The greening of data center (Page 218)

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

• Excessive power consumption uses vast amount of electricity that must be generated through hydroelectric plants or coal-fired power plants. While hydroelectric generation plants are less stressful on the environment than coal-fired, nevertheless, they do pull resources from more useful purposes. Coal-fired power plants generate huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which some scientists and politicians claim is a major cause of global warming.Social implications of increased power consumption point to global warming.
• From business perspective, the use of traditional data center has provided negative implication(s) toward corporations where it can be shown from higher (annual) operating cost and longer cooling time. Apparently, using traditional data centre, corporations prone to incur lots of costs that is, prominently derived from power /or energy consumption. Due to the fact that traditional data center required tremendous power consumption; it entailed corporations with the needs of spending more for operation purposes.
• Yet, with significant energy consumption, traditional data center did not perform in the effective manner as it ought to be. Based on the case study, it has been shown that traditional data center requires long cooling time upon certain time of operation before it can continue. In the cooling process, traditional data center still have to consume energy, which normally equivalent to the energy consumption needed for operation. This in turn, increasing corporations operational cost by twice and led to inefficiency and ineffectiveness of corporations in maintaining and operating their data center(s).
• As a result of using traditional data center, corporations have to suffer tremendous costs, which apparently can be eliminated and avoided.
• On the social aspect, the usage of traditional data center inclined to jeopardize the well-being of environment and society. Prior to the fact that source of power is derived from machinery (that transformed coal and etc. into electricity), thus the needs of additional energy consumption may had increased the amount of carbon dioxide emission(s) produced from prevalent machinery. This in turn, diluting the thickness of ozone layer and led to significant escalation in the level of worldwide temperature and ultra violet, which eventually endanger people’s health.

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

Each of major components had provided significant contribution in addressing the existing issues of traditional data center. Although, technology can be deemed to have given tremendous impact toward the matter of traditional data center usage, still both management and organization were involved in the process as well.

Organization 

Flexible organizational structure has enabled Facebook to significantly reduce its energy usage to a certain extent. As a matter of fact, in the attempt to undermine power consumption of its data center, Facebook was empowering its engineers with higher authority where they could be able to make necessary decisions without the needs to request for top managements’ approval. Being given with flexibility in decision making, Facebook engineers were able to return the trust of management by redesigning Facebook IT infrastructure to operate in the more efficient manner. Apparently, IT infrastructure namely motherboards, power supply, server chassis, server rack, battery cabinets, data center electrical as well as mechanical construction specifications had been altered and modified to perform in the more optimizing energy efficiency. Particularly, Facebook hardware engineers re-thought the electric design, power distribution, and thermal design of its servers and had been able to reduce power usage by 13 percent.

Management

management leadership had also participated in overcoming issues within traditional data centre. As in the case of Acorda, its management tends to have positive perception toward the integration of technology in improving business performance. Based on the case scenario, it has been revealed that Acorda top management had provided financial support and invested $100,000 in virtual servers running on technology from VMware. Prior to wide acceptance of technology system into its business processes, Acorda had gained tremendous benefits where it became able to eradicate likelihood of spending $1.5 million for more physical servers and energy consumption as well as efficient shiftment of data transfer. This in turn, not only increasing the efficiency of Acorda business operations, yet it also allowed Acorda to achieve higher rate of profit generation and effective cost savings method simultaneously.

Technology

It had prominently given substantial contribution in solving the issue(s) of traditional data center. For instance, the integration of similarly cloud computing information system namely Vmware has facilitated Acorda with effective cost savings and efficient business operation. New design of data center(s), including motherboards, power supply, server chassis, server rack, and battery cabinets had allowed Facebook to attain lower power usage effectiveness (PUE) at the level of 1.07. In accordance with, the usage of power sourcing tool based on winds and hydropower ecosystem had enabled Yahoo to have power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.08.

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

Even though it may cost a 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. However,Businesses that reduce their power needs help the environment and can promote themselves as environment-friendly.

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

• Yes. Based on the case study, numerous benefits can be achieved upon the adoption of green computing information technology. Cost savings and energy savings are major benefits that can be obtained by integrating green computing information technology. As the primary objective of business institution is to generate profit while maintaining cost as low as possible, thus the adoption of green computing may enable business entities to achieve its prime financial objective(s) and attain competitive advantage simultaneously. Based on the prevalent benefits, thus I personally would suggest all firms to adopt green computing into its business processes.
• All firms should make some effort to reduce their power requirements and promote green computing.Because from a business standpoint it makes sense to reduce costs, both short term and long term.