Calculation for Data Center Efficiency.

1. Introduction:
For a datacenter, source and cost of electricity had been the primary focus. Due to their
enormous consumption of power they are regarded as power hungry infrastructure. And this
is not limited only to monetary concerns, due to a worldwide growth of data centers in past
10 years they are also collaborating in green gas emissions. This has given rise to an
alarming situation to be focused by environment protection agencies. Now the general trend
also has shifted towards environment impact of the data center-to minimize their carbon foot
print.
A data center is like a breathing workhorse that consumes loads of power to provide services
to the enterprise. In order to determine the efficiency of datacenter Green Grid Consortium
has developed a metric PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) to calculate efficiency of the data
center. It is the leading metric that to monitor the impact of energy efforts. This is definitely
going to help the Data Center managers to improve the energy use. Thus reducing the
amount of natural resource consumption a data center utilizes for its functioning.

2. PUE:
PUE is defined as a ratio of Total Energy Consumption by the data center to the energy
that is utilized in IT equipment called as IT Load.
PUE= Total Facility Power/ IT Load
The value of PUE can range from 1 to infinity. A data center with PUE 1 indicated thats its
100 percent efficient. All the power is utilized in IT equipment. However that is the ideal
case which is yet physically impossible to achieve. The typical value of PUE is between 1.2
and 2.5. A data center with PUE 2.5 means that for every 2.5 watts of energy 1 watt is
supplied to the computers. Companies are competing to achieve lower PUE values but to
calculate it first there are many measures that should be considered as every data center
has a different power utilization and economization mechanism.

2.1

Total Facility Power:

Total Facility Power of the data center is calculated at the utility end that is dedicated solely
to provide electricity to the data center. It includes everything that is within the boundary or
in the building of the datacenter.

2.2

Subsystems:

The power used by components in the datacenter should be categorized in the subsystems in
order to distinguish between useful output to IT Load and the devices that help the data
center in being efficient. A typical data center power usage is broken down as follows:
Typical Data Center Power Breakdown.
Servers

Cooling

Power Cond.

Network

Lighting

56 %

30 %

8%

5%

1%

All the devices that take part in IT operations should be considered as IT Load and the rest
of the building services that support data center operations are considered physical
infrastructure.

2.3

IT Load

IT load consists of all the piece of hardware equipment that makes up for the IT
functionality of the data center. According to Green Grid guidelines it roughly constitutes
the following most common equipments.
Servers
Networking Gear
Storage Equipment
KVM and Monitors
Disaster Recovery
IT Loads
IT Equipment in Network Operations Centers (NOC).

2.4

Physical Infrastructure

Physical Infrastructure of Data Center consists of tangible equipment that doesnt take part
in computing systems but provide servicing platform to the IT Load such as cooling
infrastructure, lighting infrastructure, UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply.) and PDU (Power
Distribution Unit.)
A data center is highly intensive and it require much more energy and cooling facilities as it
resembles an Industrial structure that is mostly developed for computers, servers and not
for people. Its structure might not be ideal for serving for people like lacking windows and
office rooms and facilities etc. However in some cases a datacenter might be having a small
or medium office setup for regulation or enterprise purposes. Thus the power consumed by
that part doesnt come in the computing power or IT Load. Similarly the NOC (Network
Operation Centers) in many datacenters may be missing completely. So in order to include
them as processing power or not is also sometimes ambiguous.

2.5

Shared Resources:

Data center may be sharing resources with another building like having same cooling tower
or one power grid serving two or more building. Configuring the power usage exactly by a
single datacenter in such scenario can be complex. Therefore a careful examination and
calculation of the power consumption by every equipment is required with energy loss
estimations.

2.6

Instantaneous PUE

The value of PUE of a data center at any instance of time doesnt give a true picture of data
center total efficiency. As it varies throughout the year, depending on many factors. The IT
load may also vary during a course of week time and its value can fluctuate when there is

much less IT load during weekends. The outdoor conditions as weather can largely effect the
working of cooling equipment thus altering the PUE value. Therefore we should focus on the
period of time, when the PUE value is averaged. Usually this period of time is 1hour and
PUE based on this average is called as Instantaneous PUE. This value could be different
from annual PUE, as single measurement lacks the contributions of all the parameters that
affect it and the value of PUE cannot be benchmarked on simply by calculating IT load at
particular instance of time.

2.7

Annual PUE

Its definitely the total annual energy consumed by the data center. It can be directly found
from the utility bills throughout the year. And if the data center is sharing energy resources
with another building then the energy that is utilized by the data center should be metered
and subtracted from the total energy figure.
The data center might be using different forms of energy such as natural gas, fuel, oil or
district chilled water. All the energies used should be converted to same energy unit before
summation. EPA has provided a weighting factors list based on their national average
source factors in building energy benchmarks. It is calculated as:
Weighted energy of each type= (Annual energy use * source energy weighting factor.)

Following Table provides the weighting factors for different energy types:
Energy Type

Weighting Factor

Electricity
Natural Gas
Fuel Oil
Other Fuels
District Chilled Water
District Hot Water
District Stream
Condensed water

1.0
0.31
0.30
0.30
0.31
0.40
0.43
0.03

An Example of PUE Calculation using Source Energy Weighting Factors:

Suppose a data center is using district chilled water to provide cooling to the data center.
The PUE for this model can be calculated as:
Electricity (1,305,000 kWh total)
IT Load (1, 000, 00 kWh)
District Chilled water (1,300,000 kWh total)
PUE= 1,305,000 *(1.0)+1,300,000*0.31
1,000,0000*(1.0)

1.70

3. Model of Data Center Efficiency:

Developing efficiency models for data centers is a very practical approach that is going to
mould as standard practices in near future. Simply measuring and recording data center
energy usage cannot give an idea about the performance of datacenter. There are many
factors such as temperature, humidity, outdoor weather inputs, different IT loads that affect
the efficiency averages over time. Therefore establishments of parameters regarding data
center efficiency are required. A model can predict the efficiency of the data centers with
different levels of input fed to it thus providing meaningful output.
There are two kinds of measurements that help in calibrating a mathematical efficiency
model of a data center:

3.1

Initial measurements

The data collected during an efficiency assessment of the subsystems that helps enough a
mathematical model to be calibrated.

3.2

Ongoing measurements

Ongoing measurements are made to quantify any efficiency improvement and provide
warnings of energy efficiency losses. The model can identify the cause of efficiency variance
due to weather or IT Load variations.

3.3

Misconceptions in Data Center efficiency Model

While talking about comparison of power utilized by the physical infrastructure and their
efficiency there are many wrong assumptions that hamper the result in real data centers.
One such factor is underestimation of power and cooling equipment load. Some of them are
as follows:
It is mostly assumed that power and cooling equipment are fully operational. However

there are significant losses in efficiency of these equipments during lower IT loads.
Typically a data centers operates at much lower load then the physical infrastructure

designed for its aide.

The heat generated by the cooling equipments is regarded insignificant but it should be

included to analyze efficiency of cooling system.

Components are derated to provide a safety margin with a value of approx. 10% to 20%.
Redundancy of components using N+1 or 2N configuration so that the loading on a
single device is less than the half its design value in case of 2N.
Component is oversized to balance load diversity.

Keeping all these scenarios in mind an improved model of efficiency of data center can be
calibrated that determines all the following factors:
Determination of over sizing of every power and cooling equipment.
Determine losses of the equipment based on over sizing, no-load loss and proportional

loss.

 Determine the loss as a result of need for cooling the equipment.

Sum all losses.
Compute and tabulate all losses as a function of IT Load.

Data center efficiency can thus improve by reducing over sizing of data centers, and
improving efficiency of the cooling equipment.
Therefore the best strategy is to let the cooling and power infrastructure to grow with the
load and reduce over sizing and improve efficiency of cooling equipment. Figure below
illustrates the improved efficiency of data centers.

Data Center Efficiency

30 %

35%

70%

Savings
Total Power
consumed by
Data center

Do Nothing

Increase efficiency
of DCPI equipment
by 10%

"Rightsize" DCPI

References:
[1].
[2].

[3].
[4].

[5].

Richard Sawyer. Calculating Total Power Requirements for Data

Centers. White Paper3.
John Bean, APC. , Ron Bednar, Emerson Network Power. ,
Richard Jones, Chatsworth Products. , Phil Morris, Sun
Microsystems. , David Moss, Dell. , Dr. Michael Patterson, Intel. ,
Joe Prisco, IBM. , Wade Vinson, HP,John Wallerich, Dell. Proper
sizing of IT Power and Cooling Loads, White Paper.
Victor Avelar, Guidance for Calculation of Efficiency (PUE) in
Data Centers, Revision 2.
7*24 Change, ASHARE, The Green Grid, Uptime Institute,
Energy Star, Save Energy Now. Recommendations for Measuring
and Reporting Overall Data Center Efficiency, Version2Measuring PUE for Data Centers, 17 May 2011.
Neil Rasmussen, Electrical Efficiency Modeling for Data Centers,
White Paper 113, Revision 2.