Blogs

What's in a number? PUE/DCIE



How much can a single number tell you about how efficient a data centre is? While many argue about the value and benefit of PUE/DCIE, we've developed a tool that takes this simple metric and makes it much more meaningful.

GreenIT Mission to Japan



In a recent trip to Tokyo, I visited many leading organisations in Japan to see what they were doing about energy efficiency in the data centre. The trip was sponsored by the British Embassy in Tokyo.

Metrics #1 - Either Simple or Useful



The dichotomy of metrics, we want simple metrics but when we simplify them they are no longer useful for anything. If we were to try and rank car insurers from “best” to “worst” for every customer the problems would be obvious so why are we trying to do this for data centres?

Time's up for PUE/DCIE?



Has PUE reached the end of its useful life or is there a way we can breathe new life into this metric that our industry has embraced with such enthusiasm?

Green IT #1 - Data centres are not light bulbs



Will green data centres increase energy use? The industry press has a never ending stream of “green” announcements from ICT vendors telling us how much energy their new product will save or how good the “Design PUE” of their new data centre is. The problem is that all this green may actually increase data centre energy use.

Data centre cost #1 - Chargeback metrics



Whether you are a data centre operator trying to account for your costs and allocate your newly acquired power bill to the owners of the systems filling up your data centre, a consumer of data centre services or a management accountant trying to understand where the cost should be allocated, charge back metrics are a hot topic.

Cost black holes



How the corporate data centre has become a cost black hole. The corporate data centre has some serious challenges to face up to in its relationship with the business. Whilst the proportion of business spend in the data centre is rising our ability to account for that spend and demonstrate value is disappearing.

Water in my data centre



Is water a necessary evil in the data centre? Are we right to fear having water in the data centre?

Cloud - What else is needed?



No self-respecting IT blog would be complete nowadays without some mention of cloud computing, so for what it is worth here's my view.

Containers - What issue do they solve?



Many people ask me about the containerised data centre and what I think about them so I decided to write the answer I normally give when asked.

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Our thinking

  • There seems to be an endless comparison of the size of different data centres’ PUE. Whilst on the one hand this is encouraging as it demonstrates that the industry is facing up to the energy cost or environmental issues facing data centres, it is also a little depressing as the numbers are, in many cases pretty meaningless and not comparable. Why is this so, and what might we be able to do about it?

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