Definitely! With 'SMART' electricity meters now available that you can view anywhere in the house and in real time, people are saving money by just being aware of what and where they are spending. Your analogy/contrast is very much like the disgruntled parent viewing his teenage daughter’s contribution to HIS phone bill. He is livid but probably the hidden cost of her use of the immersion heater is much greater, but he does not have any idea - apart from the difficulty is getting access to the bathroom! Knowledge is power . . and unfortunately some DC operators don't even know fully how their DC works - let alone where it is severely inefficient.
DOES THIS GROUP CONSIDER TELEMETRY/ INSTRUMENTATION A WORTHY INVESTMENT AND EFFECTIVE CONTRIBITOR TO FACILITY EFFICIENCY?
Does this group consider that investment in telemetry/ instrumentation that aids transparency on both Site and System utilization a worthy expense; and, is it considered that by default such transparency aids the facility reach optimal performance? I use the example of billing - I pay more attention to my phone bill than I do my utility bill, why, the habits I can glean from how I use my phone (because of the transparancy the bill provides) influences my decisioning over use vs. my utility bill which is generic and difficult to translate. So - my point, transparency of usage/ trend/ behavior makes me use the device more efficiently; and with this as a rule of thumb of human tendancy - would our DC's be more optimal if use was really understood!
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May 4, 2011 14:30
May 4, 2011 14:30
CARBON3IT.COM sell a DC energy monitoring solution.
contact info@carbon3it.com for more information
May 4, 2011 14:30
If you want your operation to be more efficient, then you must have the necessary information to evaluate the operation. Instrumentation is the source of information, without it you just don't know. In addition, you should consider programming which automatically tabulates the usage and can generate regular reports that can tailored to your individual needs. A specific instance where this is of even more importance is installations where dual corded equipment is utilized and teh power to operate is available from multipal sources, without monitoring it is esasy to end up with onesource overloaded on a failure of the alternate, resulting in a cascading situation.
May 4, 2011 14:30
Instrumenting data centres has proven benefits whether for hot spot detection, energy consumption data or hardware warranty claim support. One difficulty is often the cost and inconvenience of retrofitting monitoring equipment.Some suppliers claim you can achieve all this without any additional instrumentation - I'd be interested to know how.
May 4, 2011 14:30
Great question and analogy. Seem to be getting a resounding "yes" from the group so far - however, all the contributors are vendors:) Be good to get some DC managers contributing.
Regarding instrumentation itself, do you mean in peripheral devices i.e. intelligent power strips, meters, UPS, temp and humidity sensors etc etc, or could it include instrumentation that is built into ICT devices i.e. servers and routers that can be monitored by software? I wonder if that is going to become the primary source of this kind of data in the future.
May 4, 2011 14:30
Hence my original question. Frankly much of the discussions in these forums relates to PUE etc, i'm not intending to dilute the importance of the focus on plant effiiciency, but consider a different approach. The design intent of any facility is 100% capability; yet, frequently mismatch between the datacenter subystems prevents from getting to those design levels (power, cooling, space, CPU, Network, disk etc). If telemetry existed that gave such transparency of these combined resources and their overall performance, by default the sites would get to their original design intent and the subscriber or providor would by default get an efficient site and maximum ROI. The latter issue of ROI is so frequently ignored in most of these forum discussions.
Definitely! With 'SMART' electricity meters now available that you can view anywhere in the house and in real time, people are saving money by just being aware of what and where they are spending. Your analogy/contrast is very much like the disgruntled parent viewing his teenage daughter’s contribution to HIS phone bill. He is livid but probably the hidden cost of her use of the immersion heater is much greater, but he does not have any idea - apart from the difficulty is getting access to the bathroom! Knowledge is power . . and unfortunately some DC operators don't even know fully how their DC works - let alone where it is severely inefficient.
CARBON3IT.COM sell a DC energy monitoring solution.
contact info@carbon3it.com for more information
If you want your operation to be more efficient, then you must have the necessary information to evaluate the operation. Instrumentation is the source of information, without it you just don't know. In addition, you should consider programming which automatically tabulates the usage and can generate regular reports that can tailored to your individual needs. A specific instance where this is of even more importance is installations where dual corded equipment is utilized and teh power to operate is available from multipal sources, without monitoring it is esasy to end up with onesource overloaded on a failure of the alternate, resulting in a cascading situation.
Instrumenting data centres has proven benefits whether for hot spot detection, energy consumption data or hardware warranty claim support. One difficulty is often the cost and inconvenience of retrofitting monitoring equipment.Some suppliers claim you can achieve all this without any additional instrumentation - I'd be interested to know how.
Great question and analogy. Seem to be getting a resounding "yes" from the group so far - however, all the contributors are vendors:) Be good to get some DC managers contributing.
Regarding instrumentation itself, do you mean in peripheral devices i.e. intelligent power strips, meters, UPS, temp and humidity sensors etc etc, or could it include instrumentation that is built into ICT devices i.e. servers and routers that can be monitored by software? I wonder if that is going to become the primary source of this kind of data in the future.
Hence my original question. Frankly much of the discussions in these forums relates to PUE etc, i'm not intending to dilute the importance of the focus on plant effiiciency, but consider a different approach. The design intent of any facility is 100% capability; yet, frequently mismatch between the datacenter subystems prevents from getting to those design levels (power, cooling, space, CPU, Network, disk etc). If telemetry existed that gave such transparency of these combined resources and their overall performance, by default the sites would get to their original design intent and the subscriber or providor would by default get an efficient site and maximum ROI. The latter issue of ROI is so frequently ignored in most of these forum discussions.