Where to Start Cutting Data Center Power Costs

Pouchet's first rule is to obtain complete and detailed understanding of all equipment power requirements and determine which units consume most of an enterprise's power. He also strongly suggested setting up corporate policies to conserve power, as well as upgrading to higher-efficiency equipment whenever possible.

"You start by knowing what you've got -- by understanding the utility bill. Most data centers, unfortunately, don't understand utility bills," Pouchet said.
"A lot of studies have been made on this -- by the Green Grid and others -- and we're finding generally that we don't know how much power we're using in data centers and where that power is going."

Normally, power bills are never seen by IT managers and are instead paid by the chief facilities manager.

Taking stock of servers, lighting, air conditioning, UPS (uninterruptible power supplies), and everything else electrical is the first step. "Then you can say, OK, we have a starting point. Now you can step back and say, 'What can I do differently?'" Pouche said.

Maybe you don't need all the servers you have running at the same time, Pouchet said. Turn them off, then -- manually, or by automation.

"If you're using 50 percent of the capacity of all your servers, congratulations -- you're the only IT manager on the face of the Earth doing that. Most of us are using 10 or 15 percent. Try to increase the capacity for servers that are being used, and turn off -- or spin down -- the ones which are little used," Pouchet said.