Operating a data center can be expensive, but you can lower operating costs and raise your overall profitability with a few simple practices. Improper equipment, needless energy costs, and a poor maintenance strategy are often to blame.
Here are the best ways to reduce data center costs.
Improper Equipment
Most data centers are more efficient when at or near capacity. As businesses move data storage to clouds, your center can end up under-utilized. The closer your facility is to complete capacity, the more efficient your equipment will operate. Shutting down some infrastructure and relocating the loads can help with your maintenance strategy and energy costs by condensing heating and cooling requirements.
Energy Costs
Energy costs are a considerable expenditure for data centers, but you can tweak them—as long as you keep them within server rack temperature recommendations. Failing to stay within guidelines could mean equipment failure and costly downtime.
Here are a few ways to cut heating and cooling costs:
Power Off Unused Equipment—Idle equipment consumes about 30 to 40 percent of its maximum power. Find underutilized equipment, and power it off.
Virtualization—Aggregate servers and storage onto a shared platform while maintaining a strict separation between applications, users, operating systems, and data.
Consolidation—Reduce energy with consolidated storage to share cooling and backup systems.
CPU Power—Turn on power management features on CPUs.
Maintenance Strategy
A data center reports its condition to a centralized management strategy. Monitoring this data can help you and your staff make more cost-effective decisions on maintenance. Waiting for systems to fail to deliver maintenance increases downtime—and severely damages your reputation with clients. Replace components based on manufacturer guidelines to prevent a mishap and avoid the costly mistake of fixing one.
Staff Turnover
Reducing staff turnover will help make your data center more profitable. Offering competitive pay, recognizing good performance, and providing the ability to grow within the company will keep employee morale high. A staff that stays with you means you spend less on training inexperienced individuals to replace them if they should leave.
The best ways to reduce data centers are easy to implement and can help you recoup lost profitability overnight.