Grilling the grl’s

We talked about the grl’s (Green Resource Locators) but how these green resource locators are going to work. That’s a subject in this concept shaping article.

Currently data centre infrastructure efficiency is measured as Power Usage Effectiveness most of us know as (PUE of Data-Centres). PUE is a metric of efficiency of data center’s physical infrastructure, whose major elements are Power and Cooling Systems. It quantifies the “Useful Work” performed by the physical infrastructure. It’s very important to mention that efficiency doesn’t measure how much power is being used rather it indicate the magnitude of power being wasted compared to what is being used.

PUE= Total data centre input power / IT Load Power

Means all power not consumed by IT Load is considered as loss which include:

• The internal inefficiencies of the power system (Power path devices such as UPS, PDUs, Wiring, etc) dispersed as a heat.

• All power consumed by the cooling system.

• All power consumed by other data centre physical infrastructure subsystem.

How PUE will help to identify the grl’s

      In certain part of Europe the interactive automated electric meters are used by certain electricity distributers. Some cases these meters are also passing on the energy generated in-house by renewal energy sources back to power system and that is also getting subtracted back from their billing cycle all these data input and calculation is automated. We can utilise such meters to calculate the PUE factor of every data centres and use the PUE factor as one of criteria to rate the green resources. PUE Factor is factor change (+ or -) over a defined period of time.

          Say example in winter of Europe PUE of data centre in Finland is 1.6. While in Summer which is after three months PUE is 2.2. The PUE factor of Finland data centre will be (1.6-2.2=- negative .6) while at the same time PUE Factor data centre in Australia since (Nov-Dec is Summer is some part) is positive .3. That’s means Nov. Dec Finland DC is Green while in Jun-Jul Australia DC is green.

          PUE is not only a factor which should define what is green. But it should also include what’s a % of the energy consumed by these DC’s are generated by renewable source of energy.

         Just wanted to conclude that if any time in future grl’s dream is going to be true that would be my 2 Cents to Mother Nature for our future generations.