A new analysis from the research firm Gartner has concluded that the costs of running data centers are only going in one direction next year, and that is up.

Gartner said power, cooling and space costs will only get worse in 2010. It said IT managers must proactively confront these issues, and that means monitoring and measuring power usage, getting rid of old or underutilized servers and consolidating data centers.

Gartner analyst Rakesh Kumar said in a statement that energy is the biggest financial cost, but he added that data center managers are still "not paying sufficient attention to the process of measuring, monitoring and modeling energy use in data centers,"

"They need to realize that removing a single x86 server from a data center will result in savings of more than $400 a year in energy costs alone," said Kumar.

One approach, the report said, would be to increase the temperature in the data center to reduce the amount of cooling necessary, using outside air when possible rather than air conditioning, and using the multiple tools and technologies offered by server makers to reduce the power consumed by the systems.

The Gartner report also said data center administrators should examine whether the hardware is still being used to determine which systems are still useful, noting that replacement of old equipment has led to 5 to 20 percent reductions in the number of servers being used.

In addition, Gartner recommended that companies consolidate their data centers. If a data center is located in an area with high labor or energy costs, data center managers should consider moving the facility to a place with lower costs, Gartner said.

For more on data centers:
- see this eWeek.com article

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