Musings on personal and enterprise technology (of potential interest to professional technoids and others)

Friday, September 25, 2009

Measurement + Monitoring of Data Centre Energy Use Immature Through 2011: Gartner

As previously posted, "cheap" servers really aren't cheap at all (Infoworld 5/2008), since recurring server operational costs are often as large or larger than the initial hardware capital investment. Below is a related update from Gartner, reminding us that "you can't manage what you can't measure". Here is Gartner's explanation of the importance of metrics for reducing data-center energy consumption [emphasis mine]:

Gartner Says Measurement and Monitoring of Data Centre Energy Use Will Remain Immature Through 2011:
“...when asked which energy management metrics they will use in the next 18 months, 48 per cent of respondents have not even considered the issue of metrics. However, without metrics it is impossible to get accurate data, which is essential to evaluating basic costs, proportioning these costs to different users and setting policies for improvement.

'These metrics form the bedrock for internal cost and efficiency programmes and will become increasingly important for external use', said Mr Kumar. 'Organisations that want to publicise their carbon usage through green accounting principles will need to have their basic energy use continuously monitored.'

Mr Kumar also urged organisations not to rely on internal metrics saying that evaluating server energy needs to be done in an open and transparent manner...”


hat tip / source: http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc/statuses/4339604501

1 comment:

dgftest said...

Maybe this relative lack of interest in energy metrics is not really surprising.... So what would be the best way to encourage collection of meaningful consumption data? Maybe intelligent government/utility incentives for measuring the current energy consumption ‎baseline, even before investing in new energy reduction in the data centre (?‎)