Title: Criteria to select energy efficiency metrics to measure performance of data centre

Authors: Mueen Uddin; Azizah Abdul Rahman; Asadullah Shah

Addresses: Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Systems, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM Skudai, 81310, Johor, Malaysia ' Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Systems, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM Skudai, 81310, Johor, Malaysia ' Department of Computer Science, Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology, International Islamic University Malaysia, P.O. Box 10, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract: The progress and expansion of data centre industry is driven by ever growing business domains, end user applications from consumers and performance improvement limitations. Due to continuous increase in the size and magnitude of these tier level data centres there is a continuous demand for energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gases that has started to limit further performance progression due to overwhelming electricity bills and global warming effects hazardous for global health and environmental sustainability. The research highlighted in this paper discusses about instigates and problems of high power/energy consumption, and explores the reasons why energy savings in data centre is an important issue. It then spotlights the importance of implementing green metrics for measuring efficiency of data centre in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Metrics are instruments used to measure the performance of data centre. We proposed a methodology to choose appropriate metrics suitable for measuring data centre efficiency and performance in terms of energy efficiency, cost savings, green initiatives and CO2 emissions. The proposed methodology helps data centre managers to select appropriate metrics and then set benchmarks.

Keywords: benchmarking; data centres; energy efficiency; greenhouse gases; green metrics; performance measurement; selection criteria; business domains; end user applications; consumers; performance improvement; performance progression; electricity bills; global warming; global health; environmental sustainability; climate change; power consumption; energy consumption; energy savings; efficiency measurement; cost savings; green initiatives; carbon dioxide; CO2; carbon emissions; benchmarks; energy technology; energy policy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJETP.2012.052112

International Journal of Energy Technology and Policy, 2012 Vol.8 No.3/4/5/6, pp.224 - 237

Received: 10 Nov 2011
Accepted: 31 Mar 2012

Published online: 27 Aug 2014 *

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