What is PUE and DCiE?
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and its reciprocal Data Center infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE) are widely accepted benchmarking standards proposed by the Green Grid to help IT Professionals determine how energy efficient data centers are, and to monitor the impact of their efficiency efforts.
How do data centers measure energy efficiency?
The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric has become the de facto standard for measuring data center energy efficiency. PUE compares the total power going into a data center with the amount of power used to power IT equipment (servers, storage, and network).
What is a good PUE?
PUE is the ratio of total amount of energy used by a computer data center facility to the energy delivered to computing equipment. An ideal PUE is 1.0. Anything that isn’t considered a computing device in a data center (i.e. lighting, cooling, etc.) falls into the category of facility energy consumption.
What is power and efficiency?
Power and efficiency The rate at which energy is transferred is called power and the amount of energy that is usefully transferred is called efficiency.
What is PUE and why is it important?
Measurements of efficiency such as PUE helps data center owners/operators gauge their overall operations; as well identify opportunities to increase efficiency. A lower PUE rating means a more efficient data center, which in turn means lower operating costs for both the owner/operator and customer.
How is DCiE calculated?
DCiE, which is expressed as a percentage, is calculated by dividing IT equipment power by total facility power. How to Determine DCiE: DCIE is the reciprocal of Power Usage Efficiency (PUE). PUE is defined as the total facility power divided by the IT equipment power.
How much energy do data centers use?
In order to keep data centers running continuously and without interruption, managers must use a lot of electricity. According to one report, the entire data center industry uses over 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. This is the equivalent output of roughly 34 coal-powered power plants.
How can I improve my data center PUE?
Tweak your data center’s design Hot air always rises, so better PUE can be achieved by changing top-charged equipment to a bottom-charged model. Design and positioning of racks has a direct impact on your data center’s PUE. The hot-aisle/cold-aisle approach is a good model to enhance PUE without too much investment.
