Beyond PUE: Other ways to grade 'green' data centers
Mid-sized businesses that operate their own data centers, as well as data center operators that provide outsourced services to mid-market companies, tend to focus a lot of attention on PUE, or power usage effectiveness. But there are other ways to keep track of how energy-efficient and “green” a data center is. Developed by The Green Grid consortium for efficient IT, PUE compares power going into a data center to power used to run the center’s information technology. This means the perfectly efficient data center would have a PUE of 1.0 … that is, all the incoming power goes entirely to driving the IT, with no energy wasted through heat, power conversion losses or other inefficiencies.
