Gartner: 80 percent of new large data centers to report PUE readings by 2015

As companies emerge from recession, data center power is set to become the fastest-rising cost. Experts will take to measuring efficiency by using power utilization efficiency (PUE) to get a comprehensive, accurate and real-time record of the energy used in data centers. By 2015, 80 percent of new large data centers will report continuous PUE readings across data centers according to analyst firm Gartner.

"With upwards of five percent growth for server shipments predicted per year over the next two years, organizations need to forcefully control their energy consumption and costs. To do this, data center operators need to measure energy-related data across the whole site, including the building, the facility's components and the IT equipment portfolio. Despite wide availability of measurement tools, experts and consultants on the topic, operators struggle with the best place to measure the energy in their data centers. What is needed is a pragmatic approach that will provide sufficient information for most operational planning purposes," said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner.

Users need to measure across six areas: building, electrical facilities, building facilities, racks, IT hardware and virtual machines (VMs). By measuring across these areas, data center operators can obtain a detailed, comprehensive and, in most cases, a real-time usage picture of the energy that is being consumed across the whole site.

"Energy management across IT hardware, racks and electrical facilities should be tackled immediately, while measurements across data center building facilities and buildings will be necessary mainly for hosting providers that want to charge customers specifically for energy usage. Measurement across VMs will happen during the next four or more years, becoming relevant when users want to examine the energy associated with a workload and when that workload is running in a separate VM," said Kumar.

Data center power, cooling and energy supply issues are going to worsen in the next few years with organizations amassing technology infrastructure, according to Gartner, which puts energy-related costs as approximately 12 percent of overall data center expenditure.