Do we need a data center energy protocol?

Numbers — many equa­tions are used to illus­trate the current and future ‘consump­tion’ of data centers, but do we really know it exactly? I have made inquiries with various author­i­ties that should know, but there is no unequiv­o­cal answer to the ques­tion of how much power data centers in the Nether­lands consume. Isn’t it time to finally map this out with a new data center energy protocol?

A quick search provides many answers to the ques­tion of how much energy data centers actu­ally use:

• A lecturer from the Univer­sity of Twente warns: too little power for inter­net means the end of unlim­ited inter­net. In 5 years’ time, 20% of the entire elec­tric­ity produc­tion will be spent on data traffic, good for 15% of the total CO₂ emis­sions. (source: Tubantia).
• Energy consump­tion 2018: 654 MW multi-tenant and 688 MW single-tenant (source: Dutch Data­cen­ter report 2018).
• Energy consump­tion 2019: 1503 MW data centers, 80% green energy (source: Dutch Data­cen­ter report 2019).
• The sector encoun­ters capac­ity prob­lems 6.2 PJ elec­tric­ity consump­tion, 10% of the total elec­tric­ity demand in North Holland (source: report CE Delft 2020–2050).
• Data centers consume three times as much power as the NS (source: NRC).
• NS annu­ally uses as much elec­tric­ity as the entire city of Amster­dam (source: Metro).

I wonder: where does this mess of numbers come from? Although I under­stand that stake­hold­ers have their own inter­ests and stick to figures that best substan­ti­ate their views. One talks about the energy contracts with suppli­ers, the other about the actual energy consump­tion or refers to the maximum power capac­ity of a data center. How many servers are installed and with what power? I don’t know, do you know?

From PUE to DIC

I have lived through the era of PUE, where data centers have finally achieved a huge effi­ciency gain with regard to infra­struc­ture. Further PUE improve­ment on the infra­struc­ture side of the DIC costs a lot of money and yields a little. As a next step, Mees Lodder, Dirk Harry­van, Max Amzarakov and the under­signed have devel­oped a new indi­ca­tor for energy effi­ciency. These are the Data Center Idle Coef­fi­cient (DIC) and the Server Idle Coef­fi­cient (SIC) from which the DIC is calcu­lated. This coef­fi­cient relates the CPU load of the IT equip­ment (% useful / % idle) to the energy consump­tion and thus provides insight into how energy effi­cient IT is when it is — say — not busy.

The DIC gives substance to the ‘Recog­nised Measures’ imposed by the govern­ment, of which the acti­va­tion of the power manage­ment func­tion (PM) on servers has already come into effect on 1 July 2019. We believe that this ‘eco-mode’ can yield signif­i­cant energy savings. At the same time, I think that as a result of the measure, the eco button has only been turned on on few servers. In any case, this new measure­ment method demon­strates the poten­tial for energy savings and thus provides data center managers and IT users with more insight into their energy consump­tion. Call it the ‘smart meter’ of the data centers.

Energy management

But how much energy savings is that? At least a lot. But how much? I don’t know. How do we find out? Do the stake­hold­ers want to know, or are there other inter­ests at play? In any case, the climate discus­sion has accel­er­ated things and put energy manage­ment (higher) on the agenda.

But are we really doing energy manage­ment? I don’t think so. We know that server capac­ity and perfor­mance has increased much more than energy consump­tion, but we also see that energy consump­tion itself has not decreased. In any case, we see in the figures that every­one expects that the energy consump­tion of IT will continue to grow. Certainly not at the rate of IT perfor­mance growth, but still… How much it contin­ues to increase, I don’t know. What do you think?

Energy manage­ment is not possi­ble without knowing how many kW data centers use, without knowl­edge of the size of the under­ly­ing energy contracts, how many kW are gener­ated by wind, solar, alter­na­tive, et cetera. Energy effi­ciency and sustain­abil­ity are buzz­words and good for the image, but it is time to substan­ti­ate it with figures, reli­able ratios, coor­di­nated and certi­fied by inde­pen­dent institutions.

Transparency helps

How do we achieve this? In any case, by doing it together, together with the govern­ment, data centers and inter­est groups for data centers and ICT. In my opinion, the current ‘Recog­nised Measure’ of power manage­ment for servers does not lead to the desired result in the short term. It is new and concerns many batches and many devices. It calls for atten­tion to be paid to effi­ciency among people who are currently only judged on avail­abil­ity and conti­nu­ity. Enforce­ment of this measure is there­fore complex and unclear. In short, that takes time.

What is the solu­tion then? I would like to see a covenant between the parties, which stip­u­lates that monthly reports are made to the govern­ment. Server owners report the data and provide insight into the energy consump­tion and behav­ior of the servers. Rele­vant data has been present at the heart of IT equip­ment for many years. BIOS, ILO and other soft­ware keep track of this data. Data centers report their total energy consump­tion and the energy consump­tion consumed by the servers on a monthly basis. On the basis of this infor­ma­tion, the govern­ment can then make regu­la­tions. In consul­ta­tion with the inter­est groups for data centers and ICT users, they can use the infor­ma­tion for account­abil­ity to their stake­hold­ers and to society.

Ulti­mately, we must be able to test objec­tives against actual figures and analyze the impact of measures on the basis of reli­able figures. Other­wise it will remain a mush of numbers and fancy words with no tangi­ble results.

Bright spot: in the LEAP project of the Amster­dam Economic Board, a number of renowned compa­nies with a large ‘IT foot­print’ are working together in a pilot. By making consump­tion data from their equip­ment avail­able, insight is gained into poten­tial effi­ciency improve­ments. WCooliT and Certios partic­i­pate in LEAP with the DIC measure­ment method.

Trans­parency helps. The begin­ning is here.