Overview on energy efficiency parameters in data centres

This paper proposes alternatives of energy efficiency assessment for data centres. Data centres are the core of present information and communication economy. Since the early days of telecom's facilities, the operators' main challenges were the equipment placement, capacity planning, expansion, redundancy and availability of services, all these factors leading to power consumption inefficiencies. The evolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT or IT&C) and cloud computing, increase the storage and processing capacity conduct to an exponential growth of Information Technology (IT) resources that have to be hosted and provide continuing operation. Beside of availability factor, the optimal utilization of the capacity and energy efficiency are the main characteristics of Data Centre facility. The overall efficiency of a data centre has to be precisely calculated to establish parameters of comparison, estimate environmental impact and to decide the specific measures for reducing energy consumption. The practical design, simulation and measurement have made it possible a comparison of efficiency parameters regarding energy consumption and IT utilization density.