Spring Cleaning Your Data Centre Could Save You A Fortune

Such scenarios are all too familiar in large corporations and are exacerbated by problems surrounding high staff turnover.  Employees that are leaving are rarely concerned about who will own their applications or hardware once they have gone.  

If nobody actually needs these ‘orphan’ items they are left there to quietly carry on consuming power, cooling and rack space ad infinitum.  

From my experience in data centres there is an average of around 5-10% of hardware that is of no value to the organisation but is still switched on.  For companies with multiple locations this can lead to vast amounts of wasted rack space alongside maintenance payments that are no longer necessary. 

To remedy this issue you need robust and clearly defined SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) in place for the decommissioning of hardware.  Most organisations have well defined procedures for commissioning items but few have anything as formal in place for equipment removal. 

Typically, this waste is only discovered during a data migration or building move. Hundreds of man hours can be wasted attempting to find owners of unutilised equipment that could have been removed years ago.  

Time and time again companies are astounded at the space that could have been saved had they decommissioned equipment effectively.  Few believe that this has occurred and even fewer are willing to pay for a full environmental audit in order to find out. 

Such  ‘policies of denial’ could end up costing millions if an additional data hall is built unnecessarily, or power feeds to an existing facility need to be upgraded.  

In almost all cases an environmental audit and the creation of SOP’s for equipment decommission will pay for themselves many times over in real terms, while also reducing an organisations power consumption and carbon footprint.