Why Roger Federer is important for Green IT

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What does Roger Federer's silky backhand have in common with greening your data center? More than you might think.

During the first round of the U.S. Open, I got a behind-the-scenes look at the IBM green infrastructure that powers the event. IBM uses its U.S. Open data centers as a kind of showcase for green IT, and the deployment holds out lessons for anyone who wants to green their own data center.

First some background. Steve Sams, IBM vice president of site and facilities in IBM Global Technology Services, has studied the challenges that IT faces when it comes to energy and cooling use for data centers. He notes that data center energy use doubles every five years.

"This means that by 2030, energy use by data centers will represent eight percent of all energy use worldwide," he warns.

The threat to the environment by this is clear; the financial implications are perhaps not so obvious, but they're just as dire. Sams says that one IBM customer spends a quarter of a billion dollars in energy costs for its data center.

CPU density in data centers is increasing exponentially, thanks to blade servers, and because of that, data centers use far more electricity per square foot than any other part of an enterprise. At IBM, for example, data centers take up 6% of the company's floor space, but account for 30% of its energy bill.

Greening the data center can have dramatic bottom-line benefits, Sams says. An average-sized data center of 2500 square feet uses $2.6 million in energy consumption per year. IBM has found that green technologies can save from 40% to 50% in energy consumption, which means up to $1.3 million annually. But there are even larger hidden savings. Making a data center energy efficient defrays capital costs, because it saves on data center space, and so new data centers do not have to be constructed. Additionally, for every dollar saved in energy, Sams says, there are from three to eight dollars saved in operational savings.

What does all this have to do with Roger Federer's backhand, or Venus Williams' powerful serve?

Plenty. Every time a sportscaster pulls up a statistic or a visitor views a page on www.usopen.org, and each time a point is scored and changed on the scoreboard, it's powered by an IBM data center.

IBM uses three data centers to power the US Open, including one set up directly at the Open itself. It's all powered by IBM p6 550 servers running Linux, and uses virtualization for a complete virtualized environment. The resulting green savings due to virtualization and other technologies have been dramatic:

* Servers have been consolidated from 60 in 2006 to six today.

* Energy consumption was cut by 23% from 2006 to 2007, and cooling requirements cut by 25%.

* This year, IBM expects that energy consumption will be cut by 40%, and cooling requirements cut by 48%.

This greening has occurred while far greater demands have been put on the infrastructure. Visits to the U.S. Open Web site have increased by 26%, and numerous new services have been added as well. Yet the cost per visit has been cut by 27% --- and as I've outlined above, it's all far greener as well.

The implications are pretty clear for data centers and IT departments everywhere. Going green has big bottom payoffs, while delivering more computing power as well.  

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