Data Centre Operators Are Too Self-Reliant

Data centre operators rely too heavily on their own internal knowledge, instead of referring to sources of best practice such as the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Efficiency, according to a webinar led by eWEEK Europe.

Although there are many good ways to improve the efficiency of data centres, most operators are relying very heavily on the way it has always been done, according to presenters in Efficiency in Data Center Design, a webinar chaired by eWEEK Europe, as part of BrightTalk’s Efficient Data Center summit.

We prefer our own ideas, say operators

In a survey of the webinar’s audience, 50 percent said their main source of efficiency ideas is their own internal experts, and only 23 percent said they would look first at the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Efficiency. Despite being widely endorsed, and viewed as a good source of independent expertise, the Code of Conduct apparently is still not being widely picked up by end users.

This agreed with comments by Pip Squire, engineering director of data centre company Ark Continuity, who said that many data centre operators are unaware of the latest possibilities for running more efficiently. Ark runs a facility in Wiltshire that will ultimately use underground cooling to deliver very high efficiency data centre services.

The webinar also raised the question of how important measurement is. The Green Grid’s PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) divides the power put into a data centre by the power that reaches the servers to get a very rough efficiency measure, which has been adopted by orgnaisations worldwide to measure efficiency, despite criticism from some sources.

PUE should be regarded as work in progress, according to Gary Thornton, group technical director at training company Cnet. It includes the energy used by server fans as part of the overall energy used by the servers, so does not completely separate IT and cooling energy use. However, the only way to get a better measurement is to work with an existing one such as PUE, he said.

The majority of the audience said efficiency savings should be paid for by the data centre operator, and Michalis Grigoratos of engineering company Halcrow described ways to do this. Alongside energy efficiency, governments are attempting to add an incentive through schemes such as the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which the panel welcomed – although an alternative proposal called CCA has been suggested.

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Listen to the recorded webinar here: Efficiency in Data Centre Design