These tips will help you minimize power consumption, heat, waste and chaos.

How green is your data center? If you don’t care now, you will soon. Most data center managers haven’t noticed the steady increase in electricity costs, since in most cases they don’t see those bills. But they do see the symptoms of surging power demands.

High-density servers are creating hot spots in data centers that have surpassed 30 kilowatts per rack for some high-end systems. As a result, some data center managers are finding that they can’t get enough power distributed out to those racks on the floor. Others are finding that they’ve maxed out the power utility’s ability to deliver additional capacity to their location

Fortunately, there are many steps that data center managers can take to start reducing power consumption in existing data centers without making a huge investment — or sacrificing performance or availability.

1. Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate.
2. Turn on power management.
3. Upgrade to energy-efficient servers.
4. Use high-efficiency power supplies.
5. Break down internal barriers.
6. Follow the standards.
7. Advocate for change.