Data Center and Center Power Consumption

Homework B – Data Centers (1) 1. PUE (Power usage effectiveness), the ratio of total facility energy to IT equipment energy within a data computer, which measures how much of the power is actually used by the computing equipment. It is an important place to start when considering how to reduce data center power consumption because it is one of the most effective metrics for measuring data center energy efficiency. PUE is calculated by taking the total power of consumed by a data center facility then dividing by the power consumed by the IT equipment. In practical terms, a PUE value of 1 means that all power going into the data center is being used to power IT equipment. Anything above a value of 1 means there is data center overhead required to support the IT load. Having a holistic understanding of a data center's energy consumption is a key first step in being able to determine the appropriate steps necessary to consider how to reduce data center power consumption. Therefore, the understanding how efficiently a data center operates is critical to ensure cost-effective operation. Since we pay for every watt of power entering the data center, every watt of overhead represents an additional cost. Reducing this overhead will reduce the overall operating costs for the data center. That is the reason why a data center manager should strive for in order to minimize cost of an operation.

2. Five methods recommended by Google for reducing power consumption: * Measure PUE: make sure that instrumentation in place is ready to work. Try to get PUE as close to 1.0 as possible and measure PUE as fast and frequently as possible. PUE measures the amount of non-computing overhead energy to the amount of energy used to power the actual machines. * Focus on the management of the air flow: to eliminate the mixing of the hot and the cold air is the most important thing and then increase the temperature of cold aisle. Good air flow is fundamental to efficient