By Darren Bonawitz

I wanted to share some thoughts on an article written by Justin Lee from www.thewhir.com about the EPA finalizing energy star ratings for data centers.

I will be very interested in following how this plays out, and I think this will be adopted much more quickly by pubic data centers than private data centers. While many private corporate data centers will likely pursue the Energy Star data center label, it will largely be determined by company culture. For example, companies with senior management looking for ways to cut costs and those lead by progressive IT leaders will be much more likely to pursue it. For public data centers, however, this will be more than just about energy efficiency. While these facilities will be equally interested in cost savings through efficiency, the real value will be from a marketing standpoint. If a particular collocation or hosting data center is Energy Star “certified” they have a decided leg up on the competition that is not. The resulting competitive advantage will be far more valuable than the energy savings.

In addition, I would like to learn more about how the Energy Star program plans to consistently measure Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) which is a ratio of power in versus power out. In short, PUE = power as measured at the utility meter divided by the load associated with all of the IT equipment.

For more information about PUE, check out this link:

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid80_gci1307933,00.html#

Rather than going into a lot of details about my issues with PUE as it is defined today, I recommend checking out James Hamilton’s blog post at:

http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/06/15/PUEAndTotalPowerUsageEfficiencyTPUE.aspx

In short, the problem is that PUE itself needs to become a very clear and consistent standard throughout the industry or at least in Energy Star testing. Otherwise companies will use the most favorable definition of PUE as possible to improve their data center’s rating and chances of being Energy Star certified. In addition, I am curious who will be in charge of taking the measurements. Are there going to be neutral third parties that data center operators have to pay to come out and measure? Is the Energy Star program going to facilitate the measurements themselves? Surely they won’t allow data centers to self measure and submit results. There is far too much risk and incentive for miscalculation at best and fraud at the worst. I guess I’ll have to wait and see the details as they are released.

To read the original article by Justin Lee, click here.

You are here: Home » 1102 GRAND » Darren Bonawitz, Principal of 1102 GRAND, Kansas City’s data center, Internet Hub and Colocation Facility Comments on whir.com article; EPA to Finalize Energy Star Rating for Data Centers

Tags: 1102 GRAND, Bandwith, call center, carrier hotel, carrier neutral data facility, Carriers, choosing a data center, Co-location, co-location services, collocation, collocation cross connect, Colo, cooling, Darren Bonawitz, data center, Data Center Cooling, Data Center Journal, Data Center Security, data circuit, data management, Data Suites, efficiency, electricity, filtration, hardware, hardware maintenance, heating and cooling, Internet Hub, Internet hub and data center, IT, IT infrastructure, Kansas City data center, LEED, Midwest data center, Midwest Internet hub, overheating, raised floor, recycled water, remote facility, temperature control, VoIP, water, water shortage This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 12:44 pm and is filed under 1102 GRAND, Colocation Information, Data Center Cooling, Disaster Recovery Solution, Location, Midwest data center, Networking, healthcare it, raised floors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.