Track data centre sustainability metrics
Most data centre professionals are familiar with Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which is the ratio of total facility energy to total IT equipment energy. The closer to 1.0 your PUE is, the more efficient your data centre is.
PUE is certainly one of the most important KPIs to gauge your efficiency efforts, but there are other KPIs you should measure for the most complete picture of how sustainable your data centre is.
Here are a few of them:
- Cabinets Compliant with ASHRAE Standards - measures how much progress has been made towards ideal environmental conditions calculated by Racks in ASHRAE Recommended Range / Total Racks.
- Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) – Measures the overall sustainability of your data centre from a carbon footprint perspective. The carbon footprint of a data centre is defined as the carbon emissions equivalent to the total amount of electricity a particular data centre consumes.
- Data centre Space Efficiency (DCSE) – Measures how efficiently your data centre space is used.
- Stranded Power Capacity Per Rack – Measures how much additional equipment can be deployed in existing cabinet resources.
Measuring your data centre sustainability metrics enables you to capture the effect of changes and to determine if you are achieving improvements in your data centre sustainability. Currently, there are no efficiency requirements for data centres, unlike individual computer servers.
“Carbon-neutral energy sources and energy-efficient digital technologies are available today, and it’s through appropriate methodologies, industry commitment and policy enforcement that broad adoption can be driven,” said Benoit Revaz, Swiss Federal Office of Energy. “We welcome projects such as the Swiss Data centre Efficiency Label, which can help to lessen the negative climate impact of one of the digital backbones of our society. We encourage and support organizations and nations worldwide to undertake similar efforts.”
Considering the exponential growth of data volumes and data traffic projected in the next few years, methodologies for measuring and managing data centre efficiency are needed to significantly reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption.
In the last decade, global internet traffic increased tenfold and data centre storage capacity increased by a factor of 25. To grow capacity sustainability, green data centres and cloud operators are making incredible advancements in energy efficiency. They are deploying state-of-the-art hyper-efficient equipment and cooling technology, generating renewable energy onsite, and pursuing other innovations like building data centres underground and underwater, developing artificial intelligence that can predict environmental conditions and optimize operations, and reusing waste heat to cool nearby homes and buildings.
Measuring data centre sustainability metrics and driving energy efficiency isn’t just for hyperscalers. All data centre managers need to improve efficiency, reduce operating costs, and comply with corporate and governmental sustainability initiatives.
Drive Sustainability in Your Data centre with Tri-Paragon’s industry-leading Sunbird DCIM Software. Leading experts deploy Sunbird’s Data centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software to support their energy efficiency objectives.
Tri-Paragon’s Sunbird DCIM software makes it easy to:
- Measure energy consumption so you have the data to make more intelligent decisions
- Get real-time charts and reports on energy metrics like PUE
- Create bill back reports to facilitate more energy-efficient behaviours from customers
- Avoid overcooling and wasting energy without sacrificing performance
- Identify power-hungry equipment that should be replaced
- Design your physical infrastructure for optimal efficiency
- Intelligently consolidate and virtualize resources
Follow our weekly blogs for additional Tips to reduce power consumption (your carbon footprint) and increase the sustainability of your data centre.
Contact Tri-Paragon Inc. for additional details. We can be reached at 416 865-3392 or by email at info@triparagon.com.
