u00a0\u2013 must first come to terms with the idea of data not being \u201calways on\u201d. Providers must examine how customers and internal business users will react: have policies actually been explained to the users? Or will the business leave IT to take the blame for any lack of transparency?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to have the right tech in place, but you\u2019ve got to have the right people and policies for the business to be willing to do something about this,\u201d says Lock. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve been talking about ownership of data for a long time. Businesses want to be able to see their data. They don\u2019t actually want to do anything about it, though \u2013 unless it\u2019s really easy, or preferably invisible, for them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

SEDC\u2019s Hewkin agrees: \u201cThe industry has yet to adapt to data that is not available 24×7. It is assumed that everything we need to know will always be available at a touch of a button or click of a mouse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 6<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>The clock is ticking on sustainable IT and energy use, and much more can be done to save energy, power and reduce emissions at a datacentre level. So why isn\u2019t it happening? By Fleur Doidge Datacentres represent a growing share of global power consumption and emissions. An average user PC consumes\u00a01.3 kWh\u00a0of electricity every three hours, without even going online;<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155,38,35,8,4,268,30,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-batting-for-tech-in-the-covid-19-times","category-best-practices-for-data-center-operations","category-data-center-facilities","category-data-center-hardware","category-datacenter-news","category-datacentre-energy-efficiency-and-green-it","category-expert-advise-and-opinion","category-industry-news-and-expert-advise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7018,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions\/7018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}