Achieving data center efficiency is no small feat. By its very nature, your data center is a highly complex system. It’s filled with IT hardware and racks, connected by miles of wires and cables. The relationship between hardware and software is complex enough. Then there’s the facility itself, providing power, cooling and space for the IT equipment needed to drive your business.

Wrangling this complexity in an affordable way that doesn’t limit business growth is a challenge. Data center IT footprint is always moving and growing. IT power densities continue to increase. So do power costs, often exceeding IT hardware costs. Data center energy can consume up to 40 percent of your business’s entire energy use.¹ Cooling and power transformation required for the facility can take up 50 percent or more of data center energy costs.²

Often, your IT and facilities teams are at cross purposes when it comes to data center energy efficiency. IT is focused on delivering additional performance and less concerned about power savings. Meanwhile, facilities folks are always on the lookout for ways to manage energy costs. But you can’t manage what you can’t measure. There’s got to be a smarter way.

Envision this: An intelligent data center environment that integrates and optimizes IT equipment and facilities from an energy information perspective. That’s the concept powering HP Data Center Smart Grid.

With it, you can accurately visualize and control energy use and environmental impact in real time across the data center. You can then make decisions based on accurate data to control power density, efficiency and capacity use.

HP Data Center Smart Grid collects and communicates thousands of power and cooling measurements across IT systems and facilities. Using extremely accurate power meters similar to those in energy-efficient households, it measures and reports all energy use and impact. You get all the environmental monitoring and control information needed to:

• Increase capacity and useful data center lifespan, postponing or eliminating additional capital expense
  
• Reduce operating costs required to power and cooling IT systems
  
• Improve reliability by optimizing the power and cooling efficiency of both IT equipment and facilities
• Provide insight and control over energy costs and environmental impact
  

The HP data center energy portfolio has already saved customers around the globe millions of dollars in energy and capital expenses. With powerful management tools and intelligent hardware monitoring, we’ve helped companies dynamically manage energy usage across virtual and physical infrastructures. But we are not stopping there. Our vision is to optimize data center performance by managing data center IT equipment and facilities in a tightly synchronized way.

You can already see the HP Data Center Smart Grid philosophy at work in current solutions, including:

• » HP Thermal Logic
• » HP Data Center Environmental Edge
• » HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD)

Now we’re enhancing and adding technologies to take the next step—integrating data center IT and facility solutions and driving improved performance.

We’re extending HP Thermal Logic technology from IT systems to broader environmental monitoring and control across the facility. We’ll eventually expand to include third-party IT and data center systems, enabling all hardware products to speak the same language and report the same way. We’re also adding monitoring capabilities to HP Data Center Environmental Edge to deliver temperature, humidity, pressure and power reporting on your facility.

Lastly, we’ve enhanced HP Insight Control with a power management suite that includes data center power control. This feature allows data center managers to define rules to handle power and cooling emergencies. It’s another way to better align IT needs with energy delivery.

You don’t need an expensive new or expanded data center to support business growth. And you shouldn’t let IT capacity constraints and skyrocketing data center energy costs limit business growth.

Instead, take the HP Data Center Smart Grid approach—and convert your data center into an intelligent, energy-aware asset. You can not only cut data center power consumption but also extend the life of your current data center.

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