For servers and datacentres, as energy consumption is their main carbon footprint, it is important to continuously work on decreasing their energy consumption.

Before any best practices, let us focus briefly on datacentres to understand what is at stake.

First, it is good to keep in mind that datacentres/servers are not bad guys here! Their efficiency has been improved ridiculously over the last decades. According to GreenIT.fr, datacentres' activities increased by 550% over the last decade, for a slight 6% increase of electricity consumption.

Datacentres are listed into Tiers - depending on the average unavailability of service (per year). The more the service is ensured, the higher Tier it is (and the energy consumption too!).

Therefore, before anything, it is important to estimate the importance of a service to deploy it on a server/datacentre. Non critical services are not necessary on a Tier 4 datacentre for example.

Last - but not least: data flows are important to understand to lower their impact. Isit Academy estimates that:

- 15% of data received/sent by datacentres are processed from end-users

- 15% of data received/sent by datacentres are processed from external datacentres

- Remaining 70% (!) data are internal flows (save, security, storage...).

This gives perspective to know where improvements should be made in priority. Especially, security processes are considered being the most energy consuming services in a datacentre.

Finally, the electricity consumed by a datacentre also includes all interfaces, screens, people.... Some improvements have to be enforced here also, not only in the datacentre processes themselves.

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Some important Best Practices to implement:

• Choose green servers / services to virtualize your datacentre equipment. Deploying in cloud allows servers optimization. For large scale companies, you could consider hyperscale datacentres. See solution in green hardware and e-waste.
• Chase idle servers and stop servers when they are not used. See solution in green hardware and e-waste.
• Increase physical servers occupation rate, push for thin provisioning.
• Deploy high-capacity drives (they are optimized)
• Deploy virtualized environments for testing, development...
• Use AI and IoT to optimize your datacentre, to detect deficiencies and improve PUE (Power Usage Efficiency)
• Set up a Datacentre Infrastructure Management (DCiM) and lead inventories as often as possible 
• For each server, remove all physical parts that are not necessary
• Adapt your cooling system:            
    - Cool only servers racks that are in use
    - Set up adequate temperatures given by manufacturers. Servers may support higher temperatures that we usually think and manufacturers warranties are usually up to 35° Celsius / 95° Farenheit.
    - Optimise air flows according to where the servers are located in the room / racks
    - Adopt an Air containment strategy for a better energy efficiency (closed spaces to keep temperatures constant, hot zones / cold zones separation ...)
    - Explore different cooling technologies such as liquid cooling