How efficient is your Data Center?

The Green Grid Association is a non-profit consortium of information and communications technology, and its main goal is to:

Establish standardized metrics.
Provide risk assessments.
Help organisations to build a cost-effective business across ICT infrastructure.

This organisation established one of the key metrics when analysing how efficient is our Data Center, Power usage Effectiveness (PUE).

PUE

Power usage Effectiveness (PUE) in Data Centers

PUE criteria, was published in 2016 as a standardized metric under ISO 30134-2:2016.

PUE is a ratio of total amount of power used by the data center as whole to the power delivered to all the IT equipment. A PUE of 1 would represent the ideal scenario, the perfect efficiency. All energy is used by the IT equipment.

There are four recommended categories for the PUE measurement within a data center facility:

TYPE	PUE₀	PUE₁	PUE₂	PUE₃
IT Energy Measurement location	UPS Output	UPS Output	PDU Output	Server Input
Definition of IT Energy	Peak IT Elec. Demand	IT Annual Energy	IT Annual Energy	IT Annual Energy
Definition of Total Energy	Peak Total Elec. Demand	Total Annual Energy	Total Annual Energy	Total Annual Energy

This metric is useful for the companies as it allows them to see how much power the data center is used for a given IT item.

Inversely, the DCIE (Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency) is a metric also used to evaluate energy efficiency of the data center.

PUE	Efficiency Level	DCIE
3.0	Very Inefficient	33%
2.5	Inefficient	40%
2.0	Average	50%
1.5	Efficient	67%
1.2	Very Efficient	83%

Efficient Data Center: Parameters affecting PUE and DCIE

Utilization rate of the data center. Facilities not completely occupied by IT equipment would have higher PUE.
Efficiency of the Data Center IT equipment itself. IT equipment is able to handle greater workloads with less power consumption.
Design of the facility and age of it.

Here it is a common efficient Data Center Design PUE:

ASHRAE