Implementing The Data Center Energy Productivity Metric

As data centers proliferate in size and number, the endeavor to improve their energy efficiency and productivity is becoming increasingly important. We discuss the properties of a number of the proposed metrics of energy efficiency and productivity. In particular, we focus on the Data Center Energy Productivity (DCeP) metric, which is the ratio of useful work produced by the data center to the energy consumed performing that work. We describe our approach for using DCeP as the principal outcome of a designed experiment using a highly instrumented, high-performance computing data center. We found that DCeP was successful in clearly distinguishing different operational states in the data center, thereby validating its utility as a metric for identifying configurations of hardware and software that would improve (or even maximize) energy productivity. We also discuss some of the challenges and benefits associated with implementing the DCeP metric, and we examine the efficacy of the metric in making comparisons within a data center and among data centers.