Data Center Infrastructure Management Blog
iTRACS Collaborates with Intel on New Direction in Efficiency
Monday, January 30th, 2012What’s the holy grail of IT efficiency? For many data center executives, it’s the ability to measure and optimize the efficiency with which the data center delivers quantifiable value to the business.
A lot of very smart people are working on this. As Wired.com recently wrote, “What’s the best way to measure the efficiency of a data center? No one really knows. But there’s no shortage of IT minds trying to figure it out.”
Recently, iTRACS, the global leader in enterprise-class DCIM solutions, announced a new set of efficiency metrics called DCIM Business Output™ that is poised to take the industry closer to a new way of measuring efficiency.
DCIM Business Output™ attempts to measure the ratio between business output delivered by IT assets and the energy/cost required to deliver it: business value achieved vs. the energy/cost to achieve it.
DCIM Business Output™ accomplishes this by using device-level data to measure business output and energy consumption at the individual asset level. This is where the iTRACS partnership with Intel plays such an important role. Under the partnership agreement, the Intel Data Center Manager software suite will be integrated with iTRACS Converged Physical Infrastructure Management™ (CPIM™), broadening the iTRACS PowerEye™ strategy through the collection, management, and analysis of power, temperature, and environmental information at the device level (CPU).
This takes the industry is one step closer to attaining the ultimate measure of efficiency by comparing two key metrics at the asset level:
- Business output – what is each asset accomplishing for the business? (CPU cycles etc.)
- Energy consumption – how much energy is that asset consuming to generate that output?
The first proposed metric in the DCIM Business Output™ series is Asset Efficiency. This compares CPU utilization vs. power usage at the individual device level, creating an opportunity to conduct asset-to-asset comparisons to determine which asset is delivering business value at the highest efficiency.
This “asset vs. asset” example demonstrates how a data center owner or operator might use the Asset Efficiency metric. In this example, Server B, which has the potential to deliver higher business output, is actually running less efficiently than Server A. This is a problem for both the business and the planet. Using this information, the data center might take steps to increase server utilization, or, if necessary, swap out older energy-guzzling assets for newer, more energy-efficient ones.
Next up: The second metric, IT Efficiency
