4 Practical Ways To Slash Expenses In Your Data Center

Even though the experts will tell you the economy is getting better and better every day, companies today are still looking for more ways to reduce their expenses. One way to do this is to find ways to save money in your data center. With the cost of energy continuing to rise, now is the best time to start making some changes to save some money in your business. Keep reading to learn 4 practical ways to reduce business expenses in your data center:

1. Consolidate Your Data Center Facilities

One of the largest projects you can take on to slash your expenses is to consolidate your data centers. This can also be the project that saves you the most money. If you have more than one data center, even if one of those facilities isn't much bigger than your linen closet at home, then you're bleeding money. Consolidate all your data center equipment under one roof to reduce your expenses. You'll pay less in real estate costs, disaster recovery contracts, and have lower maintenance and support expenses. You'll also get rid of redundant IT assets, hardware, and software.

While reducing the number of data centers also means you'll need less employees, it is highly recommended that you retrain these employees to fill other rolls in your IT department instead of letting them go. To give you an example of how much money you can save by consolidating your data centers, take a look at what the Utah state government did. After consolidating their data centers and machine rooms, they saved $4 million!

2. Rationalize Your Hardware

According to the Cambridge Business English Dictionary, hardware rationalization is the process of using data to make decisions about how an organization or department buys and uses computers, software, and other products and tools to ensure they are as effective as possible. The result is not only hardware that is effective but also efficient, and often results in significant savings.

The areas where you'll see the most savings is in asset and inventory management, because you'll be able to easily see which items are used effectively and which are not, and then make changes to eliminate the things that are not effective. Rationalizing your servers will lower your maintenance and support costs, energy costs, and overall hardware costs.

3. Virtualization Of Hardware

Hardware virtualization is the creation of virtual versions of computers and operating systems, instead of using tangible items. Using virtual hardware will improve your company's operational efficiency, support consolidation efforts, and assist with decommissioning and cost management programs. With virtual hardware, you will have less equipment in your data center taking up precious space, and you won't have to pay as much for maintenance and support for the machines.

Virtualization also reduces your energy costs, since there are less machines in your center that will require power. There is one thing to keep in mind about virtualization, and that is you may need a license to operate virtual hardware. But the savings you'll get are worth that small stipulation.

4. Manage Energy Costs

The biggest expense for data centers is the cost of energy to keep all the servers and computers running at a cool temperature. The more equipment housed in a data center, the more energy is used to keep everything cool. If you raise the temperature of your data center to 75.2 degrees Fahrenheit, you are reducing the level of cooling and saving a significant amount on your air conditioner bill.

Also, utilize free outside air as a method of cooling instead of air conditioners. To save even more money on your data center energy bills, consider implementing blanking panels and economizers, hot aisle/cold aisle configurations, and sever-based energy management software to keep workloads running as efficiently as possible.

While companies of all sizes today are still facing budget cuts, data centers are often overlooked as areas where significant savings can be made by implementing a few practical changes to the way the department currently operates. Things like consolidating all your hardware into one location and virtualizing and rationalizing your hardware can greatly reduce your company's expenses. For more information on how to reduce expenses in your data center, contact a local data center hardware maintenance company. They'd be happy to help you find cost-saving solutions for your business.

Check out sites like http://www.virtualtechnology.com/ for more information.

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