Editor’s Note: This blog post is based on May 12 post
from our DCIM partner, Sunbird Software.
In a recent blog post titled, “Data Center Power Monitoring: How DCIM Software Can Help,” we discussed how DCIM software can discover and poll all data-producing devices, then use the information to glean insights about power and energy usage in your data center.
In the second half of this two-part series, we’re going to discuss the key metrics for Data Center Power Monitoring:
Without knowing which metrics to track and how to leverage your data, the visualizations and dashboards in your DCIM or data center monitoring software are nothing more than pretty pictures. So, what are some of the metrics and analytics you should consider for data center power monitoring? Your dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will vary based on your objectives, but most modern data centers can benefit from tracking and analyzing the following:
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a measurement of the total energy of the data center divided by the IT energy consumption. The Department of Energy spotlights PUE as a key metric for data center energy management and performance assessment. For the same reason, PUE is included among five key efficiency metrics measured in the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI).
A lack of visibility into when you need more power capacity can make it difficult to keep energy costs down while maintaining uptime. Trending power capacity over time can help you forecast your power consumption more accurately, so you’ll have a more accurate window of when you’ll run out of capacity and won’t have to order more at a premium price or on short notice. Combine this with failover simulation analysis to ascertain whether you have enough resources to handle a failover situation and eliminate outage concerns.
Tracking active power over time can help you quickly identify spikes, prevent potential power issues, and maximize uptime. Leverage power monitoring at the server level to identify power consumption by server, which will allow you to decrease energy costs by shutting down ghost servers and replacing power hogs with more efficient devices or virtual servers. Tracking active power by device or even more granular levels can also help you more accurately billback customers for their energy usage.
Using DCIM software to monitor power usage is a key step to boosting efficiency, decreasing costs, and getting a better handle on your data center energy management. Once you have power monitoring software in place, you can transform your information into actionable insights that will enable you to optimize your data center.
Chatsworth Products (CPI) has partnered with Sunbird Software, a leading innovator in DCIM solutions to co-brand Power IQ® for eConnect®, a vendor agnostic data center monitoring solution with out-of-the-box compatibility with eConnect PDUs that provides all of the benefits described above.
For more information on Power IQ for eConnect, visit the product page, or test drive the software here.
Sunbird Software