Plenty of Bandwidth, Not Enough Power: Responsible Data Center Power Allocation

Having enough bandwidth for your servers won't do you any good if there isn't enough power at your data center. Power allocation in data centers is becoming an increasing problem these days with rising oil prices and increasing power costs. In the past it was enough to simply supply equal power throughout the racks, with little or no concern for the distribution. But as times are changing, there's a need to rethink the way the power is allocated in data centers. Costs of cooling and supplying power make it necessary to implement a new strategy for distributing power throughout the data center.

Start by Measuring

The first step in an effective energy management solution and power allocation is to start by measuring the current power consumption and needs of the data center. To do this, the data center will need to have both hardware and software components working hand-in-hand to address the following areas:

• wasted energy
• overuse of power by certain applications
• overheating
• "hot spots"
• air conditioning

Responsible Power Allocation

Once these issues are addressed, measured and monitored, the data center can create an effective plan for allocating their power usage. An effective solution should include the following components:

• Integrated Information- Data centers should start by having a consolidated view of the power requirements including those of regulating the temperature and allocating the power to all applications with the data center.

• Flexible power management- The ability to manage power within a data center is useless if it isn't flexible. Part of responsible power management is the ability to change with changing needs. The data center should have the ability to either manually or automatically re-allocate power needs to servers or groups of servers. These changes should be based on the needs and power usages of the facility such as air conditioning, power and equipment.

• View system usages- The ability to look at how the power is being used is crucial to effectively managing it. This way the data center can make sure that all components of the center are being used efficiently before any new systems are added. Components to look at include: air conditioning, power and space requirements.

• Management of processors and resources- The ability to manage these two components allows the data center to make the most efficient use of power consumption in order to achieve the maximum efficiency in the data center.

• Proper power allocation for each server- Not all servers require the same amount of power and energy. Depending on the size, usage and bandwidth some servers require more bandwidth than others. An effective power management solution recognizes this need and has the ability to allocate more power to servers that need it and less to those that do not.

• The ability to feed energy-use information to chargeback applications- In this way, the data center has the ability to monitor which servers are using what. That is to say, which servers are using the most power, creating the most heat and requiring the most air conditioning. This way, individual servers can be held accountable for their consumption and it allows the data center to find creative ways to monitor and effectively allocate resources.

When taken as a whole, all of these components are important in order to create an effective energy solution. When a data center takes these steps to allocate their power responsibly, they not only help the daily operations of the data center, but they also help the end users as well as take responsibility for the environmental factors involved. Cost savings that come with responsible power usage are passed on to the customers. Additionally customers can feel assured that their servers will receive the amount of power that is needed, without taking away power from other servers. This is an important factor when choosing a data center to host your servers.