Given the growing complexity of data centers for institutional and commercial facilities, it is not surprising that owners and managers must contend with a host of misconceptions, blind spots and hidden risks in the day-to-day operation of these facilities. Chad Ludwig, senior director of client operations with McKinstry, an engineering and energy management firm, points out a series of such potential trouble spots:
PUE. “A common misconception is that power usage effectiveness (PUE) tells the full story,” he says. “While useful, PUE only measures the ratio of IT energy to facility energy. It does not account for inefficiencies inside the IT load itself or energy lost along the power chain.”
Upgrades. “Another misconception is that efficiency starts and ends with equipment upgrades,” he says. “Replacing servers, chillers or UPS units helps, but operational discipline and active monitoring often deliver greater long-term impact.”
Efficiency. Some believe renewable energy alone equals efficiency, but cleaner power does not address waste or thermal losses inside the facility. Others assume air cooling is simpler and more reliable. In reality, as rack densities rise, air cooling can become inefficient and technically impractical.
Avoiding these and other potential problems requires that owners and managers rethink their approach to operating facilities and take steps to address new-generation challenges created by advances in such areas as controls technology.
“Controls are becoming much more complex in these different facilities, and understanding how to operate a data center that is moving to higher density becomes more complex,” says Matt Koukl, principal with Affiliated Engineers Inc., a consulting engineering firm. “That extends to the need for recommissioning or retrocommissioning of that facility to be able to bring it back to either its existing operational state or to be able to bring it up to its new state and make sure that it’s going to operate in its most efficient way and be able to help train the staff that may have taken that over to understand how they need to operate these facilities.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
