New trends in datacenter energy efficiency: beyond PUE

Abstract

The energy efficiency is one of the great challenges of the IT industry. This challenge is even greater for supercomputing centers, since they are very intensive in energy consumption. The FCSCL is a center that was born in 2008 and its infrastructures were designed to achieve higher energy efficiency. In addition, energy efficiency is the priority line of research in FCSCL. To solve the problem of energy efficiency it is necessary to establish metrics, and organizations as The Green Grid PUE has established the PUE as the primary measure of energy efficiency. The FCSCL has developed the MONICA project in collaboration with the company Caton S. L. and the University Jaume I, and the first objective of the project has been active PUE monitoring. The PUE is the main indicator of the energy balance of a datacenter, and it is obvious that the first thing to do is monitor it to keep it under control But the analysis of the data acquired in MONICA project has shown that taking measures to improve the PUE can worsen the overall efficiency of the datacenter and IT equipment, as will be demonstrated in the article.