Virtualisation delivers big $ savings for Corporate Express

Beverley Head
Thursday, 03 September 2009 09:10

IT Industry - Market

According to Jones, industry best practice is now accepted to be around 1.6, where Corporate Express has achieved a PUE of 1.49. “The lower the PUE the more efficient your data centre is,” said Jones.

Corporate Express is now working with Eaton UPS to develop a system that will track the data centre’s power usage in real time. That would mean that “Every time we do something we can see the effect of the change,” said Jones.

“If you have got transparency then when you add equipment in the data centre and adjust the air conditioning you can work out the impact on the PUE that will cost us money.”

There are also simple steps that can be taken to keep costs on check. Jones said that one of his best investments was a $100 anemometer bought from an electronics retail store to measure wind speeds in the data centre.

Jones said that there only needed to be 7°C differential between the front and the back of the rack. By using the anemometer to monitor air conditioning flow it has been able to adjust the configuration of floor grilles which blow cold air from the sub floor.

This had allowed the temperature of the data centre to be adjusted.

“When we moved form the old data centre it was kept at 18-19°C.” Although Corporate Express’s data centre has been designed to operate at 30°C Jones acknowledged, “We were a little nervous. On day one we ran at 23°C , but that has now crept up to 26°C.”

That is two degrees warmer than the Green Building Council of Australia suggests. It claims that every degree of temperature can shave 10 per cent off cooling bills, and suggests data centres can comfortably run at 24°C.