SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Green Grid Association, the IT industry’s leading voice for resource efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, at its annual Technical Forum and Members Meeting today reinforced the value of data centers to the global economy and introduced new tools designed to make it easier for operators to ensure that their facilities become more efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective.
“Data Centers have fundamentally changed the way we work, communicate, and live in the global economy,” said Rob Bernard, Microsoft representative and Board member of The Green Grid. “Organizations of all sizes have the opportunity to transform data centers from an operational burden to a source of economic prosperity and ecologic sustainability. The Green Grid is taking steps to ensure that any organization using a data center can move forward with confidence in knowing that we are making substantial progress in regional alignment in the area of sustainability, and we welcome and encourage active participation from others to assist us in this journey.”
The Green Grid recently expanded its organizational mission from energy efficiency to resource efficiency, a move that highlights the growing importance of natural resources and sustainability in the dialog about business computing infrastructures.
To deliver against its expanded mission, the organization has created unique opportunities for worldwide industry collaboration from end-users to policy makers, and is actively working on dozens of strategic and tactical projects to help data centers become more efficient in the ways they handle natural resources such as energy, carbon, and water. As a result of these efforts, the organization today announced progress against a number of initiatives, including new tools, metrics, regional trends, and best practices for managing data centers for resource efficiency:
Refined Tools for Data Center Management
The Green Grid continues to identify and explain ways data center managers can improve the operations and resource efficiency of their facilities. The latest tools introduced by The Green Grid include:
- Data Center Maturity Model, a white paper and model available to the public today that helps end users determine how resource-efficient their facilities are, along a continuum of zero, or “Minimal,” to five, or “Visionary.” Once they identify where their facilities sit on the continuum, data center operators can use additional resources from The Green Grid to improve their efficiency.
- Two new white papers from The Green Grid’s Utility Task Force that are intended to help stakeholders understand how to better engage with local utility companies in the U.S. to determine which technologies might qualify for financial incentives. “Understanding and Engaging Utility Incentive Programs” is an overview of utility incentive opportunities, and “An Analysis of Server Virtualization Utility Incentives” focuses specifically on the opportunities for utilities to incent data center operators to use server virtualization.
- Server Power Management, which is a new white paper and upcoming online course from The Green Grid Academy designed to educate IT managers about the terminology and functionality of power management features in servers.
New Sustainability Metrics
The Green Grid also announced new metrics to help data center managers quickly assess the water, energy reuse, and carbon sustainability aspects of their data centers. With these metrics, data center managers can determine if any energy efficiency and/or sustainability improvements need to be made. Among the new metrics are:
- WUE™, or Water Usage Effectiveness, is a metric that assesses the water used on-site in operating a data center, including water used for humidification and water evaporated on-site for energy production or cooling of the data center and its support systems.
- ERE™, or Energy Reuse Effectiveness, is a metric for measuring the benefit of reusing energy from a Data Center, and provides operators with greater visibility into the energy efficiency opportunities in identifying and recovering energy from their facilities.
- DCcE™, or Data Center Compute Efficiency, is a metric that enables data center operators to determine the efficiency of their compute resources, which allows them to identify areas of inefficiency. DCcE is an important piece of the ongoing work by The Green Grid to determine data center productivity.
Global Harmonization Activities
The Green Grid is collaborating with governing bodies across the globe to establish consistency in determining the metrics to measure data center efficiency, an effort referred to as “global harmonization.” Earlier this week, leading government organizations across the United States, European Union, and Japan agreed that PUE™, a metric championed by The Green Grid, would serve as a consistent measurement tool across all regions. Participating organizations include the U.S. Department of Energy’s Save Energy Now and Federal Energy Management Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Program, European Commission Joint Research Center Code of Conduct, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan’s Green IT Promotion Council, and The Green Grid.
Summary of Recent Deliverables
The following materials have been produced by The Green Grid since announcing its expanded mission into resource efficiency in December 2010:
- Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE): A Green Grid Data Center Sustainability Metric
- Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE): A Green Grid Data Center Sustainability Metric
- The Green Grid Data Center Compute Efficiency Metric: DCcE
- A Roadmap for the Adoption of Power-Related Features in Servers
- Data Center Maturity Model white paper
- Data Center Maturity Model online tool
- Qualitative Analysis of Cooling Architectures for Data Centers
- Understanding and Engaging Utility Incentive Programs
- An Analysis of Server Virtualization Utility Incentives
About The Green Grid
The Green Grid is a global consortium of companies, government agencies and educational institutions dedicated to resource efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The Green Grid does not endorse vendor-specific products or solutions, and instead seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center energy efficiency. Membership is open to organizations interested in data center operational efficiency at the Contributor, General or Associate member level. Additional information is available at www.thegreengrid.org.