How To Use The Green Grid Maturity Model

For instance, in column 2.3 (mechanical refrigerant cooling reduction), the aim is to reduce the number of hours the centre uses energy-hungry cooling units – by whatever means makes sense.  “We don’t want you to use mechanical refrigerant cooling,” said Singh. “You can use economisation, open your windows, or run liquid cooling to the cabinet, or to the chip.”When this bar is at level 2, the centre will only use mechanical cooling for half the hours in a year. Above that, it reduces until at level 5 there is no mechanical cooling at all.

Different data centres must decide for themselves how far they go, he said, as reducing cooling is harder to do in a hot climate.  “If you are in Dubai, compare yourself with the data centre next door. Don’t compare yourself with a data centre in Iceland.”

However, if it is possible to raise the air temperature, level 5 could be possible even in hot places, he said.

Reliability, and older data centres

Similarly, some data centres may require very high reliability, which means that back-up systems are required which will reduce the efficiency. Again, says Singh, it is up to users to set their priorities here: “We are not intending to replace the Uptime Tier system.”

The model also is intended to be applied to older data centres (which are never likely to get much higher than level 2) and newer ones, which can be specified to go as high as the organisation decides it wants to go.

“Older data centres will try to get to level 2 and maybe 3,” said Singh (pictured). “Organisations will want to get new ones to Level 5 if possible.”

Energy metrics slot  into various places in the model, and the Green Grid’s flagship figure, PUE (power usage effectiveness), along with newer measurements such as carbon intensity (CUE) and water usage (WUE) all fall into a “management” section within the Facility part of the model – even though, as he agrees, these measures have an impact on IT as well as the facility.

How does it work for colo?

The model’s efforts to apportion issues between facility and IT are fraught with difficulty, but might turn out to be one of its strengths, said Singh.

Increasing efficiency in colocation centres can be difficult because efforts cut across a relationship between landlord and tenant. “Colo providers have said this is brilliant,” he said. They are already planning to share the IT side with their tenants to help them improve their costs, while sharing their own efforts on the facility side of the model.

Easier tools coming

All this is now more visible in the Green Grid’s materials about the Model, which includes an improved version of the white paper and will, eventually, include a tool which lets the users generate an equaliser of their own.

How will they actually use them though? According to Singh, they will be used internally to get buy-in for different projects, and to carve work up – so different divisions get different sections to work on.

“You can send the compute part to the server team, and the storage part to the storage team,” he said.

But is there  a danger that the very simplicity might weaken it, like the much-fought-over food labels in supermarkets?  “With food labelling, you can buy different sandwiches and compare them. With data centres, you can’t.”

BrightTalk’s Green Week is coming up. To find out more about about the Green Grid’s Data Centre Maturity Model, register to listen to this this webinar, chaired by Harkeeret Singh, at 1pm on 19 April.