Data Center Metrics to Mull Over

How well is your Data Center performing?

How do you know?

I went shopping for a car last year and was pleased to see several models equipped with real-time displays of their miles per gallon performance.  That’s a great feature, in my opinion, because it offers drivers up-to-the-moment insight into how efficiently their cars are operating.

Aside from providing a reality check to overstated optimistic mpg ratings touted by some car dealers, the displays might even promote good behavior now and then.  Two of my co-workers had a friendly competition last year regarding the fuel efficiency of their cars.  One has a hybrid, the other a standard gasoline engine, and they regularly posted online the average and peak mpg ratings from their latest road trips.  (I suspect more than a few hypermiling tricks were used to help their numbers.)

The Data Center industry has developed some performance ratings of their own, to help companies gauge the efficiency of their server environments.  Below is the first in a series of Data Center Deconstructed videos that explores these metrics, showing what they measure, how they’re calculated and why they’re important.

No tires were over-inflated in the making of these videos…