Federal government data centers are now required to install DCIM and achieve a power usage effectiveness rate (PUE) of 1.5 or lower thanks to the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI). Why? What’s the push behind this?
Data centers use a whole bunch of power (we know, we know: this isn’t a news flash to you). Power equals money….and lots of it. Power Usage Effectiveness represents the total amount of data center power and divides it by the power actually consumed by your IT equipment. The DCOI federal mandate is indicative of just how much DCIM can help data centers save money through power optimization.
If you don’t currently have DCIM in place, this may be what your situation looks like:
You’re spending dollars on cooling and powering your data center. You’re spending dollars on zombie servers (and zombie devices). How much? A recent study from Stanford University found that 1 in 3 servers qualify as zombies (which means they’re drawing power but not performing any functions).
You’re spending dollars on IT equipment and power that you don’t need. Without DCIM in place, you’re probably spending money powering underused racks — and purchasing new ones. Why? When you don’t know which racks are under capacity, you’re buying and powering new ones when you may not need to.
You’re utilizing your racks based on manufacturer recommendations, not actual power usage. When you can’t monitor your actual power consumption and thermal conditions over time, you don’t know what you’re actually using. You have to go off vendor guidance, which is often conservative and not making the most use of your power and space.
Introduce DCIM into the picture and you get a drastically different picture (which is exactly why the U.S. government has mandated that federal data centers adopt DCIM). With our software (netTerrain DCIM), for example, data centers experience a decrease of up to 30% in power and cooling resources. Your ability to manage power (and costs) becomes unlimited. You can plan for capacity and budget, based on actual power consumption and temperature data collected from your data center over continuous operational time.
Bottom line? DCIM isn’t just for federal data centers — and it’s not just hype. If you’re spending a significant amount of money on power and IT equipment (and if you’re managing a data center, you are), it’s time to look at how data center infrastructure management software can help.