Gartner gives tips to reduce data center cost

Data Center Management must be tricky in 2010. According to Gartner, the managers face problems associated with the consumption of energy, space and technology. For advice, those responsible for managing these structures have to be smart to seek pragmatic ways to address these growing challenges.

"Cost of energy is one of the most amount spent on the datacenter and the managers of these structures has not dispensed enough attention to the processes for assessment, monitoring and modeling of energy use in DC," he said Rakesh Kumar, a researcher with Gartner, in statement. "They need to understand that removing only one x86 server data center will result in a reduction of more than $ 400 in spending power each year."

To help IT managers cope with these challenges, Gartner has identified critical areas that need to be addressed.

The first issue is to establish a standard way to reduce costs with DC. Gartner advises executives to define a schema that specifies the cost of each element, constituting a general cost categories and keywords that make up this cost.

To reduce spending, Gartner offers a few tips:

- Streamline the hardware. Legacy systems must be utilized or discarded and workloads should be replaced by more efficient hardware. Programs rationalization and consolidation can help reduce between 5% and 20% the number of servers.

- Consolidate the sites of DC. Cost reduction is usually followed by a consolidation of multiple sites in a smaller number, but with higher structures.

- Manage energy. Tools and techniques help make the temperature of the datacenter at 75 degrees Fahrenheit, making use of outside air when possible as an alternative to air conditioning.

- Manage the cost of people. Workers remain a major cost component for many data center, accounting for 40% of all spending.

Source: IT Web