According to research company Gartner, nearly a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by the ICT technology comes from data centres. At Fujitsu's data centre in Helsinki, reducing power consumption and hardware recycling has for years been under particular scrutiny.

Computer rooms aren't the same as there were a decade ago. There are now five times as many servers, but no need for greater floor space. At the same time, power consumption is now only one and a half times bigger.

”A part of this owes to the overall development of technology, but some of it is our doing,” head of Core Services Hemminki Sääksjärvi (on the left) says.

”Virtualisation and consolidation are efficient means to reduce power consumption of the servers. The question of servers has been talked about for ages, and finally we see some results. The number of physical servers at Fujitsu started to reduce last year.”

”We are to an increasing extent selling capacity instead of just managing the customer's machines. We can do things more efficiently,” Sääksjärvi sums up.

 Hot and cold isles

System manager Sören Engström (on the right) keeps cords in order in Fujitsu's machine room. Not a single extension cable is used; every cable is just the right length and in the right place.

Electrical equipment produces a lot of heat. Cooling may easily comprise half or more of a machine room's power consumption. Therefore efficient cooling is one of the focal points of development in data centres.

”Simple means are typically the best, such as forming sufficiently airy hot and cold aisles between the machines,” Sören Engström says. Wise positioning of the machines can significantly reduce the need for cooling.

”The idea with the isles is to channel the hot and cold air to take their separate routes and not to mix. The machines take the cooling air at one side and blow the hot air off to the other side.”

Recycle old hardware

You can best save electricity by turning off the machines when you are not using them.

”At least make sure that the power saving features of the processors and hard drives are turned on,” says service director Tapio Suomi.

Despite remote connections screens are still needed in machines rooms. The number, however, has declined essentially, as in the olden days each server had its own screen. A few years back eight servers would share one screen; now 30 servers are connected to one.

The amount of lighting has been reduced in Fujitsu's machine room which saves energy and brings savings also in waste costs. Fluorescent lamps are problem waste, after all.

Sören Engström has noticed that outdated applications and machines are easily left in the machine room, as if they would come in handy one day. He tries to take them to recycling as soon as possible.

”Nothing is thrown into the waste bin. Servers, racks and electric cables are reused as long as possible. All electronic waste is recycled through our partner, and our recycling rate reaches well over 90 per cent,” he says.

Be smart in the machine room

• Virtualise and consolidate. Several virtual servers and applications can run on one physical server. The server can also have different tasks depending on the time of day, for example.
  
  
• Make sure that the power saving features of the equipment are turned on.
  
  
• See to that cooling is efficient. Build the cooling system appropriately, as in other cases you may end up consuming more power in the cooling than the actual operation of the servers.
  
  
• Check the power feed and backup power. Old power supplies and UPS equipment may be terrible power hogs.
  
  
• Do not store any unused hardware or applications in the machine room – recycle them.
  
  
  
• Instead of servers, buy server capacity and make sure you are not wasting resources.