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Measurement to remain immature through 2011

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI: Data center and IT managers are not paying sufficient attention to the process of measuring, monitoring and modeling energy use in data centers, according to a recent interactive poll conducted by Gartner. Gartner said that unless users start to create accurate dashboards, they will not be able to reduce energy costs and meet compliance requirements.

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The Gartner seminar conducted in April 2009 among more than 130 attendees from the infrastructure and operations (I&O) management found that although green IT issues remain at the top of the agenda, respondents consider vendor and green procurement a low priority activity for the next 18 months.

Although 68 per cent of respondents thought data center energy management is their most important green IT issue for the next 18 months, only seven percent consider green procurement and pushing vendors to create more energy efficient and greener solutions as their top priority.

“This finding is further affirmed in client conversations which reveal that, although the green IT and data center energy issue has been on the agenda for some time now, many managers feel that they have to deal with more-immediate concerns before focusing attention on their suppliers' products,” said Rakesh Kumar, Research VP, Gartner. “In other words, even if more energy efficient servers or energy management tools were available, data center and IT managers are far more interested in internal projects like consolidation, rationalization and virtualization.”

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Despite this apparent lack of concern for the measuring and monitoring of energy use, around 63 percent of poll respondents said that they will face data center capacity constraints in the next 18 months. More importantly, 15 percent said that their data center are already at capacity and will be forced to build new sites or refurbish existing sites within the next 12 months.

Gartner said that energy management (both in terms of capacity and cost) can only be effective through advanced monitoring, modeling and measuring techniques and processes. However, when asked which energy management metrics they will use in the next 18 months, 48 percent of respondents have not even considered the issue of metrics. However, without metrics it is impossible to get accurate data, which is essential to evaluating basic costs, proportioning these costs to different users and setting policies for improvement.

“These metrics form the bedrock for internal cost and efficiency programs and will become increasingly important for external use,” said Kumar. “Organizations that want to publicize their carbon usage through green accounting principles will need to have their basic energy use continuously monitored.”

Kumar also urged organizations not to rely on internal metrics saying that evaluating server energy needs to be done in an open and transparent manner.

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