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9 Hidden Data CenterOperations CostsAnd how to eliminate them


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9 Hidden Costs

Introduction

Hidden Cost #1: Capital

Hidden Cost #2: Stagnation

Hidden Cost #3: Delayed Benchmarking

Hidden Cost #4: Knowledge Walk

Hidden Cost #5: Corrective Maintenance

Hidden Cost #6: Ignoring Predictive Data

Hidden Cost #7: Vendor Maintenance

Hidden Cost #8: Airflow & Set Points

Hidden Cost #9: Its Not Always Energy

Key Takeaways

Where to Go From Here?

Table of Contents

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9 Hidden Costs

Did you know

In a recentsurvey by IDG Enterprise, 23% of IT Executives listed

operating costs as their top concerns of 2012.

Everyone knows its expensive to operate a data center. Between

the energy bill, human capital, and routine upgrades, the cost to run

a data center is almost as painful as filling up your car. However,

you may be unaware of hidden expenses that can drive up cost

centers and break the budget. In this ebook, well look at a few of

the ways you can eliminate these hidden costs, and get your datacenter operations program running efficiently.

Introduction

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http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/data-centers-considered-strategic-asset-growing-number-enterprise-organizations-1559942.htmhttp://www.marketwire.com/press-release/data-centers-considered-strategic-asset-growing-number-enterprise-organizations-1559942.htm


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Did you know that your operations program could be driving up your capitalbudget?

It can be argued that a lower or multi-tier level design can be supplemented

with a pristine operations program to achieve the reliability of a tier III or tierIV data center thats money saved before you even have an operatingbudget to spend! But, the right operations program can do more than that. Itcould save you from investing capital in a new build before you even need it.

Lets look at an example:

A Fortune 100 company brought in a 3rd party data center solutions providerto consult on future data center planning. At the time, the company wasnearing the end of available space in their data centers and was in themiddle of planning the build of another. The solution providers facilityoperations team immediately got to work, and within the first few monthsrecommended and implemented several best practices which increased

efficiency in their current data centers and freed up much needed computingspace. This allowed the company to not only dramatically lower theiroperating costs, but also extend the life of their existing facilities by severalyears. By eliminating the need to build in the near future, the clientpreserved millions in capital. Not to mention, they saw an immediate returnon their investment. What is your facility hiding that could be saving youmoney?

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Cost #1: Capital


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Does your operations program have a culture of innovation or stagnation? They sayif youre not moving forward, youre falling behind. In this case, falling behindmeans that youre also losing money as well as losing your competitive advantage.

One of the most important aspects of your operations program is a culture ofinnovation and proactive improvement. Without it, all the processes and proceduresin the world could fall victim to the check-in-the-box syndrome (when something isdone simply to be able to check it off your list). This type of thinking is flat outdangerous in a data center. It also means youre losing opportunity for

improvement, whether that be reliability, process efficiency or energy efficiency.Change Management and Quality Systems (QA, QC & QI) help instill a proactiveculture in an operations program. Not to mention, its what separates most goodprograms from great ones.

Here is an example of what a culture of innovation can do:

Facility Operations technicians identified an opportunity to enhance the aireconomizer on site. The technicians did their research, and reached out to thelocal utility company, which granted $800,000 to complete the project, whichcovered almost 75% of the cost. Once implemented, the improvement saved$100,000 in utility costs per month and showed a three month return on investment.

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Cost #2: Stagnation


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9 Hidden Costs

Almost all energy efficiency projects you implement will be costly upfront. Even ifyoure certain a project will save you money, you must have a baseline in place toprove ROI and secure funds for the project. Not only does benchmarking provide

a way to measure savings, it allows you to make sound decisions backed by datathat wont affect reliability and availability.

This is why you need to establish a energy usage and energy efficiency baseline.Having a years worth of data is ideal to account for seasonal cost powerconsumption. The longer you wait to establish and track your baseline, the more

time and money is wasted operating a non-optimized facility. Optimizing theefficiency of any system requires the measurement and evaluation of systemperformance. Energy benchmarking of the data center is an effective means to:

Establish baseline performance to measure against future performance or forcomparison to similar facilities.

Identify operational and maintenance issues.

Qualify and quantify changes in performance.

Assist in management and planning for both current and future facilities.

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Cost #3: Delayed Benchmarking

To have a world-class facilityoperations program, you must

instrument and create efficiencymodels for your data center. Bycreating a baseline for energy

usage and efficiency, you canuse modeling and best practicesto make and document

efficiency improvements of up to80%.


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What happens if your operations MVPs get injured, retire or leave the company? Does their knowledge of thefacility walk out the door with them?

There are often operations programs where there is no formal documentation of training and operationsprocedures. Instead, tribal knowledge exists in that data center. When training is necessary, its almostalways on the job, which means there is almost always lost knowledge in the process. In this situation, theworst thing that could possibly happen is a knowledgeable technician leaving the program. This knowledgewalk is almost impossible to replace, as it takes years for a new employee to discover everything about thedata center facility. Not only does this cost you in terms of employee experience, it puts you at risk of

downtime. There is potential for HUGE cost savings that could be realized if a formal training program isimplemented. Heres what we mean:

1. In a formal training program, youve got the best people being constantly trained, drilled and tested toperform better. This does two things: (1) retains good employees by keeping them motivated and givingthem a career path; and (2) reduces the risk of human error by putting the classroom into practice so the

right actions are second nature.2. Formal training programs provide a conduit for consistently relaying techniques for lower resourceconsumption (time, power, water, equipment wear and tear, etc.).

3. Formal training provides a reliable way to start self performing some maintenance activities, and in somecases, significantly reducing vendor costs. More on this later.

Cost #4: Knowledge Walk

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As you know, it is far cheaper to change the oil in your car (preventativemaintenance) than fixing a blown engine (corrective maintenance). The samegoes for preventative maintenance in a data center. Did you know that 30% of all

preventative maintenance activities go unperformed?*

This is not surprising considering that, on average, it takes 8 man hours toschedule a single maintenance activity. Now consider that in a 50,000 ft2 datacenter it is typical to see 800 preventative and 500 corrective maintenanceactivities take place per quarter its easy to see how preventative maintenance

gets neglected. You can help combat the time suck, save money and improvereliability by leveraging workflow automation and document managementsoftware, such as a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system)and DMS (document management system).

For example, one facility operations team recommended workflow software thatwould organize, simplify and automate the MOP process (Method of Procedure).The result? Saving $30,000+ annually by being able to produce more MOPs,perform the work faster, taking on more work elsewhere and eliminatingcountless hours sifting through a manual, disorganized filing system.

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Cost #5: Corrective Maintenance

*Based on data collected through Lee Technologies NOC (National Operations Center).


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What good is data that you dont use?

While collecting data is important, the data must be useful to justify the process. Weve already

talked about how benchmarking your resource usage, like power and water, can help youidentify areas for greater efficiency. The concept also applies to maintenance. Similar topreventative maintenance, predictive maintenance uses your past experiences and data toidentify weak points and correct them before they become costly problems. To clarify,predictive maintenance allows you to:

Know your systems weak points

Correct weak items before they fail

Modify procedures & scope of work to address such items

Adjust your data gathering and collecting as necessary

The key to predictive maintenance is documenting your preventive maintenance (PM) andinstituting a Lessons Learned program. By analyzing preventative maintenance data, you canlocate recurring problems, see when equipment performance is degrading and make changesto increase total system reliability. A Lessons Learned Program enhances the reliability andquality of your work by providing a conduit to make improvements or corrections to processesand procedures (It also feeds back in to the culture of innovation!). The savings will really startto add up!

Cost #6: Ignoring Predictive Data

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Could you be self-performing preventative maintenance orrenegotiating third party contracts?

By now, you see there are many ways to lower operating coststhrough your maintenance practices. Two final way to lower costsare by performing preventative/predictive maintenance in house andrenegotiated third party contracts. Take this advice with a word ofcaution: you should only take in maintenance activities that:

1. You will actually do (remember 30% of preventativemaintenance activities go unperformed)

2. You can do without reducing reliability. (Is your teamqualified? Do they have consistent training? Do you have aoperations methodology in place that will reduce the risk of

human error?)

The savings could be tremendous. For example, one company hiredtwo technicians to perform more work in-house and reduced vendorcosts by $400,000.

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Cost #7: Vendor Maintenance


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Alright, so you benchmarkednow what?

Once you have benchmarked your energy usage and other data points,

you can begin implementing some free or low cost efficiencyimprovements, such as:

Airflow Management Fine tuning the air delivery system (sealing floor penetrations,

proper placement of perforated tiles and the use of blanking

panels) Balancing the system and tuning the under floor airflow with

diffusers and baffles

Optimize data center configurations and set points and varioussettings on equipment, such as HVAC systems, when they are notfully loaded.

Look at utility charges and make sure that client is getting fair price

Employing efficient power system components (these componentsare usually cost-effective when installing new or replacing end-of-lifeequipment)

You can expect to save 20% of total energy spend on low hanging fruittypes of activities, such as these. Expect to save much more on capitalprojects, such as economizers.

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Cost #8: Airflow & Set Points

A computational

fluid dynamics(CFD) study can beperformed to betteroptimize computerroom air handlerunits, under floor

dampers andperforated tile

placement. Onecompany performedadjustments made

based off this studyto save the facilityup to $2 million.


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While energy efficiency is a hot topic and a huge area for operationalsavings, dont forget there are other means to cost savings, such as:

Reducing energy consumption all around as opposed to justusing it efficiently. Both will positively affect your power bill.

Other resource consumption, such as materials, man powerand time. Use your culture of innovation to make improvementsto cost, energy usage, process and quality.

Costs to avoid, such as safety hazards, downtime, knowledge

walk, etc. Sometimes the best cost savings is havinginsurance or assurance against expensive, negative events.

If youre building, consider the impact your facility design hason operations. Consider reusing or repurposing materials. Forinstance, designing a chilled water system that treats andreuses water from the chillers to irrigate site vegetation. This

design saves one company $2.6 million gallons of water of yearand saves $80,000 annually in water/sewage. It also has a 2year ROI.

Cost #9: Its Not Only Energy

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1. Your operations program can affect the cost of future buildsand visa versa. If you are planning to build, verify with aunbiased third party that you do, in fact, need to build. If so,

include your operations team in the design process to helpdetermine the designs impact on future operational costs.

2. Data is one of your most valuable assets, so put it to work tooptimize the energy efficiency and reliability of your datacenter.

3. A quality training program can help your employees performtheir best, keeps them happy and helps you get the most bangfor your buck.

4. Performing maintenance before problems arise is cheaper thancorrective maintenance. Preventative and predictivemaintenance can also be performed in-house to lower third-party vendor costs. It will also help extend the life of yourequipment.

5. Dont forget that increasing energy efficiency is not the onlyway to lower your operating costs.

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Key Takeaways


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Still wondering where to go from here? Talk to your data centermanagement team to determine what activities can realistically beperformed in-house. Discuss the possibility of performing an audit on

your data center to identify inefficiencies.

Once the audit has been performed, look at where improvementscan be made. Stack rank them in order of ease to perform and costeffectiveness.

For more best practices on facility operations, check out the blog,

Data Center Insider, from Lee Technologies, a division of SchneiderElectric.

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Where To Go From Here?
http://info.leetechnologies.com/http://info.leetechnologies.com/


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9 Hidden Costs

2011 Schneider Electric. All rights reserved.

All trademarks are property of Schneider Electric or

its affiliated companies.

address:

132 Fairgrounds Road, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA

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make the most of your energy

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