by jbs021610 d3 — February 19, 2010—A report from Info-Tech Research Group, A Method for Measuring Data Center Energy Efficiency, emphasizes that capturing and analyzing energy efficiency metrics in data centers can improve business management decisions in several areas.
The report provides businesses with the most widely used methods of measuring energy used by data centers, and is aimed at helping IT managers and FMs improve energy efficiency, particularly as computing and storage requirements grow, coupled with rising electricity costs.
The energy efficiency metrics include improving data center capacity planning for power and cooling infrastructure, avoiding costly brownouts and service interruptions, meeting corporate priorities for “green” initiatives, calculating the real total cost of ownership (TCO) of infrastructure components, providing a baseline for calculating return on investment (ROI) for new energy saving initiatives, and identifying areas of opportunity based on energy usage data.
The report lays out four recommendations to improve overall energy efficiency, IT productivity and server energy efficiency, which include investing in energy efficient management products, working with facilities to gather non-server energy consumption data, using energy efficiency metrics to drive business cases, and phasing out older equipment.
