2Sustain

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how UPS is greening its Windward data center to save money, improve efficiencies, and achieve environmental goals. Now, there’s word that Highmark, the largest health care insurer in Pennsylvania, is doing the same.

Highmark’s green initiatives are detailed in “Building an Energy-efficient IT Infrastructure”, an article by Samuel Greengard that was published over the weekend at BaselineMagazine.com .

Highmark, a company that boasts 2007 revenues of $11.9 billion and more than 11,000 employees, was thinking “green” when it first opened its new data center four years ago, Greengard reports. The facility is LEED-certified, and features smart lighting systems and an Energy Star roof that collects rainwater which is then stored in a 100,000-gallon underground tank. This water is used for gray water in restrooms and also in cooling towers for the data center.

Recently, though, the company began looking at other sustainability initiatives for its data center. For example, a thermal analysis of the data center uncovered how to space servers and racks for maximum performance and reduced cooling costs.

“We found that a lot of servers in our data center weren’t being used, even though they were powered up,” says Mark Wood, director of data center infrastructure for Highmark, in the article. “So, the first thing we did was power down those servers when they weren’t in use. Most data centers operate in always-on mode, but we wanted to go to an on-off approach.”

They switched off unused systems, and also adopted a server virtualization and consolidation strategy. Today, 75% of Highmark’s 400 servers are virtualized.

As a result, the company has:

• reduced kilowatt-hours by 50,000 –resulting in a net savings of about $52,000 on the electric bill

• reduced equipment demands –and energy requirements—by 14:1

• cut overall energy consumption by 10 to 12 percent

The article goes on to discuss some of the new tools now available for measuring and monitoring energy consumption in data centers. These tools are becoming increasingly vital to overall management because when system administrators can view data about when and where the power load is peaking, they can formulate proactive approaches to track and minimize energy consumption and carbon emissions.

In the article, Wood is quick to acknowledge that greening a data center isn't particularly easy. “There’s no question that it’s a challenge to transition to more energy-efficient systems,” he says. That's why it's great that we're starting to see more companies like UPS and Highmark rising to the challenge. Energy prices are volatile, corporate budgets are being squeezed, and concerns about climate change are mounting –it's becoming increasingly clear that a good energy policy for your data center is no longer a “feel good” option, it’s a necessity.