CASE STUDY: THE GREENING OF THE DATA CENTER

Q1.What business and social problems does data center power consumption cause?

Power consumptions by data center have negative environmental implications. The excessive power that is being consumed by these data centers uses a vast amount of electricity produced through hydroelectric plants or coal-fired power plants resources for more useful purposes. When electricity is generated from coal, it generates a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which some scientists and politicians claim is a major cause of global warming. Businesses have to pay huge amounts of money to acquire electricity to power their servers for maintaining websites, analyzing large pools of transactions or social media data which requires more and more power-hungry machines in business resulting in overheating which may lead to server failure hence these servers need to be kept cool for it to be operational by paying for more electricity through expenditure of financial resources. Therefore, power consumption has mostly financial implications. Besides that, the social problem that the data center power consumption cause is high corporate operating costs.

Q2. What solutions are available for these problems? Are they management, organizational, or technology solutions? Explain your answer.

Some of the solutions to cut power consumption discussed in the case study are a good beginning.

People: Employee telecommuting; users understanding and abiding by policies in which they turn PCs off when not in use as in all employees in the management should accept the responsibility of turning off their computers as they leave their desks.

For example Acorda:

• A $210 million-per-year maker of drugs to treat nervous disorders such as multiple sclerosis.
• Installed motion sensors and invested in the intelligent cooling system to boost energy efficiency at the new facility.
• Preparing to test virtualized desktops.

Organizational: Building data centers that take advantage of hydroelectric power generation rather than coal-fired power plants as they are less stressful on the environment; renewable energy projects; alternative energy; better management of computing resources. Organizations should look for solar energy solutions that would help the environment and save money

For example Facebook:

• Publicly posted the specifications for the design of its data centers.
• Facebook’s engineers modified the programming in the servers.

Technology: Thin client computers, software that automatically turns computers off; more efficient chips. Perhaps the most environment-friendly solutions are those that control the hardware and software, thereby controlling the problem at its source. Virtualization holds great promise as a way to reduce power requirements by reducing the number of servers required to run applications.

For example cloud computing system:

• Optimized for virtualization and for supporting as many different subscribing companies as possible.
• Produce major savings when doing the computing for large numbers of companies.

All of the environment-friendly solutions that reduce carbon emission are:

• Using centrally monitored power management software 2) Training people/employees about energy consumption 3) Better management of resources 4) Moving towards cloud computing 5) Telecommuting 6) Terminal servers

Q3.What are the business benefits and costs of these solutions?

Even though it may cost business up-front money to install hardware and software that reduces power requirements, it will save a business a lot of money in the long run by reducing the amount it pays for electricity to run the equipment and cool it at the same time. Businesses that reduce their power needs help the environment and can promote themselves as environment-friendly

Certain changes or solutions that will benefit the business by reducing costs are:

–Reduce the human resources in the data center: Virtualization in data center helps to reduce the number of servers and storage resources in a firm’s IT infrastructure.

–Make firm more energy- efficient: Installed motion sensors will shut off the light after five minutes if no movement is detected. This enable firm greatly reduces the power required to run a workstation.

– Reduce corporate operating costs: the Intelligent cooling system will automatically change setting of the computer as the conditions change. The intelligent cooling system helps the firm to save the electric supply and thus, reduce the operating costs.

Q4. Should all firms move toward green computing? Why or why not?

Of course yes. Reasons:

All firms should make some effort to reduce their power requirements and promote green computing. From a business standpoint, it makes sense to reduce costs, both short term and long term.

-It is very effective to reduce their power requirements

-Reduce costs

-Reducing impacts on environmental and human health

-Helps to minimize the energy consumption by educating consumers on efficient ways to keep power usage low.

– Sustainable technology

-For sake of human existence

-For saving billions of dollars

-Next generation computing