The data center will be impacted in 2009 by current economic conditions. With less money available, data center and IT managers will need to get more from their facility. The top 10 ways to overcome this challenge are suggested by Emerson Network Power.

Top 10 Tactics to Get More from Your Data Center with Less Money:

1.   Cover Your Bases. It may be more difficult to recover from an outage during tough economic times than during prosperous one. Money can actually be saved by a relatively small investment in precision air conditioning and backup power. For example, precision air conditioning will adequately protect data center assets; building air conditioning alone will not. For raising system availability and ensuring business continuity a double conversion backup power solution with adequate redundancy is essential.

2.   Look Inside Before Outside. To meet the need for more capacity than new facility development, increasing density may be a more cost-effective approach. For example, at a fraction of the cost of building a new facility, new cooling architectures can enable densities notably higher than average data center densities.

3.   Assess Before Action. Perhaps to asses their data center to identify and resolve vulnerabilities that threaten availability, increase data center efficiency, and improve planning and budget allocation will be one of the smartest investments businesses can make in the coming year.

4.   Go From Room to Rack. Utilizing an integrated enclosure system (i.e. data center in a box or mini computer room) offers a cost-effective solution to protecting the equipment that may be in a small data center or room. Just protect the rack instead of conditioning whole room environment.

5.   Cap the Cold Aisle. Cold aisle containment allows cooling units to run at reduced capacity to achieve ideal cooling conditions and save energy costs. Offering a better environment for data center personnel, this tactic is more efficient and effective than hot aisle containment systems.

6.   Check the Weather Forecast. In many locations, economizers can be used to allow outside cool air to complement data center cooling systems and provide "free cooling" during colder months. This approach lessens wear on some components in the cooling equipment, lowers energy usage and decreases operational costs. All together, it can be a welcome reduction in the data center electricity bill.

7.   Watch Often - If Not Always. The importance of monitoring what's going on inside the complex and dynamic data center is more important than ever. Businesses will be helped steer clear of unnecessary maintenance and repair costs by keeping an eye on performance. Success in this endeavor will require IT and facilities to integrate disparate data into a centralized portal where actionable and meaningful information can be derived.

8.   Improve Energy Utilization. Opportunities exist to improve energy use throughout data centers of all sizes. Adding variable frequency drives to cooling systems for example, allows them to recognize reduced loads and operate more efficiently. Every Watt of savings achieved on the processor level will create a total of 2.84 Watts of savings for the facility.

9.   Avoid Cutting Corners. A preventive maintenance plan can extend equipment life and reduce maintenance costs. Employ a battery maintenance strategy for example, so that your business isn't a victim of the number one cause of UPS failure: bad batteries.

10.   Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. It may be necessary to minimize capital expenditures but make sure you don't compromise future scalability. UPS scalability is emerging as a popular solution to reducing the risk associated with miscalculating future capacities.