EDITOR’S QUESTION
DR STU REDSHAW,
FOUNDER AND CTO,
EKKOSENSE
ast year was perhaps
the year that climate
L
really came to dominate
the social, political and
corporate agenda, with
organisations competing
to sign up to the most impressive net zero
carbon commitments.
These won’t be easy targets to achieve
and the data centre sector – already
established as one of the world’s highest
consumers of energy – is going to find
itself increasingly in the spotlight as
management seeks out quick carbon
wins to demonstrate commitment to
their net zero progress. So, for data centre
operations and facilities management
teams, the bar has been raised. It’s no
longer a question of whether they can
develop a
greener approach
to operations, but
now a discussion of
how much energy they
have saved and what are
they working on next.
Unfortunately for data
centre teams, these corporate
pressures couldn’t have come at
a worse time. Last year saw record
temperatures and there’s been a
continued escalating demand for hosted
data centre services – amplified recently
by the transition to home-working
effected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The good news, however, is that there is
lots that data centres can actually do to
deliver an improved energy performance.
Even the best run data centres have
cooling power and capacity issues and
cooling still remains the data centre’s
second largest energy consumer.
EkkoSense research has shown that – on
average – cooling still typically only runs
INSTEAD OF
JUST ADDING
MORE AND MORE
COOLING, IT
MAKES MUCH
MORE SENSE TO
MANAGE YOUR
DATA CENTRE
SPACE MORE
EFFICIENTLY.
at 34% capacity, so for most data centres
there’s a real opportunity to optimise
thermal performance and use your cooling
more efficiently. Instead of just adding
more and more cooling, it makes much
more sense to manage your data centre
space more efficiently.
That’s why data centre thermal
optimisation has such a key role to
play as there’s so much more that can
be done to reduce data centre energy
consumption. At EkkoSense, we’ve
found that with rooms optimised using
our EkkoSoft Critical software, we’ve
been able to not only remove 100% of
thermal risk but also deliver an average
24% cooling energy saving. This makes
a huge difference as so much energy
consumption is taken up by cooling.
But it’s important to remember that data
centres don’t remain static. Workloads
increase, racks get moved, new
technology gets added. That’s why we
recommend taking advantage of ongoing
best practice industry thermal expertise.
We’ve taken the PhD-level thermal
analysis expertise of our data centre
optimisation experts and built it into
the heart of our software. This results
in simple, easy-to-understand advice to
enable our customers to benefit from
guaranteed ongoing energy savings of
10% – just by following practical advice
from the software.
Example recommendations – based
on real-time thermal and capacity
data – include identifying data centre
floor tiles or grilles that need changing,
recommending immediate adjustments to
setpoints in the coldest part of the room,
as well as monitoring AHUs to highlight
and suspend those not actually doing any
active cooling. ◊
32 Issue 15
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