Power Assure, Inc. has releaed the PAR4 Measurement Service designed to measure the true idle and peak power consumption of IT equipment in a rack or an entire data center in order to maximize IT power and space constraints, freeing-up stranded power and increasing IT capacity.

Increasing demand for new applications is causing data centers to run out of power, even when the racks or rooms are half-full. Data centers are typically provisioned based on the power consumption figures provided by the vendor on the server nameplate label. These figures are designed to be conservative and overstated, leaving much-needed power stranded throughout the data center rather than being put to productive use.

The PAR4 Measurement Service provides the accurate power data needed to achieve best practices in data center power management and significantly improve efficiency in energy management. The PAR4 Measurement Service includes:

• On-site visit by Power Assure technicians who perform all measurements using the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) tested PAR4methodology and equipment, based on the UL2640 standard methodology;

•  PAR4 measurements and certificates providing true power usage for every measured server at four power levels, powered off, idle, loaded, and peak, along with the waveform of the power cycle;

• Periodic access to additional measurements based on a customer’s hardware refresh cycle;

• Access to Power Assure’s award-winning EM/4 Energy Management Dashboard for rack and server performance monitoring and comparisons; and

• An upgrade path to EM/4 Capacity Planning, ROI and Lifecycle Analytics.

“Data centers waste a lot of energy and money because they are designed for peak capacity—with buffer amounts inserted in multiple places—and because they usually base their power consumption needs on data supplied by the server manufacturers,” said Brad Wurtz, president and CEO, Power Assure.  “After measuring hundreds of servers, Power Assure has found that the manufacturer's power consumption numbers are on average between 40% and 60% too high. This naturally results in power and space requirements being overstated, thereby creating a situation where the organization will outgrow its calculated power and space capacity far sooner than it will in actual use.  By measuring exactly the maximum amount of power any server can consume, the PAR4 Measurement Service provides valuable intelligence that can often double data center capacity and delay the need for building costly new facilities.”