Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) vendor iTRACS has teamed up with Intel on a project part of which is to come up with a data center energy efficiency metric that will address shortcomings of The Green Grid’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric that is currently the most widely used one for the purpose.

Elizabeth Given, iTRACS president and CEO, said PUE – which compares total power that comes into a facility with the amount of power used to run the IT equipment it supports – was useful but could not really measure a data center’s efficiency.  
 

"Efficiency isn't just about power,” she said. “It's about the interrelated costs of power, space, storage, networking, and how efficiently those resources are managed to deliver substantive, continuous value to the business.”
 

To truly measure efficiency, specific business outcomes the physical layer delivers must be identified and correlated with power, space and IT services required to deliver them, Given said.
 

Another part of the partnership between the two companies is integration of Intel’s Data Center Manager software suite with iTRACS’ DCIM solution called Converged Physical Infrastructure Management. Intel’s software adds the ability to collect data about and control power usage and temperature at the processor level.
 

iTRACS said adding Intel’s functionality will add to its solution’s capabilities to help improve capacity planning, increase rack density, identify “energy-guzzling assets,” eliminate excessive cooling, speed up commissioning of new equipment and a number of other common operational issues.
 

“We're combining iTRACS' interactive 3D visualization, single-pane view of the IT ecosystem, Future View, and ‘What If?’ analysis capabilities with Intel's deep expertise and unparalleled granularity in CPU data collection and aggregation, monitoring, trending and analysis,” Given said.
 

“It's a compelling alliance for customers seeking a strategy to quantitatively visualize, manage, and reduce energy usage across their enterprise infrastructure."