“Going green” cannot only save your business money and make it a good corporate citizen, but green business practices can also make you less susceptible to the kinds of major events that call for DR in the first place. Here are some of the different levels of green practices you can incorporate to help establish a sustainable disaster recovery plan.
Building Location and Construction
Your building’s infrastructure is closely tied to its DR capabilities. For example, power supply is a crucial issue. Locally-available, low-cost, low carbon energy sources, such as renewable energy is always the best choice if available. The successful green business utilizes multiple energy sources in order to protect itself from potentially damaging power outages.
A green building location is not only amenable to the surrounding landscape, but is built to redirect water runoff in order to avoid flooding, which could potentially cause great damage to business operations. Of course, buildings should also meet today’s energy efficiency standards such as LEED and other environmental protocols. Reducing heat loss, emissions and waste, conserving water and maintaining high air quality will make all businesses healthier and more resilient to potential disaster scenarios.
Data Centre Design and Upkeep
The way a data centre is designed and organized can go a long way towards making a sustainable disaster recovery plan. A key factor in maintaining safe and secure IT equipment is temperature. Although overheating equipment can seriously damage data processing equipment, many businesses overcompensate by blasting cold air into the rack room, inevitably cooling off surrounding office areas and forcing people to turn up the heat, defeating the whole purpose.
Instead, your business should be considering a complete, energy-efficient IT environment and architecture, combined with green practices, to maintain proper conditions throughout the data centre. HVAC, humidity controls, insulation and lighting should all be low-energy compliant.
Your entire range of IT equipment, including racking, power supply / distribution, and server and storage technology — including high-speed switching and advanced power management intelligence — should all be designed to minimize power and cooling consumption.
A green data centre doesn’t just help prevent unforeseen threats, it saves money both short-term and long-term. Better, more energy-efficient equipment extends its lifespan, facilitates potential expansion and upgrades, and makes it easier to re-use, dismantle / recycle and resell at the end-of-service.
Green Activities
The way businesses treat their IT equipment should also go green. Unless your business and computing runs 24/7, there is no reason anymore to keep IT equipment fully and constantly powered-up. The risk of a fatal burnout or failure increases with the length of time your machines are kept on. Maximize the use of end-of-day power off and sleep functions. Consider telecommuting and “virtual offices” in order to keep central power and transportation use down.
Other green activities include reducing waste toxins and consumables, by minimizing the use of un-recyclables. This includes:
- Minimal excess packaging
- Refillable / long-life toners
- Rechargeable batteries
- Upgradeable software/hardware.
Green Means Safety
At the end of the day, a green business is a safer business than a non-green one. By preventing potential problems from ever surfacing in the first place, you reduce the risk of disaster ever striking. In this sense, a sustainable disaster recovery plan is a process that can be carried out in tiny increments every second of every working day, keeping your business green and reducing potential threats at the same time.
