Network World has a package of stories titled The New Data Center that addresses energy efficiency in mission-critical facilities. There are at least eight stories, including a look at power metrics at Digital Realty Trust (DLR), which uses dollars-per-kilowatt as its key measure of the capital cost of building a data center. An excerpt:
Digital Realty developed the dollars-per-kilowatt metric in 2006 but has been using it as the key benchmark for its business since mid-2007, says Smith (Jim Smith, Digital Realty's VP of engineering). It's straightforward to calculate dollars-per-kilowatt: Divide the cost of the data center under construction by its kilowatts of UPS capacity, and you come up with the project's dollars-per-kilowatt measurement. For example, a $9 million data center that provides 1000 kilowatts of UPS capacity costs $9000 per kilowatt. Using this metric, Digital Realty has found it gets better returns on low-density data centers than on high-density ones.
Network World also looks at Green Grid metrics for power consumption (PUE and DCIE) and five big-picture strategies for reducing your data center power usage.
