Data Centre Specialist Group

The Members review version of the white paper is available for download in the DCSG document repository. We have released this draft version of the white paper to members to seek review and feedback on both the model and white paper from our members prior to public release. We seek feedback and comment on the model, the structure and content of the paper. 

From the introduction to the paper; 

The issue of IT systems and Data Centre energy efficiency has recently become more significant and visible for both commercial and environmental reasons. Data Centre operators are faced with the challenge of continuing to deliver an ever increasing IT demand whilst simultaneously handling the converging constraints of power availability, power density, space and carbon impact.

There is now a continuous stream of announcements from vendors of IT and Data Centre equipment of new Green solutions for IT each of which claims to provide a unique and essential cure to the problem. If there is one thing that has become clear it is that the Data Centre is a complex, interdependent environment and that none of these point products individually represents a solution. It is down to IT and M&E architects to integrate these components into a solution that meets their specific requirements.

The servers that we run in our Data Centres are the still the primary consumers of power, therefore any change to the power utilisation or power profile will have a significant impact on the overall facility energy consumption and efficiency. As the cost of utility power and power infrastructure continues to rise, Data Centre operators are becoming increasingly concerned with planning and understanding the power utilisation of the equipment they house.

The cost of commodity servers continues to fall whilst the power they consume continues to rise. This results in a significant rise in Watts consumed per £ spent on IT hardware. There is a common impression that the costs of computing are falling with the cost of commodity servers, the reality is far from this. Against the rising costs of Data Centre infrastructure and utility power, the balance of IT hardware to Data Centre infrastructure and power costs is changing rapidly. Unless businesses, IT and M&E groups make significant changes to their financial, capacity planning and operational processes these changes will create significant commercial issues for IT users.

Many high power Data Centres are in cities where the power demands outstrip the electrical grid capacity, as such the continued deployment of IT services is now constrained by power availability to these facilities, this has created a direct commercial case to improve the less than 5% efficiency of these facilities.

With Mandatory Cap and Trade in the UK and equivalent schemes elsewhere coming into force Data Centre operators will be required to report and justify the energy use of their facilities. As with any other accounting process, there will be competition between business units for this carbon budget. In order to justify the energy use of the Data Centres IT groups will need to be able to allocate energy and capital facility costs to the consumers of IT services. This will require that facility operators develop the same level of understanding of carbon accounting as they have of their IT and M&E infrastructures.

To provide IT and Data Centre operators with the tools to make their own, informed decisions on server and infrastructure products that are effective, not just in a case study but in their production environment the Data Centre Specialist Group has developed a mathematical model to represent the energy transfer and efficiency of the Data Centre. This model currently represents three cost areas;

And reports;

We intend to release the model as an open source framework, open to input and contribution from experts in each area of IT systems to provide usable tools for IT operators and vendors to assess the cost and energy impacts of equipment selection and operational processes. The intention is to provide an open and fair playing field for the assessment and selection of hardware, software and data centre infrastructure systems.