What is new about the 2022 EU Code of Conduct Best Practice Guidelines and what colo operators and their customers need to know.
Read the 2022 Best Practice Guidelines for the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency here.
In April this year the European Commission issued its 2022 Best Practice Guidelines for the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency to help suppliers, customers and other stakeholders monitor and evaluate the energy consumption used by data centers to power the modern digital economy.
The guide advises that each participant, listed as Operator, Colo Provider, Colo Customer, MSP in Colo, and MSP ‘should determine which of the Practices apply to them based on their areas of responsibility.’
Depending on particular practices, the report advises where stakeholders should ‘implement’ or ‘endorse’ different actions. Actions are given a qualitative value from 1-5.
For all stakeholders, understanding energy usage and environmental impact is vital for data centers to meet ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) KPIs (key performance indicators) for IT workload and physical infrastructure operations.
Advice includes the establishment of ‘an approval board containing representatives from all disciplines including Senior Management, IT, M&E Engineering, Applications/Software and Procurement.’
Under the section on ‘DC Utilization and Planning’ the guidelines state: “Ineffective communication between the disciplines working directly and indirectly in the data center is a major driver of inefficiency as well as capacity and reliability issues.”
Advice includes the establishment of ‘an approval board containing representatives from all disciplines including Senior Management, IT, M&E Engineering, Applications/Software and Procurement.’
It urges the approval of this group for any significant decision to ensure that the impacts of the decision have been properly understood and an effective solution reached.
Serverfarm stated view is that a long-term plan spanning FM, M+E, and IT, is needed as the basis of a sustainability strategy for data center operations. It knows that this can never be the product of a single controlling hand. Rather, it is the result of a considered strategy based on the careful calibration of many different actions in different disciplines. These must be performed at the right moment for a known outcome.
Serverfarm InCommand DMaaS
While there is unlikely to be a single product that will act a panacea for an approval board, any such group should be seeking solutions that provide granular insights covering the best practice guidance.
Serverfarm’s InCommand DMaaS platform is just such a solution.
Serverfarm’s InCommand DMaaS platform provides CIOs and CTOs with the data to make informed decisions. The information repository accessible through the InCommand platform enables all stakeholders to leverage data analytics to execute critical tasks, including capacity planning, change control, manage governance and work orders.
InCommand DMaaS makes it possible to assign tasks and make changes in real time at single or multiple locations on an as needed basis, this saves time, resources and operational expenditure.
It already does this in more than 750 data centers across the globe.
Ageing infrastructure combined with inflexible practices mean new processes and methodologies can be difficult to adopt.
Focus on Power
Many existing data center facilities have not changed since they were first commissioned, some stretching back to the early 2000s. Back then data centers were not originally constructed with power or environmental measuring capabilities in mind. Often data centers were designed for peak demand with fixed power and cooling infrastructure resulting in over capacity being baked in and that power, space and cooling remaining stranded. All things age and eventually technology and infrastructure become less efficient over time. This results in additional pressures on project management, reporting, data capture and cost control.
Ageing infrastructure combined with inflexible practices mean new processes and methodologies can be difficult to adopt. The root cause can be lack of visibility into what is actually happening inside the data center. For example, The EU COC 2022 guidance says ‘Data Centre companies must make the necessary changes including the removal of idle equipment that continue to draw power these include servers, networking switches and storage boxes. Most servers never run at full power processing capacity.’
The InCommand control platform optimizes operations and maintains reliability for server racks based on real operations challenges.
Serverfarm’s InCommand DMaaS dashboard console enables managers and engineering staff to constantly monitor energy, and usage levels across power, cooling, and IT rack infrastructure.
Automated energy and environmental monitoring are required to drive efficiency because IT workloads are changing in nature making operations unpredictable in both long and short term. InCommand DMaaS takes all physical assets in IT, facility and data center environments and presents them as a virtualized service.
The InCommand control platform optimizes operations and maintains reliability for server racks based on real operations challenges. Its resource management system is capable of analyzing and optimizing where, when, and how IT workloads are commenced and consequent energy used for the desired result in accordance with the EU Code of Conduct.
The EU COC 2022 guide provides valuable planning advice for energy management designed and sustainability to encourage the adoption of best practices that align with industry standards.
Serverfarm has produced a whitepaper offering its own guidance on how enterprise and colo customers should address efficiency and sustainability by eradicating the burden of data center design debt.
Read Part 2 of This Series
EU Data Center Code of Conduct (EU COC) 2022 guidelines and what should Colo operators and their customers should do next.