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…

People are often surprised to find that the cost of gathering the IT asset data is often as much as or even more than the cost of the management system itself.

There are several obvious costs. First, there is the cost of the asset management system itself. Add to this the cost of the initial collection and recording of the asset data. Finally, add the cost of performing manual audits of the data on an ongoing basis. In…

A data center can contain thousands of assets, from servers, storage and network devices to infrastructure support equipment such as Computer Room Air Conditioners, PDUs and UPSs. Keeping track of these assets is an ongoing task faced by data center managers around the world. A Digital Realty Trust survey found that only 26% of data center managers could locate a server that had gone down within minutes. Only 58% could locate the server within 4…