Three new datacenter metrics for sustainability
At the Green Grid Technical Forum and Member's Meeting, going on today, the Green Grid announced three new metrics for its stable of datacenter operational measurement tools. These new tools will join their industry standard power usage effectives (PUE) ratings as additional tools that can be used to build, run, and manage an efficient datacenter.
The first is Data Center Compute Efficiency (DCcE). Designed to allow datacenter operators to determine the efficiency of their computing resources; it is not a productivity metric. The goal is for this metric to be used in conjunction with other proposed datacenter productivity metrics. The metric is currently designed to allow the information needed to be extracted from the data already provided by native OS measuring tools and not require any additional instrumentation.
The second metric is Energy Reuse Effectiveness (ERE). ERE is designed to give the operator ideas for the reuse of energy (basically the heat) being created in the datacenter outside the datacenter. The white paper contains examples and the mathematical formula for determining the ERE value. The primary difference between ERE and PUE measurements is that ERE calculates the value of the energy being provided to resources outside the datacenter, while PUE is focused on energy consumed and dissipated within the datacenter.
The last metric in this release is Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE). This is one of the most complex and difficult to evaluate metrics in a water-cooled datacenter. The balance between water and energy usage can be used as part of the operations model for a datacenter and WUE is designed to provide an effective metric for the operator to use in their operation and planning. There also two mathematical models for the metric, the standard WUE, which focuses directly on site water usage and the WUE (source) which adds in the source energy water usage number to the site water usage.
The sustainability metrics being promulgated by the Green Grid are designed to be used in conjunction with the energy metrics already in place. All of these metrics can be effective guidelines for the design and operation of your current and next generation datacenters.