Hosting
BT’s 21CN Data Centre
Initiative
Reducing power consumption through technology innovation.
By Harkeeret Singh, Head of Data Centre Strategy,
BT Design & Operate.
With rising energy costs and the centre initiative was to develop a the way that it builds and
responsibility to reduce carbon system that would reduce the operates its data centres.
emissions, companies are increasingly operating costs and carbon footprint
reviewing the efficiencies of their data for the data centres, thereby reducing Challenging the
centres and hoping to take advantage BT’s impact on global warming. With Status Quo
of initiatives such as procuring green this objective in mind, the company Traditionally, data centres
energy to power them. BT, which established the following tactics: use refrigeration (or forced-
typically consumes approximately 0.7 air cooling) to remove heat
per cent of the total power in the U.K., To remove servers from the data from the facility and maintain a
is no exception—its data centres have centre that held no business value temperature between 20 to 24
an estimated 11,000 server racks with To adopt virtualisation and degrees Celsius year round in
an average of 1,500 watts per rack consolidation technologies to reduce order to achieve optimal
and 25,000 physical servers. However, carbon emissions equipment performance.
through its 21st Century (21CN) Data To research and engineer cooling However, the inherent problem
Centre Project, the company is systems that use external air to with cooling systems is that for
beginning to see the benefits of reduce the amount of power required every kilowatt of energy used
increased energy efficiency and cost to cool the data centres (a for computing, more than 1.2
savings. combination of free-air cooling and
fresh air where possible)
Green Ambition To review and reduce the loss of
As part of its commitment to running a energy during the power transfer from
sustainable and responsible business, the street to the data centre—
BT has set two bold goals: To reduce comparing AC and DC power as the
its U.K. carbon footprint by 80 per standard electrical infrastructure in the
cent by 2016* and to globally reduce data centre
its carbon emissions intensity by 80
per cent by 2020*. To support these However, to be truly effective in
goals, the company developed the accomplishing its goals in terms of
21CN Data Centre Project in order to reducing the carbon footprint
change the way it builds and and the operational cost of
maintains its data centres. the data centres, BT is
constantly looking into new
The overarching objective of the data and innovative ways to evolve
34 | DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS |
www.datacentresols.com September 2008
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