The operational costs of a data center can be enormous. But many businesses are lost when it comes time to reduce their operational costs. Unfortunately, accounting does not always know which costs are essential and which have room for reduction. Conversely, the technical staff might consider everything essential even if it only increases performance by a small percentage.

Here are some tips for reducing operational costs of a data center.

Identify Your Costs

Most data center managers do not even know where they spend their money. They might have undifferentiated accounts that break out maintenance, utilities, hardware, software, and personnel, but they might not know which specific expenses are the greatest.

The first step of reducing costs is to identify them. For example, many data centers spend 40% of their total operational costs on electricity to power and cool the equipment. Understanding your energy expenses will help your data center energy management services develop an energy plan.

Upgrade to Reduce Costs

Older equipment will consume more electricity. Advances in energy management have made equipment more efficient and less expensive to run. If you have equipment near the end of its life, replacing it could substantially reduce your operating costs.

Equally importantly, replacing equipment helps you retain customers. For example, latency is used by many of your customers to evaluate your business. Apps and products with the lowest latency have a competitive advantage in the market. Equipment tailored for edge computing will be critical as your clients move their services toward providing real-time data to users.

Review Your Maintenance Policy

When maintaining a large data center, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. Server downtime means unhappy customers. And unhappy customers lead to a tight budget because of disputed charges and canceled accounts.

Instead of using your data center managers and administrators for troubleshooting and emergency repairs, have them develop a proactive maintenance schedule. Occasionally taking a server offline for maintenance and inspection will not only reduce your downtime but could help you detect:

  • Potential hardware failures
  • Software that requires patching
  • Data intrusions

Data centers can be costly. But by understanding where your budget is spent and taking a proactive approach to equipment maintenance and replacement, you can have a data center that meets all of your customers’ needs. Contact LDP Associates, the provider of mission critical support solutions, for more information.