DCiE

DCiE - Overview Part 1

Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency, DCiE is one of the predominate metrics for establishing data centre infrastructure energy efficiency. Together with its related metric PUE it has emerged as a commonly used metric for identifying and measuring the energy efficiency of a data centre. The Green Grid’s sponsorship of the metric has been integral to the acceptance by data centre industry professionals of the metric, which like PUE has now taken on a character all of its own.

As a measurement of complex data centre infrastructure, DCiE is a simple and easy to calculate metric. It establishes the relationship between the power supplied to a data centre with the power it consumes and expresses it in terms of a percentage of efficiency. As a percentage it can be quickly ascertained how efficient the data centre infrastructure is at delivering energy to the IT equipment.

Mathematically DCiE can be expressed as :

DCiE

=

IT Equipment Power (ITEP) Total Facility Power (TFP)

* 100

IT Equipment Power includes all IT equipment used in the delivery of an application, such as, servers, storage, switches, workstations, printers and any other service delivery equipment.

Total Facility Power includes the power consumed by all of the equipment included under the definition all IT Equipment Power, such as, servers, storage, switches, workstations, printers and all of the power used in the power delivery, cooling, air conditioning, UPS. Lighting and other ancillary power consumed in the data centre is also included.

Application of this metric provides a simple percentage that explains the ratio about how efficiently the data centre consumes energy. For example, a DCiE of 45% means that the power used by the IT Equipment is 45% of the energy supplied to the data centre and the remaining 55% is what is consumed to support the IT Equipment and delivery of services.

A typically observed DCiE of 45% reflects the currently accepted industry average.

Data centres with higher percentage values of DCiE is symptomatic of an efficient data centre infrastructure where the overhead of power delivery, air management and support services is minimised. However, DCiE should be measured and reviewed over time in order to be a meaningful metric for analysis and inclusion in decision making processes.

It should be noted that a high DCiE percentage value only implies an efficiency energy delivery infrastructure and has no inference as to the productivity of the IT Equipment and its service delivery responsibilities.

Use the DCiE Calculator to work your own DCiE calculation.

Assessor incorporates online software tools and expertise to enable you to monitor the energy consumption and work with key data centre metrics such as PUE and DCiE in your own data centre and IT computer room facilities.