09 April 2024
Alison Matte, sustainability lead, EcoStruxure IT, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric
Data centres continue to see unprecedented growth and the IDC forecasts a steep climb in data centre energy consumption, partially driven by generative AI, anticipating a growth to 803TWh by 2027, which marks a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16%. 
In context, the growth represents the total energy consumption of France in 2022, and it is this growth which is causing countries to create regulations to manage the impact that IT and data centres are having on the grid. For new regulatory requirements to be achieved, Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools have never been more important.
2024 will mark the biggest step-change that EU-based data centre owners and operators have seen since becoming legitimately accountable for their energy consumption via the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). When it was recast last September, it established ‘energy efficiency first’ as a fundamental principle of EU energy policy, giving the regulations a legal-standing for the first time.
As large energy consumers, data centres became a key focus, and while the exact metrics and measurements have yet to be confirmed by the EU, data centre operators with a total rated power of at least 500kW are required to publicly report their energy performance data annually per site.
Once this data has been collected and a benchmark is set, operators must collectively reduce the impact they have on the grid, and the communities around them. To do so, DCIM Software is vital, and while the legal requirements for the large data centre operators and enterprises within the EU are new, the global consciousness about sustainability is growing.
Gartner, for example, has reported that 75% of organizations will have implemented a data centre sustainability program driven by cost optimisation and stakeholder pressures by 2027, up from less than 5% in 2022. DCIM can provide accurate measurements to help organisations understand their sustainability and energy efficiency metrics, and ensure they’re reported on, both internally and externally.
Top tip 1) Aggregation
This begins with understanding what IT assets are under management. Companies have complex, highly distributed and diverse hybrid IT portfolios. DCIM tools establish what assets you have in your IT estate and determine the sources of the metrics you are tracking. Once IT assets are established, DCIM can help collect data and reporting metrics to establish a baseline. DCIM aggregates data across IT assets.
Whether a company is subject to legal reporting or not there is growing pressure to shrink their environmental footprint and increase their efficiency in the face of rising costs. DCIM can help managers to understand how to aggregate the data as much of the time it can be stored in different locations and applications.
This is significant, not only for regulations like the EED, but to improve operational and energy efficiency and save costs. Data is often spread across an organisation and will be managed at the site or data centre level, so having complete visibility of your data centre is essential.
Aggregating the data is the biggest challenge when companies begin to become more sustainable and efficient.
Top tip 2) Invest
In the context of the EED, DCIM is an important tool for managers to track, measure and report on energy and sustainability reporting. Investing in a DCIM tool and ensuring updates are made to their existing tools can both improve the performance capabilities of your infrastructure and the viability of the metrics on which you are reporting. For metrics to be meaningful, it is important for the DCIM tool to aggregate all the data it can communicate with and normalize data from all data sources.
DCIM can aggregate and report PUE, total energy consumption with breakdowns by subsystems and even carbon emissions.
Top tip 3) Educate and take action
The final tip is that managers must educate themselves and their teams on the data provided by DCIM, so they can report it clearly both to internal and external stakeholders. Once they are tracking and measuring correctly, understanding the evolution of metrics, and where improvements can be made, not only helps with reporting, but also on costs.
DCIM insights raise awareness, provide a basis for setting goals to reduce and optimize, and identify opportunities to enrich the measurement data. A benchmark helps managers and organizations to know where to improve, what to prioritize and how to show progress year over year. Examples of this are reducing power consumption, increasing efficiency and optimizing the life of a product. Your asset coverage in DCIM can determine product age, status, and whether to recycle, or relocate equipment to another site.
Ultimately, managers should be ready to pivot depending on whatever their key challenges are and through predictive analytics, DCIM can play an important role in futureproofing and capacity planning.
By analysing historical data and leveraging the information, DCIM helps managers have a resilient, secure and sustainable IT infrastructure reducing their environmental impact, and improving resiliency.
