Looking beyond the EU’s data centre code of conduct

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Few would dispute that the issue of power consumption in data centres needs to be tackled. It's been estimated that collectively, computing systems worldwide account for around 2% of global carbon emissions - that's as much as the aviation industry.

For that reason, in April 2008, the European Union (EU) released the first draft of its voluntary Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency of Data Centres. The stated aim is "to inform relevant organisations about energy consumption by IT and to stimulate its reduction by spreading awareness of energy-efficient best practices."

That's all very well - but according to Chris Gabriel, marketing and solutions director at Logicalis, organisations that focus solely on reducing data centre power usage may be missing a bigger opportunity: achieving all-round IT efficiency.

"Excessive power consumption in the data centre is often the result of two things. First, organisations store heaps of data that they don't need and will never need again. Second, they have that data sitting on servers and storage devices that are vastly under-utilised but are consuming the same amount of energy as a well-utilised machine," he says.

When Logicalis consultants talk about data centre efficiency, he says, they're certainly thinking about reducing power consumption, but they're also thinking about the time, skills and money that an inefficient data centre consumes.

Organisations that want to make savings on all fronts, he says, need to work to a wider remit. "They need to get inside that data centre and work out what's needed and what's not in terms of data and hardware. They need to be choosier about what they save and where they save it."

It's ironic, Gabriel says, that at the same time that the EU is promoting the data centre code of conduct, its policymakers are lobbying for wider retention of corporate data through mandates such as Mifid. "In response to all this regulation, organisations get panicked by the need for compliance and develop a ‘save everything' mentality towards data centre management. They keep a lot of rubbish as well as the important stuff, out of fear they'll be penalised," he says.

So it's not the amount of energy their data centre consumes that they really need to worry about, he argues - it's the amount that's powering the systems that support duplicated and redundant corporate data. "Until you identify where that's happening in your data centre, you have very little chance of achieving energy efficiency targets over the long term," he says. "But start with efficient IT as your goal, and the energy savings will follow as a matter of course."