The issues data centre managers are facing

While many web hosting users will not even see the data centres that their information is stored in, someone has to maintain them. Managers of data centres currently have to face some critical issues that they should look to deal with, according to Gartner.

"Energy costs are the fastest-rising cost element in the data centre portfolio, and yet data centre managers are still not paying sufficient attention to the process of measuring, monitoring and modelling energy use in data centres," commented Rakesh Kumar, research vice-president at Gartner.

According to Gartner, the only way that energy management can be carried out effectively is with advanced measuring, modelling, monitoring techniques and methods.

The organisation also pointed to a number of ways in which data centre managers can cut costs. One of these is through the rationalisation of hardware, removing systems that are underused or old.

Consolidating numerous sites into a smaller number of bigger sites can also help cut down on outgoings. Gartner said that its clients have reported that rationalisation and consolidation initiatives have seen five to 20 per cent fewer servers being deployed.

But what did Gartner note was the biggest cost element for data centre management? People. According to the organisation, outgoings on people at the facilities can sometimes amount to as much as 40 percent of overall costs.

Talking about the management of data centres, James Cole, director of Keysource, said: "The sign of a bad data centre starts with poor management of the airflow space."

In an ideal world, data centres would have exhaust airs coming from the rear of the servers and the general data centre air, as having a divide between separate airs is the "main enabler to efficiency", Mr Cole explained.

He claimed that the best opportunities for improving efficiency in data centres is through IT virtualisation.

Written by Sarah Woolf.