How To Green Your Hardware Asset Management In The Data Center

Embracing green hardware asset management is not only good for the environment but good for your IT budget.

Running a data center is a resource-hungry affair. Computing consumes power and requires increasingly sophisticated hardware, with a price tag to match. Servers are routinely underutilized and sometimes hardly contribute to workload despite being fully functional.

Given these time and cost pressures, getting a handle on your data center hardware has never been more important.

So, how are attitudes to hardware management in the data center evolving? And what are three steps IT managers can take in the pursuit of green hardware asset management?

Why Green Hardware Asset Management

Data center hardware is integral to our world. Servers handle workloads that touch every aspect of everyday life, from processing financial transactions to delivering healthcare.

But, if not managed robustly, critical hardware comes with a financial and environmental cost. Equipment underutilization, compounded by the mounting problem of data center e-waste, represent very real challenges.

The solution demands a multi-pronged approach that calls on IT managers to:

Improve server utilization
More intelligently manage refresh cycles
Embrace hardware reuse

Let’s start with the thorny case of zombie servers:

1 Improve Server Utilization

Horror movie references aside, the data center is literally teeming with zombie servers. These machines are technically alive but either woefully underused or devoid of purpose.

Some studies put the rate of zombification (as a proportion of all global servers) as high as 30%. These wasted servers need power to operate, require cooling to keep operational, and take up valuable rack space. A 2015 analysis estimated the cumulative cost of zombie—or comatose— servers at a cool $30 billion. Who knows what that figure might be today?

With a little motivation, it’s not difficult though to identify these power-draining machines. Network discovery tools exist, and something as simple as a periodic walkthrough can help. Once identified, there are plenty of options around server virtualization and decommissioning to explore.

But IT managers have typically found it hard to attack zombification. Across global markets, it appears there is low appetite for addressing the problem, according to the latest Super Micro survey on green computing practices.

Don’t let reticence get in your way. Zombie servers represent an opportunity to free up rack space, redeploy resources, and recover value from decommissioned equipment.

Secure management buy-in. Present your plans with an emphasis on the cost savings associated with the work. Executives love to see efficiencies. Your CFO will thank you for it.
Assess the operational impacts. Zombie servers may still be performing some residual level of work and storing some type of data. But whose work and whose data is it? Clearly associate servers with workloads, including internal points of contact.
Develop an internal protocol for evaluating which applications to delete and when. If nobody claims an application within a communicated timeframe, consider it permission to cut the cable.

Because zombie servers hate nothing more than cable-cutting time.

2 Intelligently Manage Refresh Cycles

Server refreshes represent a double-edged sword. As a rule, upgrading data center equipment is good for the environment. New, more powerful machines can generally do more work for the same amount of power.

At the same time, organizations must have robust plans in place for responsibly decommissioning retiring hardware. E-waste is a mounting problem across data centers globally.

Design your IT infrastructure with refresh cycles in mind. For each piece of data center equipment, assign it a decommissioning plan at the time of its deployment.
Explore disaggregation. This is a big commercial play for manufacturers such as Super Micro. Disaggregated servers allow IT managers to upgrade part of the server (say the CPU) but leave the rest—including peripherals and networking—as is. “Disaggregated servers give data centers the ability to spend less time and money on refreshing servers so that they can refresh faster and take advantage of the latest technologies,” says Super Micro in its report.
Watch the hyperscalers closely. Examine their nuanced approach to server management and their zealous focus on repair and longevity. Take Microsoft’s goal of reducing the level of e-waste in its data centers by 90% come 2030 through a combination of repair management, reuse, and recycling, largely orchestrated by intelligent software.

Using machine learning, we will process servers and hardware that are being decommissioned onsite. We’ll sort the pieces that can be reused and repurposed by us, our customers, or sold. We will use our learnings about reuse, disassembly, reassembly and recycling with design and supply chain teams to help improve the sustainability of future generations of equipment.
Microsoft president Brad Smith announcing his company’s commitment to reduce data center e-waste by 90% within the decade.

Ask your ITAD provider about what role improved repair management and server disaggregation may play in helping better manage your server refresh cycles.

Time to Refresh?

Most of the data on refresh rates points to a lengthening in the cycle across recent years as hardware gets more resilient and the benefits of refreshing become less immediately obvious.

That said, Super Micro’s latest survey identified an apparent shortening in the cycle compared with its survey from the previous year.

“The 2020 survey showed that 68% of respondents were refreshing their servers every year or two to three years. This compares to just 37% for the 2019 survey,” the report stated. “For those that keep servers for six or more years, only 8% in the 2020 survey said they do so, compared to 23% in the 2019 survey.“

Chart outlining attitudes to server replacement among respondents to Super Micro's 2020 survey of IT professionals — Super Micro’s survey identified an apparent shortening in the refresh cycle, contrary to studies elsewhere.

However, some of these changes may be attributable to the size and scale of the 2020 survey, which had fewer respondents and a much heavier skew toward large organizations than its 2019 counterpart. There’s also the disruptive impact of the pandemic to consider.

3 Embrace Hardware Reuse

Whatever your attitude to server utilization and refresh management, you need a clear policy in place for hardware reuse.

“One of the essential elements of a TCE (total cost to environment) calculation is what happens to equipment that is no longer needed or has outlived its usefulness,” says the Super Micro report. “The decommissioning of servers and plan for e-waste is a critical component of a TCE plan.”

Chart outlining different ways IT managers responding to Super Micro's 2020 survey promote reuse and recycling of data center hardware — Appetite for reusing and repurposing data center hardware appears to be on the rise, according to Super Micro’s survey.

Despite this, almost half of survey respondents didn’t have a decommissioning oe reuse plan in place. The problem is particularly pronounced among small and medium-sized businesses.

In the 2019 survey, although 37% of respondents reported redeploying assets internally, that means more than six in ten IT professionals don’t.
Fewer than a quarter (22%) look to resell IT equipment on the secondary market. The vast majority (almost four in five) either choose not to or simply don’t consider it.

Green Hardware Asset Management Is Your Friend

It may not always feel like it among the operational hurly-burly, but the future of the data center is green. Stay focused on ways of

improving server utilization
proactively managing refresh cycles
and (most importantly of all) embracing hardware reuse.

With 25 years’ experience working with the biggest names in the industry, Horizon Technology knows how to drive operational savings in your hardware lifecycle management.

Be part of the solution and advance the green data center through excellence in hardware asset management. It will save you money, too.

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