With rising energy costs now becoming a major concern for most large organisations, the interest in reducing data centre and IT energy, where the majority of a company's utility costs are incurred, is now becoming a necessity. "Green" organisations, such as LEED and Green Grid, are stirring interest within C-level executives to turn their companies into eco-friendly, energy efficient consumers and producers.

When The Pantry decided that it was time to expand their headquarters' data centre, Ed Collupy, VP of Information Technology commented, "we saw an opportunity to take advantage of new power and cooling technologies, which were environmentally friendly yet more productive."

The Pantry had already begun taking advantage of new computing technologies such as blade servers, whereas one server chassis consists of multiple circuit boards, or 'blades', that each act as an individual server. This allows more computing power in a smaller space, which drastically reduces power consumption, but results in highly concentrated, or 'high density' heat output. The ability to capture and remove this concentrated heat, in order to maintain an optimal temperature requires a new approach to data center design. With this in mind, The Pantry chose Altruent Systems for their proficiency in high-density data centre design using APC's (American Power Conversion) scalable InfraStruXure architecture.

Altruent's design and construction of The Pantry’s data center allowed The Pantry to make a significant contribution to Energy and Atmosphere conservation and preservation. This is done by using multiple InRow, 'close-coupled' cooling units, which eliminates the need for an inefficient raised floor, and places the cooling units closer to the servers. This captures the heat directly from an intentional 'hot aisle' and distributes cool air to the 'cold aisle'. This prevents the hot and cold air from mixing, which highly improves cooling efficiency, and thus reduces the total energy required to maintain the proper temperature. With the implementation of such a system, The Pantry was able to greatly increase their computing capacity and reliability, while simultaneously going Green.

"Working together with Altruent, we successfully transformed an outdated data centre into one that will carry us forward for many years to come", stated Ed Collupy. "These initiatives have positioned The Pantry for continued technology growth along with an outlook towards smart energy-related controls."

While more and more companies such as The Pantry are looking towards a "Greener" future, it's no wonder why companies like Altruent Systems are being selected to reconfigure, design and provide solutions to outdated data centres. With energy costs rising and many companies trying to incorporate a green ideology within their business model, it makes sense to start going green at the core of your business, where most energy is consumed - the data centre.