IT sustainability is a rapidly emerging megatrend, and organizations everywhere are focusing on new approaches to decarbonize the data center. Leading the way is Hitachi Vantara, who for more than a decade has followed a rigorous process for lowering the carbon footprint of its systems. Hitachi is the only storage vendor to have its products certified by Carbon Footprint for Products.
The first step in moving the needle toward sustainability is determining your starting point: how much CO2 is produced by your data center storage infrastructure? How much can you possibly reduce, and where should you begin?
To get an idea of where you are at now on the sustainability scale, try the Hitachi Vantara CO2 Calculator. Watch a short demo, plug in your numbers, and Hitachi Vantara will email you the results.
It’s Not Easy Being Green
To jumpstart the journey to decarb your data center, start by looking at best practices. Tom Christensen, Global Technology Advisor and Executive Analyst at Hitachi Vantara, offers these ideas gathered from interactions with customers on how to make your data center more eco-friendly:
App Modernization. Lay out an IT strategy to navigate sustainability. While this is by no means a simple process, you can start by looking at application modernization of workloads, to reduce operating system overhead and the infrastructure footprint. In some cases, app modernization can provide up to 50% saving of server capacity, according to Christensen.
Break down data silos. App modernization enables organizations to start breaking down data silos. When this occurs, businesses can also extract data insights across the organization and can automate more of the daily tasks. This shift provides cost savings and agility throughout the organization.
Move toward an eco-friendly infrastructure. Digital systems providers have a role to play in sustainability. Christensen notes that more than 80% of the value-chain CO2 emissions of a storage product are related to its use after it is sold. To reduce emissions across the entire value chain from cradle to grave, it is crucial to reduce CO2 emissions not just during production, but also during the stage of use. That means that replacing the infrastructure with eco-friendly systems is certainly worth considering.
Smarter data management. Hitachi Vantara Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) can help reduce the CO2 emissions with its enhanced data reduction technology, which lets organizations store more user data on the purchased capacity. Hitachi Vantara states that in some use cases, a 65% reduction in electricity consumption will reduce CO2 emissions by 65% as well.
Another carbon-saving option is the non-disruptive replacement of a storage controller to next-generation systems, without the need for data migration. This allows organizations to avoid the time-consuming data migration timeline that requires old and new systems to run in parallel for an extended time period. “Such processes consume a lot more power and require additional cooling and floorspace, not to mention they can take months to complete,” notes Christensen.
Going Holistic
Hitachi Vantara itself takes a holistic approach to sustainability and attacks carbon on multiple levels, decarbonizing its offices and factories and developing new low-carbon infrastructure. Between generations of storage solutions, Hitachi Vantara cut carbon emissions between 30% to 40% compared to previous models. That savings includes in the procurement of raw materials, production, transportation, five years of use, and final recycle.
Eco-friendly technology advances can help organizations achieve more by using digitalization to visualize the environmental impact and reduce the impact through the proper use of the infrastructure. These innovations are good for your bottom line--and good for the planet.
Decarbonize your data center, try the Hitachi Vantara C02 Calculator.
Image Source: Getty Images, Hitachi Vantara