Energy efficiency & IT: the industry is finally waking up

It was a relief to read the Uptime Institute's 2023 predictions and see that, finally, IT power consumption is being recognized as a critical aspect of data center energy efficiency.

Aligning to our own predictions for the year ahead, Uptime has realized that power usage effectiveness (PUE) values simply aren't an effective way of measuring overall energy consumption in data centers. 

As the report notes: "Reporting requirements will, sooner or later, shed light on the vast potential for greater energy efficiency, currently hidden in the IT infrastructure."

While we commend the body for highlighting the blatant energy efficiency opportunities within the IT stack, we can't help but wish they'd come on board sooner. 

After all, looking at energy from both an IT and building standpoint is something we've championed at RiT Tech for years. It's the core of our award-winning solution, XpedITe. 

And yet, we also know the industry has a lot of catching up to do. 

It's time for a wake-up call

As a sector, it's fair to say we have a significant problem. Amidst rising media criticism regarding data centers and environmental sustainability, there's huge pressure on organizations to lower and more accurately report their data center energy consumption. 

But how governments, operators and enterprises measure and report energy efficiency is frequently fundamentally flawed. As we - and finally Uptime - have concluded, the PUE metric alone doesn't provide an accurate insight into overall energy efficiency. 

The measurement purely looks at the efficiency of the data center facility infrastructure without putting any focus on the IT equipment that lies inside. 

Naturally, you can see why this is a problem. After all, buildings by themselves don't consume power. If you took IT infrastructure out of a data center, it would effectively be dark. IT equipment - both hardware and software - is the fundamental energy drain. And yet, PUE doesn't consider the intricacies or effectiveness of the IT load. 

Over-provisioned and under measured

To genuinely improve energy efficiency, the data center sector must shift the focus away from PUE and onto IT infrastructure. Right now, many organizations deploy IT horribly inefficiently: over-provisioning, overestimating capacity, and adding new equipment without removing old hardware and software. 

Data center IT deployments rarely consider energy efficiency, with the result that applications, operating systems, and hardware are highly inefficient from an energy perspective and often under utilized. 

All of this inevitably creates a huge demand for energy, which most companies aren't even attempting to solve. Instead, they continue to look solely at PUE. 

The thing is, though, reducing energy consumption within the IT stack would also proportionality reduce the building overhead - the fraction after the decimal point in the PUE metric. Taking this approach really is a win-win, as we ideally need to make the '1' in PUE smaller to be truly energy efficient.

Saying this, one could also argue that PUE does an extremely good job of masking the real issues of energy consumption by data centers. For example, reducing IT load and, therefore, overall kW hours consumed could worsen the ratio, which really hammers in that PUE is not a useful overall data center energy efficiency metric.

Media mayhem and misguided messages

There's still a lot of work to be done to shift the messaging around energy consumption in data centers. It's frustrating to see governments wag their fingers at data centers for their energy consumption, when they themselves are pushing for more digital services for their citizens.

These misguided messages tend to fuel misinformed media stories about the data center, creating a climate where businesses focus their power consumption efforts in the wrong areas: looking at buildings and PUE instead of all-important consumption by digital infrastructure. 

Clearly, we need to spread the word, as an industry, about the significance of IT-focused energy optimization within the data center. 

But to truly move the needle and solve the energy efficiency conundrum, we must also empower organizations with the tools to effectively identify, manage and provision their IT infrastructure for improved energy efficiency. 

And that's where data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions become pivotal. True DCIM solutions (be wary of those really masquerading under the DCIM banner when they are just building management solutions!) bridge the all-important gap between managing IT and facilities in one holistic solution.

Our own platform, XpedITe, gives organizations unparalleled visibility into their data center IT stack. From a unified, intuitive console, they can effortlessly see the state of energy consumption across their IT infrastructure and optimize capacity quickly and granularly. 

Wrapping up

With the approval of the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requirements, it's clear regulators are starting to move from simply referencing PUE to focusing on broader IT energy efficiency. But why wait until then? 

There are an overwhelming number of benefits to be realized from optimizing the IT stack now, including lower operating costs, reduced capital investment and even potentially enhanced service continuity.

So, start your journey towards true energy efficiency today. Contact us to find out about XpedITe.