Emerson Network Power White Paper Sample

While data center energy consumption justifiably gets attention in the industry, the gains in output and efficiency deserve a similar level of consideration. To put this in perspective, if the compute output in 2007 had stayed at the same level as 2002, data center energy consumption in 2007 would have been less than one-eighth of the 2002 level. This increase in compute output directly contributes to business and personal productivity and economic output; reduces travel and other non-value-added activities; enables real-time information for better decision making; and supports the globalization of the economy.

For IT and data center managers, Energy Logic provides a means to identify, justify and prioritize data center efficiency improvement projects as well as specific recommendations for actions that can be taken today. The analysis shows that implementing the 10 Energy Logic strategies increases data center efficiency by 3.6 times. To get the most bang for the buck, the three actions of faster replacement of IT technologies, virtualization and high density architecture have the largest impact, improving data center efficiency by 3.1 times.

For the IT industry, this analysis reinforces the urgent need for the industry to move aggressively to define and adopt a measure of IT performance that is scalable to the data center. The analysis also shows that it is not necessary to develop an ideal or perfectly “fair” measure for IT and data center output. The miles-per-gallon (MPG) measure used in the automobile industry is not the fairest measure, but it serves its purpose and works. The three basic criteria for the right metric are: will it drive the right behavior; will it be available and published at the IT device level (to help buyers make the right choice); and is it scalable from the IT device to the data center level.

View This Now