How Data Centers Can Make the Grade - Better Data Center Management
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But these concerns aren't
necessarily translating into action. Only about 10 percent of data centers are
actively looking for efficiencies and improvements, Belady said. Often, this
can be traced to confusion about how to start or where to focus.
"Clearly, within the
data center, there is a need to measure so you can then control," said
Larry Vertal, a senior strategist at Advanced Micro Devices and a Green Grid
representative. "Right now, without the application of any measurements,
it is hard for a data center operator to determine which button they should
push to create differences." Fear is also a problem. "Sometimes
people think it is very difficult to measure efficiency and are afraid that a
rating system will show that they aren't as good as they thought they were,"
Belady said.
As part of its efforts to
ease these fears and get data centers moving in the right direction, the Green
Grid Metrics and Measurement Work Group—composed of 21 member companies—has
created the Data Center infrastructure Efficiency
metric and the Power Usage Effectiveness metric, which measure energy
efficiency in the data center.
In the long term, the Green
Grid is developing efficiency metrics for all major power-consuming subsystems
in the data center. "We are spending energy on making sure that we look at
all the ratings systems and metrics as a global effort," Belady said.
Hailey Lynne McKeefry is a
freelance writer based in Belmont, Calif. She can be reached at
hailey@professionalink.com.
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