Data Centre Specialist Group

The EU JRC is progressing toward a release of the EU Code of Conduct for data centres this year. This is a voluntary code of practice and objectives, as stated in the introduction;

"This Code of Conduct has been created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts.  The aim is to coordinate activities by manufacturers, vendors, consultants, utilities and data centre operators/owners to reduce the electricity consumption in a cost effective manner without hampering the mission critical function of data centres.  The Code of Conduct aims to achieve this by improving understanding of power demand within the data centre, raising awareness, and recommending energy efficient best practice and targets. This Code of Conduct is a voluntary initiative aimed to bring interested stakeholders together. Parties signing up will be expected to follow the intent of this Code of Conduct and abide by a set of agreed commitments."

These commitments currently include an initial set of basic best practices in the data centre as well as measurement and reporting to the secretariat of energy use and the Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency.

It is important that the Code of Conduct working groups achieve a balanced and effective code that is accessible and practical to operators whilst still significant enough to distinguish those operators who have signed up and comply. 

The BCS Data Centre Specialist Group has been assisting the EU JRC in the development of an EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres, the DCSG committee and some members attended the last public meeting of the code in December 2007 in London where many aspects of the code were discussed as well as presentations given.

In February some members of the Code of Conduct working groups attended a meeting in the US hosted by the Green Grid where a number of other views on energy efficiency were put forward, not only by vendor organisations but also by the US Environmental Protection Agency and other government bodies.

There has been substantial discussion of metrics and targets for the Data Centre infrastructure, the DCSG has made a number of recommendations on how the M&E infrastructure measurements and metrics can become informative and practical tools for operators in addition to the purely reporting metrics currently favoured by Industry bodies. There is a meeting of the metrics and best practice working groups scheduled for 11th March to which the DCSG will be sending a representative to put forward the concerns, views and recommendations of UK operators. There will also be representation from a number of vendors and the Green Grid at this meeting.

Another public meeting is currently scheduled for April in the UK, we suggest that DCSG members interested in or concerned by the code should attend this meeting. We also suggest that members provide their feedback to the DCSG committee who will put it forward on their behalf at both the March and April meetings.

The current draft of the Code of Conduct, the presentations and minutes of the meetings referred to above are all available on the JRC site. 

The DCSG commented version of the Code of Conduct document reviewed at the December meeting is also available in the members section of the repository (under White Papers).