A Holistic Approach to Energy Efficiency in Datacenters

This white paper from Microsoft lays out some unconventional steps companies can take to make their data centers more efficient and greener.

In the white paper, Dileep Bhandarkar, a Distinguished Engineer in Microsoft’s lays out some “non-intuitive” changes that Microsoft made to one of its sites over a three-year period, including painting the roof white and improving air flow by shifting concrete walls around AC units. Those changes, along with other projects, led to a 25 percent reduction in the site’s PUE over the course of three years.

But, Bhandarkar writes, “just improving PUE should not be an organization’s goal. The real goal is to eliminate waste and pack as much compute capability in the available power budget. PUE can be a useful indicator of energy efficiency, but it can also mislead you if used blindly. Take for example a scenario in which the fans in a server can be removed without impacting its performance. The elimination of fan power reduces the IT power (fan power is part of IT power), improves energy efficiency, but it also increases the PUE!”