By Alyson Freeman, Ph.D., Customer Innovation Lead, Sustainability & ESG, Dell Technologies IT leaders can transform their data center operations into pillars of sustainability without compromising on business value and growth. Here's where to start.
Today’s data centers are the backbones of the digital age, supporting everything from social media to serious scientific pursuits. However, their impressive capabilities come with a significant environmental cost. According to IDC, global data center energy consumption reached 382 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2022; it is projected to reach 803 TWh by 2027 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16 percent.1
Global demand for enterprise-level computing will continue to rise. Without a new approach, this increase will only add costs for companies and further strain the grid. Coupled with stricter environmental regulations and risks associated with climate change, companies need solutions to help them meet new energy, efficiency and sustainability requirements.
Fortunately, emerging energy solutions ensure that data center efficiency, performance and sustainability go hand in hand, enabling companies to reduce their carbon footprints while reducing their bottom lines.
Improving data center efficiency enables a win-win solution for the competing priorities of costs and compute needs, all while improving sustainability at the same time. Rising energy prices and growing internal demand for compute power mean that data management can have an outsized impact on a company’s overall costs, given the amount of energy each data center requires. Enhanced efficiency can lead to significant energy savings, even as performance requirements increase. Optimizing data centers enables companies to align with global sustainability efforts as well, reducing or stabilizing their carbon footprint and meeting both consumer and regulatory expectations for greener operations.
Energy costs from running and cooling data center equipment already make up 40 to 60 percent of a data center’s total operating costs.2 With data volumes increasing significantly every year, traditional energy models for data centers will become too expensive, environmentally unrealistic, or both. As data-hungry processes driven by AI grow more important to core business functions, a more sustainable approach to data center operations becomes a priority in terms of ethics, economics and competitive value.
1“Datacenter Dilemma: Balancing Capacity Demand with Environmental Responsibility,” DC Blog, July 2023. 2Dell Technologies Inc. Corporate Sustainability Investor Call, Dell Technologies, July 2023.
Embrace energy-efficient hardware
Leverage platform power management for sustainability
Migrate workloads strategically for efficiency
Implement responsible retirement of technology
Optimize data center thermals for energy conservation
2Dell Technologies Inc. Corporate Sustainability Investor Call, Dell Technologies, July 2023.
The following six-point prescription can help organizations create more efficient, environmentally friendly and compliant data centers in the future, both in terms of adopting new technologies and retiring old ones.
Step 1: Embrace energy-efficient hardware
The foundation of a sustainable data center rests on the hardware that powers it. Despite some upfront costs, adopting modern, energy-efficient servers and equipment can both help reduce the environmental impact of a data center and give companies an edge in terms of economic and operational performance.
The savings come from the accumulated efficiencies across all aspects of a data center’s technology stack and greater performance per unit of energy, or power usage effectiveness (PUE).
Step 2: Leverage platform power management for sustainability
Software solutions can be as impactful as hardware in the quest for sustainability. On the positive side, modern platform power management (PPM) solutions enable data centers to adjust CPU performance dynamically, balancing power consumption with workloads. By implementing smarter PPM, businesses can slash their energy usage without compromising operations.
Specifically, sophisticated PPM solutions can provide real-time insights into server power consumption and carbon emissions, helping IT leaders optimize and even automate key aspects of Specifically, sophisticated PPM solutions can provide real-time insights into server power consumption and carbon emissions, helping IT leaders optimize and even automate key aspects of power management and sustainability. They can fine-tune energy usage to match business demands, driving savings and giving companies greater flexibility in terms of how and when they budget their energy. (See also, “Driving decarbonization with a data-centric approach,”.)
Step 3: Migrate workloads strategically for efficiency
Not all data is created equal, and companies waste valuable energy and computing resources on unnecessary data processes. Strategic workload migration can redistribute data processing to optimize efficiency, reduce idle capacity and minimize power consumption.
Migrating workloads can be a complex endeavor, but with the right approach, the environmental and cost benefits are well worth the effort. Dell recommends a detailed analysis of workloads to identify opportunities for consolidation and relocation. IT leaders can adopt a multistage process for assessing, planning and executing workload migrations, ensuring that efficiency and sustainability are at the heart of their new data center strategies.
Step 4: Implement responsible retirement of technology
Decommissioning old hardware in an environmentally conscious way is a critical, yet sometimes overlooked, aspect of sustainability. Responsible technology retirement ensures that old hardware is repurposed, recycled or disposed of in a cost-effective way with minimal environmental impact. A structured approach to technology retirement can help companies adhere to legal and regulatory requirements and protect their data as they part ways with heavily used data tools.
By adopting this circular lifecycle approach to technology use, enterprises can recover value from their decommissioned technology. For example, vendors can help companies unlock value from retired IT assets and then redirect that value to fund new data center technologies or services.
Step 5: Advance DC power management techniques
Although legacy power grids use alternating current (AC) systems, direct current (DC) power distribution can be more energy efficient and provide a more modern, sophisticated approach. Specifically, incorporating advanced DC power management techniques can reduce energy loss in data center power supplies, distribution and conversion. DC power also allows for simpler integration of renewable energy, such as photovoltaic, because there are fewer places where a conversion is necessary to transfer from one voltage to another or from AC to DC.
Understanding the benefits and challenges of DC is the first step. For example, IT leaders can work with providers to take a phased approach to DC adoption, starting with high-efficiency power supplies and gradually transitioning to a fully DC-powered data center. The potential for energy savings is immense, as is the potential reduction in the environmental impact of data center operations.
Step 6: Optimize data center thermals for energy conservation
Efficient cooling is critical to a data center’s operation, and it accounts for a significant portion of its energy usage. Optimizing data center thermals through strategic cooling techniques reduces energy expenditure, enhances equipment longevity and supports sustainability in data center operations.
For example, liquid cooling can be more efficient than traditional air cooling, and a combination of both methods can maximize efficiency while minimizing costs. New techniques can also introduce new opportunities for offsetting other energy costs, such as heat reuse from a cooling system for temperature control applications in greenhouses, farms and industrial manufacturing operations.
IT leaders may also wish to consider data center layout, airflow management, humidity control and other factors to optimize thermals. Best practices for thermal management containment solutions—such as hot and cold aisle strategies and intelligent cooling systems—can also drive tangible business and environmental benefits.
For data centers, sustainability is now one of the defining factors of operational success. Although the path to a truly sustainable data center is complex and nuanced, it also offers many opportunities for improvement, innovation and growth. The task at hand is monumental, but collective, strategic actions can create data-driven futures that are as environmentally respectful as they are sufficiently advanced to meet the data requirements of modern business3.
For data centers, sustainability is now one of the defining factors of operational success.
