Data centers, these are the sustainability challenges

The movement of data centers from hot places to others with lower temperatures is an increasingly common trend, as a key strategy in the search for energy savings.

For this reason, social security proceeded to transfer its CPD from Madrid to Soria, with which, according to government data, they intend to save more than 150,000 euros. Thus, thanks to the almost six degrees that differentiate one province from another, they will be key to the correct maintenance of the facilities.

“With the arrival of summer and the high temperatures in many parts of the Spanish geography, more and more companies are aware of the need to bet on moving their facilities to places with milder and even colder climates with the aim not only of saving costs if not to be more sustainable”, says Pep Alfonso, head of engineering at Fibratel.

Alternatives for data centers

The great challenge of data centers lies in reducing energy consumption, since the IT sector uses about 3.5% of the energy worldwide. To this end, efforts are being directed at improving its efficiency.

In addition to the migration of these facilities, the technology sector is immersed in the search for energy saving alternatives with the aim of making DPCs more sustainable. In this sense, Fibratel has exposed some of the most recent:

• Liquid refrigeration. The purpose of cooling is to reduce heat emissions from CPUs and is traditionally done with air cooling systems through fans. However, there is an increasing trend towards other alternatives such as liquid cooling, which has a cooling capacity a thousand times greater than that of air and requires ten times less energy to remove heat. In fact, according to Fibratel, a global integrator of IT solutions, the implementation of this cooling method could lead to savings of more than 205,000kWh for a rack of eight servers compared to air cooling.

Advances in data center sustainability are presented as one of the great challenges facing the technology sector

• Low consumption processors. The infrastructure that forms the data center is, without a doubt, what consumes the most energy in these facilities. For this reason, more and more companies are betting on low-power processors that reduce energy consumption by 10%. Likewise, along with the installation of these processors and with the aim of saving energy, companies also opt for high-voltage and energy-efficient power supplies for servers.
• Greater operating ranges. In the same way that more efficient processors, power supplies and IT elements are used, IT equipment can increasingly work in higher temperature conditions. This means greater operating ranges, in such a way that the cooling temperature setpoint of the room can be raised, reducing the cost for each 1C of 3% of electricity savings.