Enterprise Data Centers

Enterprise data centers are owned and operated by a single company and a critical component to the firm’s operational integrity. They are often sizable, but not as large as hyperscale.

Barriers

Given the high corporate dependence on the facility, organizations are sometimes wary of any action perceived as affecting the data center’s availability. Internally, there can also be additional challenges from having multiple stakeholders and competing interests.

Solutions

  • The energy savings from operating at higher temperatures does not have to come at the cost of reliability that often creates concern for IT staff. Good air management and proper control of the cooling system can ensure better availability by eliminating hot spots, i.e., enabling higher average temperatures but lower peak temperatures.
  • Virtualization of hardware and more efficient sharing of system resources can increase IT equipment utilization so that active servers run more efficiently and inactive servers can be retired.

Partner Examples and Additional Resources

Intuit: Quincy Facility Energy Upgrades 
At their Quincy, Washington facility, Intuit installed hot-aisle air containment and raised secondary chilled water temperatures so that the facility’s water-side economizer could run more days and reduce the use of an energy-intensive chiller.

Sprint: Core Switch/Regional Data Center
To improve operational best practices and reduce energy consumption, Sprint developed the Network Vision plan, which includes network upgrades, advancements in power and performance efficiencies, portfolio right-sizing, operational changes, and building upgrades. Through Network Vision, Sprint consolidated data center infrastructure across 30,000 cell sites and 48 wireless switch facilities.
 

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