Energy monitoring still immature

Gartner believes energy monitoring in data centres is still in its infancy

Data centre and IT managers are not paying sufficient attention to the process of measuring, monitoring and modelling energy use in data centres, according to a recent interactive poll conducted by Gartner.

Gartner said that unless users start to create accurate dashboards, they will not be able to reduce energy costs and meet compliance requirements.

The Gartner webinar conducted in April 2009 among more than 130 attendees from the infrastructure and operations (I&O) management found that although green IT issues remain at the top of the agenda, respondents consider vendor and green procurement a low priority activity for the next 18 months. Although 68 per cent of respondents thought data centre energy management is their most important green IT issue for the next 18 months, only 7 per cent consider green procurement and pushing vendors to create more energy efficient and greener solutions as their top priority.

“This finding is further affirmed in client conversations which reveal that, although the green IT and data centre energy issue has been on the agenda for some time now, many managers feel that they have to deal with more-immediate concerns before focusing attention on their suppliers’ products,” said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner. “In other words, even if more energy efficient servers or energy management tools were available, data centre and IT managers are far more interested in internal projects like consolidation, rationalisation and virtualisation.”

Despite this apparent lack of concern for the measuring and monitoring of energy use, around 63 per cent of poll respondents said that they will face data centre capacity constraints in the next 18 months. More importantly, 15 per cent said that their data centres are already at capacity and will be forced to build new sites or refurbish existing sites within the next 12 months.