HP to push for 'greener' data centres

There is no doubt the heavy consumption of electricity in data centres contributes significantly to global warming. It would be extremely helpful in the global effort to avert warming if each data centre could reduce its power consumption, to minimise the environmental impact from carbon dioxide emissions.

That is a mission Hewlett-Packard (HP) has set for itself. It will work towards helping data centres become more energy efficient.

Hewlett-Packard (Thailand) managing director Sanpat Sopon said to tackle the global warming problem, the company had introduced a new "green" data-centre concept that used technology to help data centres attain maximum energy efficiency with minimum environmental impact.

About half of a data centre's operating cost is attributable to power consumption, and this reduces the cost-efficiency of running a data centre.

Sanpat said the company would help data centres use their infrastructure wisely, in order to save energy and money.

The company has developed a solution called Dynamic Smart Cooling. It will allow data-centre operators to monitor power use and heat and control air-conditioning to suit the environment.

Through a sensor attached to the hardware, the system measures the temperature of the environment and the machine, in order to determine the overall heat status. This information is sent to a black box, which is connected to an air-conditioner that makes automatic adjustments to control the environment.

"With this system, data-centre operators can use energy wisely. Instead of running the air-conditioner for the entire area all the time, they'll now know exactly which area they should concentrate on and be able to save energy," Sanpat said.

The technology is expected to help data centres reduce power and cooling inefficiencies anywhere from 20-45 per cent.

Dynamic Smart Cooling was first implemented in HP's US data centre. After the system's implementation, the 1,900-square-metre data centre saved on operational costs at the rate of US$700,000 (Bt22.61 million) per year with a 30-per-cent reduction in cooling consumption. This translates into a reduction of 6 million pounds of carbon dioxide emission per year - equal to about 1,000 round trips from New York to San Francisco in a sport-utility vehicle.

Sanpat said the company was introducing the new concept to customers in Thailand through a consultancy service, in order to optimise energy use in existing data centres. The service starts by making an assessment of the data centre and conducting a thermal analysis.

It then applies the Dynamic Smart Cooling solution to the data centre's design.

"We are now educating the local data-centre operators about the new concept and hope to get the first site reference for our green technology within the year," Sanpat said.

HP started working on the energy efficiency of its data centres a few years ago by consolidating all 85 centres in 100 countries into three main data centres and three discovery centres. This has helped the company save about $200 million a year. Through such internal adjustments to become more energy efficient, the company was able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions about 18 per cent in 2006 from the year before.

HP plans to reduce energy consumption at all of its facilities by 2010.