by Brianna Crandall — April 4, 2014—In view of the increasingly important role data centers are playing in most business operations in the twenty-first century, a global taskforce on data center efficiency recently announced agreement on standard approaches and reporting conventions for data center energy productivity (DCeP), a critical concern for facilities and energy managers. The latest recommendation from the taskforce is for data centers to define attributes and measure DCeP, an equation that quantifies useful work that a data center produces based on the amount of energy it consumes.
The DCeP concept allows each organization to define “useful work” as is applicable to its business, thus creating a custom and meaningful metric. For example, a retail business may use number of sales as the measure for useful work, while an online search company may use the number of searches completed.
“Overall, global data center traffic is estimated to grow threefold from 2012 to 2017, and although data centers are becoming more efficient, their total energy use is projected to grow,” said Deva Bodas, principal engineer and lead architect for Server Power Management at Intel Corporation and board member for The Green Grid Association. “With escalating demand for data center operations and rising energy costs, it is essential for data center owners and operators monitor, assess and improve performance using energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emission metrics. This is why the recommendations of the taskforce are so important.”
In October 2012, the taskforce reached consensus on the use of the Green Energy Coefficient (GEC), Energy Reuse Factor (ERF), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) metrics. Previously, it announced agreement on guidelines and specific measurement protocols for Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a metric originally developed by The Green Grid Association. All of the taskforce’s prior recommendations are included in the latest public memo.
The global taskforce on data center efficiency is comprised of representatives from: The Green Grid Association; the U.S. Department of Energy’s Save Energy Now and Federal Energy Management Programs (March 2009—October 2012); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Program; the European Commission-Joint Research Centre, Data Centres Code of Conduct; Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; and Japan’s Green IT Promotion Council. With this fourth and final public memo, the task force concludes five years of work to harmonize directions designed to improve key energy efficiency metrics within data centers.
The Green Grid Association is a global consortium of companies, government agencies, educational institutions and individuals dedicated to advancing resource efficiency in information technology (IT) and data centers with a holistic approach, including all IT, facility and infrastructure systems. The Green Grid spans the entire computing and communications ecosystem—from data centers to personal computers—and provides the global IT industry with metrics, tools and best practices to improve resource efficiency. The Green Grid does not endorse vendor-specific products or solutions; it seeks instead to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall resource efficiencies.
