GREENTECH THE GREEN GRID
Green Grid metrics will help data centre owners better manage what they measure and help save organisations a lot of time, money, and additional resources, says David Bicknell.
announced three new energy efficiency metrics designed to help data centre owners and operators improve how their facilities perform. The three new metrics, which are the Green
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Energy Coefficient (GEC), the Energy Reuse Factor (ERF) and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) are designed to help data centre owners and operators consistently assess and improve the performance of their mission critical facilities. The Green Energy Coefficient quantifies the portion of a facility’s energy that comes from green sources; the Energy Reuse Factor identifies the portion of energy that is exported for reuse outside of the data centre; and Carbon Usage Effectiveness enables an assessment of the total greenhouse gas emissions of a data centre relative to its IT energy consumption. “We want to make it as easy as possible for the data centre community to understand and embrace these metrics, and how they can work together,” said Joyce Dickerson, a board member of The Green Grid. “When implemented correctly, they can save organisations a lot of time, money, and additional resources. Although there is more work to do, we think this will bring us one step closer to a universally adopted set of metrics, indices, and measurement protocols that will have a positive impact on the industry.” The measurement guidelines and next steps for the three new efficiency metrics were agreed upon by a taskforce of global leaders from government, industry and the non-profit sector. According to The Green Grid, the taskforce wants collaboration to be an ongoing effort to improve data centre energy and greenhouse gas emission efficiencies. Specifically, the taskforce will work towards two remaining goals: agreeing on effective energy efficiency metrics that measure IT work output of a data centre compared to energy consumption, and measuring the operational utilisation of IT equipment. The group meets regularly with
he Green Grid, the organisation responsible for developing the power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric, has
representatives from each organisation every six to 12 months. Recently the Green Grid also announced the availability of its Data Centre Efficiency and IT Equipment Reliability report. The report details the latest research on the robustness of modern IT equipment, along with new practices that enable data centre operators to reduce and eliminate the need for mechanical air conditioning. Currently, the perception of data centres’ equipment tolerance to heat and humidity is based on practices dating back to the 1950s, resulting in an unnecessary waste of resources and carbon. In its latest report, The Green Grid shows how data centres can now run at significantly higher temperatures and humidity levels without affecting overall equipment failure rates. “The common perception of the IT network, server and storage equipment is that it operates within very tight environmental tolerances, but this is a belief based on data centre practices from the 1950s,” said Harkeeret Singh, global head of energy & sustainability technology for The Green Grid. “These practices are archaic, predicated as they are on maintaining constant and narrowly-defined temperature and humidity levels. In practice, modern equipment can tolerate periods of much greater heat and humidity, with no significant effect on failure rates.”
In today’s data centres, if periods of high humidity are balanced with periods of more favourable environmental conditions, where water and air-side economisers can be used for cooling, data centres can reduce their reliance on mechanical chillers without affecting overall failure rates.
While data centres may not actually be ready to completely do away with mechanical cooling, the Green Grid believes that the industry is making constant progress in minimising the need for air conditioning thanks to economisers, better data centre design and more efficient operating practices.
16 December 2012 | Volume 22 – Issue 4
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