Marketing research firm Gartner has said that by 2008 nearly 50 percent of today’s data centers will have insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet the demands of high-density equipment.

Michael A. Bell, research vice president for Gartner believes that due to the advent of high density computer equipment such as blade servers many of today’s data centers have already exhausted their power and cooling capacities. In their efforts to cater to their growing computing needs, organizations are deploying more and more equipments that consume increased amount of energy.

"Increased power translates into significant increase in heat gain, where the electrical cost to cool the data center can equal or exceed the power to energize the computer equipment," said Bell. "The heat produced by this high density requires new solutions in power and cooling management, specialty cooling solutions, data center design and layout, and processor efficiency."

Traditionally, power required for non-IT equipment in the data center such as cooling, fans and pumps represented about 60 percent of total annual energy consumption. As power requirements continue to grow, energy costs will emerge as the second highest operating cost in 70 percent of worldwide data center facilities by 2009, suggested Gartner.

In order to build an optimized, reliable and efficient facilities environment, Gartner recommended that data center managers take a holistic approach in planning, designing and laying out the data center. The approach should include looking at all the variables from site location to building type, building systems, rack configuration, equipment deployment, and airflow dynamics must be integrated and optimized.

"Although the power and cooling challenges will not be a perpetual problem, it is important for data center managers to focus on the electrical and cooling issue, and adopt best practices to mitigate the problem before it results in equipment failure, downtime and high remediation costs," concluded Bell.