The increase in reliance on information technologies in the world around us is unstoppable. Countless discussions have explored and elaborated on the impact these technologies will have on the development of our daily lives, as well as the resulting energy consumption and its implications for our already beleaguered planet Earth.
The Data Center sector is not immune to this dilemma, and that is why an increasing number of data centers have started to adopt DCIM systems. They recognize the benefits of having tools capable of improving and reducing energy consumption, thus reducing the carbon footprint of their data centers. In many cases, this will become a key point in the overall strategy of the company.
Now, what does a DCIM system bring to the table when it comes to achieving this energy efficiency?
· Energy capacity. Having precise knowledge of the energy capacity required to maintain the service allows us to fine-tune our energy expenditure, such as adjusting our contracted power.
· Cooling capacity. Most DCIM tools enable us to anticipate the approximate amount of heat that will need to be dissipated in our clean room and understand the behavior of our cooling system. This allows for proper adjustment of set-points and rotations of our climate control equipment. Combined with effective climate monitoring, which identifies hotspots and provides essential data to assess the room's performance in response to corrective actions, it can result in significant energy cost savings.
· Asset management. Real knowledge of all our assets and their status is one of the most effective actions for achieving the highest possible energy efficiency. Detecting unused or underutilized equipment, along with the energy and climate data provided by DCIM for all data center assets, and the capability offered by DCIM to facilitate equipment migrations in an easy and controlled manner, allows for asset restructuring to maximize performance in the least space possible. This, in turn, increases the efficiency of our climate control and, consequently, our energy bill.
· Workflow control. Minimizing human intervention in a clean room as much as possible is a fantastic idea to make our climate control as efficient as possible. A DCIM is a key tool to achieve this goal through its analytical and operational planning capabilities in a data center.
· PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness). Calculating the energy efficiency of your data center would be a challenging task without the ability to calculate this famous coefficient. Can your organization calculate and, equally important, automate this coefficient for your data center? With a DCIM tool and basic monitoring, you can automatically determine this coefficient and track its historical evolution, enabling analysis of how infrastructure changes or new scenarios impact your data center. .
Achieving convergence among all stakeholders involved in the operation of such a complex machine as a data center and analyzing the data contributed by these different actors is the key to understanding the status of a data center and maximizing its energy efficiency. Only through a DCIM tool is it possible to consolidate and analyze all this information.
It is not unreasonable to state that implementing a DCIM system is absolutely necessary if we want to achieve maximum energy efficiency in our data center, just as it is not unreasonable to say that we need spreadsheet software to achieve maximum accounting efficiency.
