One of the biggest conundrums facing large enterprises is the management of their power bills, especially the significant component related to energy consumption of IT equipment. This problem becomes more complex when the debate about the environmental impact of modern technology is added to the equation.

A large percentage of enterprise IT energy consumption is accounted for by datacentres. The 2007 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report states that datacentres and servers consume 1.5 per cent of the total electricity generated in the US, for example, at a cost of £2.3bn. This figure is more than double that for 2000, and on current trends, is expected to double again by 2011.

Storage devices already account for a significant portion of datacentre energy use. This poses a major problem for datacentre operators, as storage requirements are now growing at an exponential rate, according to Hubert Yoshida, chief technology officer of enterprise storage specialist Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). He believes that the lion’s share of the growth will be made up of unstructured data, such as documents, and audio and video files.

A new partnership between HDS and Iceland-based archiving specialist Data Islandia aims to solve some of these problems, addressing the power requirements for storing business data and squaring it with the current movement to greener IT systems.

Location benefits
Iceland has long been touted as a potential “datacentre capital of the world”, with IT experts claiming that the country’s geothermal energy and low temperatures make it the perfect location for server farms. The facilities built in Iceland by Data Islandia use geothermal and hydroelectric power to run systems based on Hitachi’s Content Archive Platform. The geothermal energy is a byproduct of Iceland’s location atop the mid-Atlantic ridge, which is a hive of volcanic activity.

With Iceland’s environmental advantages and relative proximity to North America and Europe, Data Islandia believes it is uniquely positioned to offer affordable and stable long-term archival storage for enterprises in those regions.

The company estimates that its eco-friendly managed service solution can deliver savings of between 30 and 40 per cent, depending on the specific requirements, volumes of data and service levels stipulated by the customer.

Sol Squire, the company’s managing director of offshore operations, said that firms should be focusing on removing rarely accessed data from their networks completely. He characterises this data as “digital toxic waste”, because it continually requires energy to keep it available.

Hitachi points to healthcare records as an example of a long-term data storage problem. “These have to be stored for a person’s life expectancy plus two years. Just consider the power required to do that, especially if it’s non-renewable,” said Alec Bruce, Hitachi’s eco-solutions champion.

Data Islandia’s service could allow firms to store petabytes (1,000 terabytes) of data at its facility, due for completion later this year. Hitachi has also introduced a newly developed system called the Data Scooter to help firms transfer data for archiving to Iceland.

The Data Scooter is a ruggedised container housing a switch, a server, and up to 18TB of storage, which is loaded up with the customer’s data and then physically shipped to Data Islandia’s Iceland facility.

Squire said the Data Scooter is designed to allay concerns over bandwidth and the speed with which data held in Icelandic facilities can be accessed. “It can take up to three days to transfer a petabyte of data by cable,” he explained. “By putting the data on the Data Scooter and flying it [to Iceland] you can complete the transfer in less than a day.”

Whether or not firms decide to sign up for Data Islandia’s service, overall enterprise energy bills are unlikely to decrease in the future. This is due to growth in demand, accelerated by developing countries such as China and India, which is currently outstripping any increase in supply.

A recent survey conducted by analyst firm Quocirca on behalf of datacentre management vendor Global DataCenter Management (GDCM), highlights the pressures firms are experiencing with regard to datacentre space and power.

The survey was based on more than 300 interviews with senior IT decision-makers, carried out in November and December 2007 in the US, the UK and other European countries. When Quocirca asked datacentre managers if they were likely to run out of space and power, 11 per cent said yes, while eight per cent said they had no idea.

Power crisis on the horizon
“If you know when you’re going to run out of power, that’s a problem. If you don’t know when you’re going to run out ­ that could be a bigger problem,” said Quocirca’s principal analyst Dennis Szubert, adding that commissioning a new datacentre can take years.

But Quocirca revealed that 14 per cent of those questioned had already hit the power limit. “They cannot get any more power into the datacentre, to cool and power any more servers,” said Szubert.

Commenting on the UK, Szubert voiced concerns about building more datacentres in London. “I’ve heard there are no new datacentres being built within the M25 because of power constraints ­ and if you want to get more power into the datacentres you already have, there’s an 18-month wait just to get the cable run in,” he said.

Data Islandia’s archival service may therefore have particularly strong appeal for firms in the London area that are looking to enhance their green credentials and make better use of their datacentre resources.

However, one potential barrier is that datacentre managers tend not to have direct financial responsibility for operations. “Fewer than one in five datacentre managers receives the power bill and 55 per cent say they don’t deal directly with the bill,” said Szubert. This means that those in a position to control power consumption often do not even know how much power their datacentres are using.

Even if offshoring data does not appeal to firms, Szubert advised that virtualisation of simple file-and-print and test-and-development services might save money. “But there’s no incentive because the datacentre managers are not paying the bill. This means there’s no pressure from the business users to reduce power because they’re not being charged back for what they’re using,” he said.

Szubert’s advice is for datacentre managers to charge back their power budget to the people who are using its services. This gives the manager and users an incentive to reduce consumption, he argued.