The quest for carbon reduction in data centers is starting to heat up. In the past, the task of power savings (with the happy byproduct of carbon savings) fell mainly on the facilities teams. The functions of capacity planning, resource usage (on and off the floor), disaster recovery, and daily operations lie with data center operations but predominantly address facility needs. While server teams and networking teams work to support applications, they may or may not have an eye toward sustainability and power savings. Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) became the tool of choice, but several organizations struggle with the time requirements to correctly populate and maintain those systems.
Facilities and engineering personnel design and model based on the needs of active electronics, but who is working to ensure the active components are the right choice? The reliance on vendor information regarding capabilities and power requirements to assist in product decisions can be flawed. Manufacturers and OEMs work through typical configurations, which may or may not be equal to the designed configuration installed. Different CPUs, core numbers, threads, memory configurations, and power supplies create variances in power consumption demands. Power requirements are as unique as the configuration options available. Real-time monitoring is some help, but certainly not at the project's design and hardware selection phase.