Data Center Efficiency Metrics

Emerson Network Power's Energy Logic white paper provided a holistic, prioritized roadmap for reducing data center energy consumption. Energy Logic did not address data center efficiency directly because there is no universally accepted metric for data center output that could be used as the basis for this analysis.

The lack of such a measure is seriously hindering the industry's efforts to address the challenge of data center efficiency.

To address this issue, Emerson Network Power has developed a new white paper, Energy Logic II, that shows how using efficiency metrics can uncover the true story of IT energy efficiency and help IT and data center managers prioritize their efficiency efforts.

While there is no universally accepted metric for server and data center output, there is significant industry information available on the increase in the "performance" of servers and chips over the past several years. For example, Christian Belady, principal power and cooling architect at Microsoft, has stated that "raw performance" of IT has improved 75-fold in the ten-year period from 1998 to 2007. What has not been clarified by the industry is the specific measure for this performance.

In the interest of furthering the discussion, Energy Logic uses the available information on performance improvement and analyzes it to see what insights can be gained. As a first step, Emerson introduces the concept of CUPS, or Compute Units per Second, as a temporary or placeholder name for what will eventually be the sought-after universal metric for IT and data center output. Another way to understand what CUPS represents is to think of it as the metric for "performance."

The analysis leads to powerful insights in three major areas of importance to all stakeholders and end-users in the IT and infrastructure industries.

First, while there has been significant increase in energy consumption in IT and data center environments, these increases are considerably overshadowed by dramatic gains in data center output and efficiencies over the last five years. Second, applying the CUPS metric to Emerson's Energy Logic model yields clear strategies for improving data center efficiency. Third, the analysis leads to a clear direction on the criteria to be used for arriving at a universally accepted metric for IT and data center output.

Click here for the new white paper from Emerson Network Power called Energy Logic: Calculating and Prioritizing Your Data Center IT Efficiency Actions.

Use the Energy Logic Efficiency Calculator