The 5 Pillars for Building a Smart Datacenter: #2 Power Density and Space Efficiency

Intro

Welcome to the second (of five) ebook of the series: The 5 Pillars to Building a Smart Datacenter. What makes a datacenter “smart”? Is it a well-planned consumption of electricity? Or is it a wise use of the resources? Is it just software or does hardware play an important role as well? In these five Submer ebooks, we will describe the strategic, practical and economic pillars that you should take in consideration if you want to make your datacenter smarter and more sustainable.

1. PUE, DCiE and WUE
2. Power Density and Space Efficiency
3. Software Defined Power
4. Resources and Energy Consumption
5. Costs

In this second ebook, we will deal with two aspects strictly related one to another: power density and space efficiency.

1. Power Density (Power Usage Effectiveness)

Power density designates the capabilities of your datacenter. Usually, it refers to the power draw of a single, fully populated server rack. The higher your datacenter power density, the better your performance and the service you can offer to clients and end users.

“Power density has a very serious impact on the choice and configuration of data centre power and cooling equipment, and thus the design of the facility as a whole.

Max Smolaks, News Editor, Datacenter Dynamics

Once, power density was measured in W/square foot or square meters. Today, it is calculated in kW/rack. This change reflects the growing need for higher density (i.e. more chips into the same amount of space) and higher levels of redundancy of contemporary datacenters (a need destined to grow further given the new digital trends requirements).

> kW/rack = > density