How to improve your data centre sustainability
Discover what you need to consider for building data centre sustainability now.
Data centres are a significant contributor to our global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimates indicating that data centres alone contribute up to 3% of the world’s electricity consumption. This not only has a significant impact on our environment, but it also provides a challenge for your organisation.
The demand for reducing and managing carbon emissions and energy utilisation in modern IT infrastructure is growing among organisations. As a response, many are actively seeking ways to minimise their carbon footprint and drive the success of their sustainability goals.
Why is data centre sustainability so important?
On average in the UK, a single data centre will consume 481,800 kWh per year, which is equivalent to:
The increasing demand for data has inevitably grown the demand for the infrastructure that powers it. In recent decades, we’ve seen a massive increase in servers, security, and internet usage which has resulted in an increase in energy consumption. However, in 2015, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals was introduced, resulting in UK organisations having to re-evaluate their infrastructure to comply.
While adopting new data centre sustainability measures offer comprehensive sustainability benefits, it also benefits you in numerous other ways:
Environmental impact:
sustainable data centre infrastructures significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, helping to combat climate change and preserve resources
Cost savings:
reduce your operational costs by optimising power usage, implementing efficient mechanisms, or transferring to the cloud
Regulatory compliance:
governments are introducing regulations and environmental standards, meaning you must adopt a data centre that is compliant with this
Operational efficiency:
improve your overall operational efficiency by optimising hardware utilisation, implementing virtualisation techniques, and deploying intelligent power management systems
DEFRA’s ICT sustainability strategy
Data centre sustainability is DEFRAs main area of focus for its ICT sustainability strategy, due to them being energy intensive and inefficient. Its main aim with this strategy is to:
- Minimise carbon emissions and energy usage
- Adopt a ‘circular economy’ approach to increase resource efficiency
- Improve transparency across the supply chain
- Promote a sustainability ‘Business as usual’ approach to organisations
- Provide net gains for the environment
Improving your data centre sustainability
Whether your organisation is utilising an on-premises, hybrid, or fully cloud infrastructure, there’s always going to be ways for you to reduce your energy consumption and lower your carbon footprint.
Take a look at how you’re able to improve your data centre sustainability, regardless of your infrastructure:
For many years, organisations utilising on-premises data centres have focused solely on its performance, however, as the emphasis on sustainability grows, these organisations are now reviewing their systems to meet sustainability goals.
For organisations wanting or needing to stay on-premises, here’s our top tips for reducing your energy consumption:
- Regularly check and optimise the energy consumption of your data centre. Use tools to track energy usage, find areas for improvement, and implement continuous improvement strategies
- Match the number of physical (and virtualised) servers to the workloads’ needs
- Ensure server BIOS settings are set for power/energy saving
- Examine the number of active ports in use rather than the number of cables that are connected
- Reduce the number of active, powered-on switches
- Consolidate your data centres and centralise multiple data centres into minimal primary locations
Cloud infrastructure offers organisations a more carbon and energy-efficient solution for storing and managing data. This is due to your organisation not needing to power and manage its own infrastructure, as it’s hosted by a third-party provider.
To ensure your cloud infrastructure is as efficient as possible, it’s important to rationalise and optimise the cloud environment to meet your workload’s demands. When moving to a cloud infrastructure, it’s important to:
- Follow a cloud smart strategy, using SaaS, followed by PaaS, and finishing with IaaS
- Utilise cloud native applications rather than reconstituting as it was on-premises
- Only pay for what you use as you’re able to scale your resources on-demand
- Continuously monitor, assess, evaluate, and optimise to ensure cloud efficiency is maintained
While utilising the cloud helps you improve your scope 1 emissions (the emissions your organisation directly creates) it’s important to be aware of the potential for it to contribute to your scope 3 emissions and take the necessary steps to mitigate them.
A hybrid cloud infrastructure helps you reduce your energy consumption by allowing you to move workloads between on-premises and cloud-based resources. This means that you can use the most energy-efficient resources for each workload, which will contribute to you minimising your energy consumption.
For example, you could move your most energy-intensive workloads to the cloud, where they will be powered by renewable energy sources. You could also move your less intensive workloads to on-premises resources, where you have more control over the energy consumption.
When you’re maintaining your hybrid cloud infrastructure, it’s important to consider the following:
- Using virtualisation: virtualisation helps you consolidate your workloads and reduce the number of physical resources you need
- Using power management policies: by utilising these, you’ll be ensuring that your resources are only running when they’re needed
- Monitor your energy consumption: it’s important to track your progress and continuously identify areas for improvement
- Employee education: make sure your employees are aware of the importance of sustainability
Calculate your carbon savings now
To help you with identifying where your infrastructure needs upgrading to improve carbon emissions, Dell has a calculator that enables you to compare your legacy devices to new ones and see where you can improve.
Calculate nowDesign a sustainable data centre with Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
We are actively assisting organisations like yours in achieving their goals by leveraging a hybrid cloud approach. Both Dell and Microsoft are playing a crucial role by bringing technologies closer together, offering industry-leading hybrid solutions and contributing to organisation’s sustainability objectives.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure enables organisations to reduce their energy consumption in a few ways, including:
- Consolidation of physical servers and storage into a single software-defined platform
- Adding and removing resources to match your workload requirements
- Adopting a hybrid cloud solution to reduce the number of on-premises servers
Get your free on-demand now
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
CRN’s 2022 Tech Innovator winner for HCI and IT Brand Pulse 2022’s HCI Appliances winner, Dell Technologies is a proven leader in the HCI market and server space. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is an optimised, tested, and verified solution that empowers organisations to create a cloud consumption experience on-premises, while maintaining data security and full-stack lifecycle management.
Managing your infrastructure and IT waste
To meet your sustainability goals, it’s important to not only consider your infrastructure while you’re using it, but also what you do when it’s End of Life. In 2021 alone, 57.4 million metric tonnes of electronic waste were generated, with that total expected to grow by an average of 2 million metric tonnes a year. On top of this, only 17.4% of electronic waste is known to be collected and recycled.
When managing your IT waste, it’s important to consider these three factors: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Reduce your IT waste: there are three ways for your organisation to reduce its waste
- Use more sustainable solutions
- Repair equipment wherever possible
- Extend its lifespan by upgrading software rather than hardware
Reuse equipment: extend the lifecycle of your equipment by donating it to charities or other organisations, selling it to a second-hand dealer, or recycling it for parts
Recycle equipment: if your IT equipment is beyond repair, it should be recycled responsibly. This could be sending it to a facility for proper disposal or sending it back to its provider.
Dell Technologies Asset Recovery Services helps you to resell, recycle, or return-to-lease your old IT equipment in a secure and sustainable way. Since 2007, Dell has recovered 2.5 billion pounds (lb) of e-waste and continues to contribute significantly to reducing their customer’s electronic waste.
Dell's Asset Recovery ServiceHow to improve your data centre sustainability FAQs
Sustainable technology is technology that supports environmental and social wellbeing, while minimising negative impacts on the planet and its resources. Sustainable technology can include renewable energy sources, energy-efficient devices, green IT solutions, circular economy practices, and low-carbon transportation.
Sustainable technology aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation, resource consumption, and pollution, while enhancing quality of life, productivity, and innovation.
It’s important for businesses to be sustainable not only for our planet and ecosystem, but also for reputation and brand image, operational costs, efficiency, and supporting the global goals of sustainable development and the transition to a low-carbon and circular economy.
Sustainable infrastructure is the design, construction, and operation of physical structures and systems that meet the needs of society while minimising environmental and social impacts. Sustainable infrastructure is any kind of data centre or cloud that is resilient, efficient, low-carbon, and circular.
Take your data centre carbon assessment
Enquire about the data centre carbon assessment with our Sustainability Lead, Jen Clewley to find out the carbon emissions data for your IT services and where you need to improve to support your organisation’s sustainability objectives.
You can also email us at [email protected] or call 01904 562200 – whatever works best for you.