The Top Ten


What are the Top Ten challenges/requests for datacenter end-users?

Our goal is to holistically improve the focus and efforts of the industry by providing ongoing visibility into the top end-user challenges. We took an initial global pulse during our summit in February and provided that reading back to the industry for consumption and contemplation. This November we provided the first update of these top challenges giving a current state of the data center.

    The Top Ten Update


  1. Industry Alignment

    2. Goal: Establish a global consortium that acts as an independent, neutral, non-profit organization of customers representing the voice of the customer. Create further alignment between the different audiences (customers, vendors, academia, government, industry groups).

    • Update: Successfully partnered with 7x24 to conduct DCP session at fall conference in Phoenix, AZ.
    • Continuing to explore DCP alignment opportunities with numerous industry organizations, Academia, Research, Regulatory, Government and others –Example: 7x24 inc/local, The Green Grid, Data Center Dynamics, CFRT, SVLG, DOE, EPA, LBNL, and others
  2. Standardized Stack Framework

    3. Goal: Provide a common framework to describe, communicate, and innovate data center thinking between Owner/Operators peers and the Industry.

    • Update: Draft 2 released and under review with end users and industry representatives.
    • Continue dialog and showcase adoption/use of framework in production data centers.
    • Inclusion of stack framework in industry work.
  3. IT Equipment Power Options (New)

    4. Goal: Dramatic increases server and power path efficiency

    • 230-277V & 400-480V auto sensing power supply offerings. Enables global usage at higher voltage and removes transformer losses.
    • Localized IT equipment battery options to eliminate need of expensive UPS installations without sacrificing availability.
    • Unified mother board voltage options
    • Servers should be at the same price point or lower than today
  4. Wire-line Power Network (New)

    5. Goal: Common communication mechanism to monitor all layers of the power delivery system

    • Discovery: Traceroute to validate power pathways from power supply to utility.
    • Metering: Enabling measurement and validation of readings at all levels of distribution and consumption points.
    • Asset Management: Intelligence from PS to dynamically identify physical assets in rack footprints through power network
    • Smart Grid: Extend the smart grid to the server level.
  5. Liquid Cooled IT Equipment (New)

    6. Goal: Increase IT work performance and cooling system efficiency by tuning data center cooling to the hottest components, rather than inefficiently trying to manage air to servers.

    • Update: Migrated from standard cooling interface request to proof of concept of air vs. liquid cooling
    • Not going after PUE, density or efficiency individually –addressing compute performance limits, capital and efficiency optimization and holistic datacenter TCO (facilities & IT)
    • Reduce complexity of support (backend) infrastructure
    • Enable year-round free cooling in >85% of global locations
    • Increase the amount of IT work done per watt.
    • POC: Liquid cooled data center project –Chill Off 3
  6. Simple Top Level Efficiency Metric

    7. Goal: Create a truly inclusive top-level metric that would enable performance comparisons of peer datacenters or industries (e.g. Miles per Gallon (MPG) for cars).

    • Update: No movement in top level metric –focusing on stack framework first.
    • Risk: DOE could impose a metric that does not represent the diverse realities of the data center industry
    • Proposal: A Data Center carbon in -carbon out metric that incorporates all point metrics (PUE, useful work, etc)
  7. Independent Data Center Repository

    8. Goal: A neutral location to house and present data center resource content and voluntary end-user environment reporting.

    • Update: datacenterpulse.org website engine built and capable of becoming the repository.
    • Exploring voluntary member datacenter automated self reporting of telemetry data
    • Exploring potential link to Green Grid PUE repository
  8. Certification

    9. Goal: Establish people, operations, and infrastructure certifications to drive continual industry improvements and controls.

    • Update: DOE Certified Data Center Efficiency Professional (DCEP) -People, not facilities.
    • Needed: Data Center Certification -requires framework (stack) to be defined and implemented to standardize approach
  9. More Products with Modularity

    10. Goal: Enable pro-active, simple expansion or contraction of datacenter capacity without risk or reduction of design availabilities.

    • Update: Not seeing any significant increase in modular product offerings or end user implementations
    • Both vendors and end users need to elevate the discussions to implement current modular solutions to enable future modular products.
  10. Update Tiers to Represent Current Data Center Environments

    11. Goal: Develop 'tier levels' to provide meaningful context and semantics holistically to data center environments. Today tier level definitions are not keeping pace with changes in the datacenter and the ordering of levels are flipped back and forth between IT & Facilities definitions.

    • Update: Tier levels becoming more rigid/proprietary without including new user requirements
    • Include IT system design implications on availability
    • Include modularity: scalable infrastructure
    • Include multi-tier environments
    • Include Mid-tier definitions
    • Risk: Users may move from using tier definitions for their business. Can become irrelevant. 451 group, be aware!