Hosting
legacy chillers. As part of the Realising Measurable
journey to move legacy data Results
centres to the 21CN Data Centre BT has reduced its U.K. carbon
initiative design, the cooling system footprint by 58 per cent since 1996
within Tinsley Park was upgraded to and is making excellent progress
incorporate a free cooling unit. As a toward meeting its goals of an 80 per
result of the upgrade, BT projects a cent reduction in the U.K. by 2016*
benefit of 255,000 kwhr per year and a global 80 per cent reduction by
(based on the configuration of the 2020*.
cooling units and the assumption that
the external temperature will remain at Additionally, BT’s virtualisation project
a level suitable for free-air cooling. has reduced a 1,500-server data
centre down to just more than 100,
BT has also performed a mass clean saving £600,000 per year. BT has also
up of its servers and application weeded out all the orphaned
estate, resulting in a significant applications and servers that are
amount of IT hardware being without a corporate sponsor.
decommissioned. Since beginning the
program in February 2006, BT has Looking Forward
removed more than 6,000 servers and The 21CN Data Centre Project will
saved an estimated 6,000 kwhrs. positively affect the entire population
of BT (106,200 employees) and the
Additionally, BT has further decreased company’s customers (more than 18
kilowatts are consumed in the cooling the power consumption of some of its million business and residential
process. In order to defray the energy data centres by employing customers in more than 170
spent on data centre cooling, BT, virtualisation and consolidation, a countries). These stakeholders will
together with several business technique that pools together servers directly benefit from a simplification of
partners and equipment that are running at low utilisation in BT’s operations, thereby reducing
manufacturers, identified equipment order to ensure that resources are cost, improving resiliency and
that does not require such stringent used more efficiently. Virtualisation increasing efficiency.
temperature controls. BT is running can focus usage onto a single server
data centres at a higher temperature so that one server is being used to its Many of BT’s data centres will be
than the original American Society of full potential rather than having 10 transformed through its long-term
Heating, Refrigerating and Air- servers being used at only 10 per cent data centre strategy, which calls for
Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) of their individual capacities. the company to reduce the number
standards and has found no of data centres into a small number
detrimental effect in terms of reliability Although the 21CN Data Centre of energy-efficiency sites. The
and performance. project was a major undertaking for company and its management are
BT, there are other more immediate fully committed to meeting BT’s
BT is also reaping the benefits of free- ways companies of any size can publicised goals for carbon emission
air cooling in Hall 1 at its Tinsley Park reduce their energy use. For example, and footprint reduction in the U.K.
Data Centre in Sheffield. Free-air BT has replaced the traditional and globally.
cooling uses external air to help cathode ray (CRT) monitors in its data
subsidise the power required to cool centres with LCD screens when doing The 21CN Data Centre Project’s
the air in the data hall. Energy desktop upgrades. Although LCD innovative use of green technologies
savings are generally made when the screens are more costly than CRT demonstrates BT’s commitment to
ambient external temperature is below monitors, they use 20 per cent less providing highly efficient and
the cooling parameters for the free-air energy. This investment alone was competitive data centres to serve the
cooling system. paid back through energy savings for needs of customers and partners as
BT within six months. Other strategies well as its commitment to
Tinsley Park previously stored 12 air include increasing the occurrence of environmental responsibility.
conditioning units and chilled water conference calls versus meetings that
was supplied to these units via five require travel. * Based on 1996 figures
September 2008 www.datacentresols.com | DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS | 35
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