The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric has become the de facto standard for measuring data center energy efficiency. PUE compares the total power going into a data center with the amount of power used to power IT equipment (servers, storage, and network). There is increasing pressure being exerted on data center managers to take measures to reduce the PUE. Unfortunately, the proper usage of PUE is often misunderstood and, by focusing solely on this single metric, it may mean data center managers are missing out on other opportunities to affect sustained reductions in energy use.

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