It’s one factor to speak about how sustainable knowledge facilities are from an power perspective. It may be one other to show {that a} knowledge middle is definitely sustainable by measuring its power consumption and monitoring power effectivity on an ongoing foundation.
What’s extra, whereas it’s widespread for knowledge middle operators to speak about what number of megawatts of power their amenities devour, gaining granular, server-by-server visibility into power consumption is lots trickier – and it’s typically the place insights into power effectivity measurements fall brief.
To that finish, right here’s a take a look at the assorted methods to trace knowledge middle power consumption and why a number of kinds of power measurements are important for optimizing sustainability.
Why Monitor Knowledge Heart Power Use?
Knowledge middle power consumption is a scorching subject nowadays due largely to the large portions of electrical energy that knowledge facilities use. Collectively, knowledge facilities are answerable for about 4% of whole power consumption.
As a result of a lot of that power is sourced from fossil fuels like coal and pure gasoline, about 1% of world greenhouse gasoline emissions are attributable to knowledge facilities.
Which means visibility into knowledge middle power consumption is necessary for monitoring sustainability outcomes.
The Want for Granular Power Consumption Measurement
The commonest technique to measure power consumption and sustainability outcomes in knowledge facilities is through Energy Utilization Effectiveness (PUE), a metric that tracks whole power consumption relative to the entire capability of IT infrastructure inside a facility.
PUE is one technique to acquire perception into total knowledge middle sustainability. It’s significantly helpful for assessing how environment friendly the cooling techniques of a facility are. As a result of most knowledge facilities have a central cooling infrastructure that dissipates warmth from all servers, power waste in the course of the cooling course of will likely be mirrored in PUE metrics.
A key limitation of PUE, nonetheless, is that it solely displays the general power effectivity of an information middle. It doesn’t present granular visibility into the effectivity of particular person racks, servers or purposes.
This presents a problem as a result of one main manner to enhance sustainability inside knowledge facilities is to find particular person belongings which might be energy-efficient and change them. Understanding {that a} facility has poor PUE metrics could also be an indicator that a few of the servers or workloads inside it will not be operating effectively. However with PUE knowledge alone, there could be no technique to pinpoint the supply of power waste – resembling a server with older CPUs which might be much less energy-efficient, or an software whose inner code wastes power as a result of it consumes extra CPU cycles than it could if the code had been optimized.
Therefore, it is very important be capable to measure knowledge middle power use not simply when it comes to the entire megawatts wanted to maintain a facility operating but additionally in additional granular methods.
Approaches to Monitoring Power Utilization In Knowledge Facilities
Happily, there are methods to measure knowledge middle power use granularly, however provided that knowledge middle operators (and tenants, if they’re answerable for managing their very own servers) spend money on the suitable options.
The principle choices for monitoring knowledge middle power use embrace:
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Central energy meters: A central energy meter that sits between an information middle’s exterior energy supply and its electrical infrastructure can monitor its whole power use.
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Department circuit monitoring: Department circuits are circuits that distribute energy to particular person components of the info middle – typically, to particular server cupboards or teams of cupboards. Monitoring energy consumption on the department circuit stage offers visibility into how a lot power completely different sections of IT infrastructure are utilizing.
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PDU monitoring: A Energy Distribution Unit, or PDU, is a {hardware} machine that provides energy to servers inside a rack or cupboard. Some PDUs function built-in energy meters for monitoring power consumption by gear linked to them.
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BMC monitoring: A baseboard administration controller (BMC) is a tool embedded into servers that may usually gather real-time energy utilization info, amongst different kinds of knowledge.
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Software program energy monitoring: Some software program utilities, like PowerTOP on Linux, can measure power utilization by particular person purposes or processes.
Every of those strategies comes with execs and cons. For instance, software program instruments that try and report the facility utilization of particular person processes are very helpful if you wish to establish particular workloads which might be sucking up extra power than they need to because of issues like inefficient code. Nonetheless, the accuracy of the info reported by these instruments can differ, particularly in gadgets that lack hardware-level energy reporting capabilities – so a course of that seems to be answerable for an outsize share of power consumption could not really change into a offender.
In the meantime, department circuit energy monitoring is often very correct as a result of it measures the stream of energy by electrical {hardware}. However the granularity of the insights it generates is restricted, because it solely experiences energy consumption on a circuit-by-circuit foundation.
As a result of these shortcomings, it’s greatest to make use of a number of energy measurement methods with knowledge facilities. Monitoring power use at completely different ranges of your IT infrastructure and through a couple of method improves the reliability of the outcomes, whereas additionally serving to to supply the granularity essential to dwelling in on energy-inefficiency issues.
