-
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a ratio of the total amount of power used by a data center to the power delivered to IT equipment. The PUE metric was developed by The Green Grid to measure the overall energy efficiency of data centers, and it has been one of the most popular data center KPIs since its introduction in 2007.
Expressed as a formula, the PUE ratio is calculated as such:
PUE = Total Facility Energy / IT Equipment Energy
With a renewed focus on increasing data center sustainability, many data center professionals must measure and improve their energy efficiency to meet corporate sustainability initiatives. This often leads to the question, “What is the best PUE ratio?”
The best...
-
Data center capacity refers to key data center resources (i.e., power, space, cooling, and power/network port connections) that are available to meet the requirements of current and future IT demand.
Accurately planning and managing data center capacity is essential for maintaining uptime and increasing efficiency. Failure to do so can be very expensive and detrimental to the business.
For example, if there is not enough available capacity, data centers can experience downtime and applications and services can be impacted resulting in unhappy customers and a damaged reputation. Or if there is too much available capacity, then the data center is operating inefficiently and wasting money and r...
-
Sunbird’s Models Library release for March is now available: Version 3.150. Download and update to Version 3.150 to get all the most recent model data!
Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 40,000 models across over 1,280 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free.
Can’t find a specific make and model?...
-
After becoming increasingly popular in the mid-2000s, cloud computing has revolutionized the data center industry. Aside from providing cost-savings, security, mobility, and scalability benefits, cloud computing was also expected to be more environmentally friendly than other data storing and processing methods. By being highly efficient, cloud operators can reduce the use of electricity and other materials that typically increase a data center’s carbon footprint.
The extensive use of cloud services has resulted in an increased demand for larger data centers spread across the world. Combined with the explosive growth of data, the demand for public cloud offerings has caused cloud service pro...
-
Cooling systems are one of the most important components of a data center. They often consume about half of all the data center’s total energy and are necessary to maintain a safe operating environment.
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) thermal guidelines recommend that the ideal temperature for server inlets is between 64.4° F and 80.6° F with a relative humidity between 40% and 60%. If the ideal temperature is not achieved, the IT equipment will likely malfunction, leading to expensive damages and an increase in downtime.
While traditional data center cooling systems typically involved CRAC/CRAH units, there have been numerous innovatio...
-
Sunbird’s Models Library release for February is now available: Version 3.149. Download and update to Version 3.149 to get all the most recent model data!
Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 40,000 models across over 1,280 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free.
Can’t find a specific make and mod...
-
Do you know what your power density per rack is? How about what it costs to power each individual rack for a year? Or all your racks combined?
The fact is that most data center managers don’t know this information, which can be incredibly valuable when it comes to power capacity planning, energy management, and maximizing the utilization of existing resources.
That’s why we created a simple and free tool to make it easy for you to understand your power density and data center energy costs.
Try the “What Does It Cost to Power a Rack?” calculator.
What Does It Cost to Power an Average Data Center?
Let’s try an example, imagining you have an average data center. Your data center pays the US a...
-
As modern data centers grow increasingly complex and distributed, data center technology and infrastructure can become more difficult to manage, and it becomes harder for IT decision-makers to find qualified candidates.
According to Uptime Institute, 50% of data center owners and operators are struggling to find qualified candidates.
In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated industry trends such as remote data center management, deepening the already severe data center skills gap.
Data center operations have been greatly affected by the increased security and performance risks that have arisen from the shift to a virtual presence for most businesses and institutions. As the pand...
-
Sunbird’s Models Library release for January is now available: Version 3.148. Download and update to Version 3.148 to get all the most recent model data!
Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 40,000 models across over 450 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free.
Can’t find a specific make and model?...
-
Sunbird’s Models Library release for December is now available: Version 3.147. Download and update to Version 3.147 to get all the most recent model data!
Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 37,000 models across over 450 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free.
Can’t find a specific make and model...
-
What a difference a year makes.
Each year, data center, lab, and edge sites become more complex, more distributed, and more difficult to manage. Managers must stay up to date on the latest trends and advancements in data center management best practices and technologies to maintain uptime, increase the efficiency of capacity utilization, and improve the productivity of people.
As the year ends, let’s look at the top 10 trends in data center management that the best professionals in the industry are leveraging to manage their data centers better and more easily than ever before.
Follow these examples to simplify how you manage your data centers in 2022 and beyond.
Automation via integratio...
-
Data center managers often struggle to accurately track and manage their data center parts inventory. Legacy management tools like Excel spreadsheets are commonly used, but they fail to support the complexity and distributed nature of modern data center environments. They are hard to use, difficult to maintain, time-consuming, and error-prone.
Instead, cutting-edge data center managers are increasing uptime, efficiency, and productivity by leveraging Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software to manage parts. New functionality in second-generation DCIM software increases the granularity of data center asset management by enabling data center professionals to centrally manage all t...
-
Sunbird’s Models Library release for November is now available: Version 3.146. Download and update to Version 3.146 to get all the most recent model data!
Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 37,000 models across over 450 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free.
Can’t find a specific make and model...
-
Modern data centers and labs are growing in density and complexity as IT devices require more and more power to racks. As such, many data center and lab managers deploy overhead busways for their reduced installation costs and better flexibility, scalability, reliability, and aesthetics.
However, without a software solution to monitor and manage your busways, you likely aren’t getting the full value out of them.
Leading data center and lab managers are increasingly leveraging DCIM software to centrally manage all their busways and tap boxes.
Here are eight ways that DCIM software helps you get the most out of your existing data center busway deployment.
Remotely visualize your busways on...
-
We are proud to share that Sunbird was recognized by Datacenter Insider as silver award winner in the Datacenter Innovations category in their 2021 IT Awards.
According to Datacenter Insider, this year's IT Awards received a record 64,000 reader votes. Datacenter Insider's readers were able to choose from one of the nominated companies available for selection as their favorite by online voting and were able to suggest other companies as well.
For a total of of 20 weeks, from spring to late summer 2021, Datacenter Insider's readers were asked to provide their votes. For each category, the editors suggested a shortlist with the ten most important companies in the last twelve months.
Sunbird is...
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a ratio of the total amount of power used by a data center to the power delivered to IT equipment. The PUE metric was developed by The Green Grid to measure the overall energy efficiency of data centers, and it has been one of the most popular data center KPIs since its introduction in 2007. Expressed as a formula, the PUE ratio is calculated as such: PUE = Total Facility Energy / IT Equipment Energy With a renewed focus on increasing data center sustainability, many data center professionals must measure and improve their energy efficiency to meet corporate sustainability initiatives. This often leads to the question, “What is the best PUE ratio?” The best...
Data center capacity refers to key data center resources (i.e., power, space, cooling, and power/network port connections) that are available to meet the requirements of current and future IT demand. Accurately planning and managing data center capacity is essential for maintaining uptime and increasing efficiency. Failure to do so can be very expensive and detrimental to the business. For example, if there is not enough available capacity, data centers can experience downtime and applications and services can be impacted resulting in unhappy customers and a damaged reputation. Or if there is too much available capacity, then the data center is operating inefficiently and wasting money and r...
Sunbird’s Models Library release for March is now available: Version 3.150. Download and update to Version 3.150 to get all the most recent model data! Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 40,000 models across over 1,280 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free. Can’t find a specific make and model?...
After becoming increasingly popular in the mid-2000s, cloud computing has revolutionized the data center industry. Aside from providing cost-savings, security, mobility, and scalability benefits, cloud computing was also expected to be more environmentally friendly than other data storing and processing methods. By being highly efficient, cloud operators can reduce the use of electricity and other materials that typically increase a data center’s carbon footprint. The extensive use of cloud services has resulted in an increased demand for larger data centers spread across the world. Combined with the explosive growth of data, the demand for public cloud offerings has caused cloud service pro...
Cooling systems are one of the most important components of a data center. They often consume about half of all the data center’s total energy and are necessary to maintain a safe operating environment. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) thermal guidelines recommend that the ideal temperature for server inlets is between 64.4° F and 80.6° F with a relative humidity between 40% and 60%. If the ideal temperature is not achieved, the IT equipment will likely malfunction, leading to expensive damages and an increase in downtime. While traditional data center cooling systems typically involved CRAC/CRAH units, there have been numerous innovatio...
Sunbird’s Models Library release for February is now available: Version 3.149. Download and update to Version 3.149 to get all the most recent model data! Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 40,000 models across over 1,280 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free. Can’t find a specific make and mod...
Do you know what your power density per rack is? How about what it costs to power each individual rack for a year? Or all your racks combined? The fact is that most data center managers don’t know this information, which can be incredibly valuable when it comes to power capacity planning, energy management, and maximizing the utilization of existing resources. That’s why we created a simple and free tool to make it easy for you to understand your power density and data center energy costs. Try the “What Does It Cost to Power a Rack?” calculator. What Does It Cost to Power an Average Data Center? Let’s try an example, imagining you have an average data center. Your data center pays the US a...
As modern data centers grow increasingly complex and distributed, data center technology and infrastructure can become more difficult to manage, and it becomes harder for IT decision-makers to find qualified candidates. According to Uptime Institute, 50% of data center owners and operators are struggling to find qualified candidates. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated industry trends such as remote data center management, deepening the already severe data center skills gap. Data center operations have been greatly affected by the increased security and performance risks that have arisen from the shift to a virtual presence for most businesses and institutions. As the pand...
Sunbird’s Models Library release for January is now available: Version 3.148. Download and update to Version 3.148 to get all the most recent model data! Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 40,000 models across over 450 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free. Can’t find a specific make and model?...
Sunbird’s Models Library release for December is now available: Version 3.147. Download and update to Version 3.147 to get all the most recent model data! Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 37,000 models across over 450 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free. Can’t find a specific make and model...
What a difference a year makes. Each year, data center, lab, and edge sites become more complex, more distributed, and more difficult to manage. Managers must stay up to date on the latest trends and advancements in data center management best practices and technologies to maintain uptime, increase the efficiency of capacity utilization, and improve the productivity of people. As the year ends, let’s look at the top 10 trends in data center management that the best professionals in the industry are leveraging to manage their data centers better and more easily than ever before. Follow these examples to simplify how you manage your data centers in 2022 and beyond. Automation via integratio...
Data center managers often struggle to accurately track and manage their data center parts inventory. Legacy management tools like Excel spreadsheets are commonly used, but they fail to support the complexity and distributed nature of modern data center environments. They are hard to use, difficult to maintain, time-consuming, and error-prone. Instead, cutting-edge data center managers are increasing uptime, efficiency, and productivity by leveraging Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software to manage parts. New functionality in second-generation DCIM software increases the granularity of data center asset management by enabling data center professionals to centrally manage all t...
Sunbird’s Models Library release for November is now available: Version 3.146. Download and update to Version 3.146 to get all the most recent model data! Sunbird’s Models Library simplifies your data center asset management. The library includes detailed information—such as U space, dimensions, weight, power ports, and data ports—for over 37,000 models across over 450 manufacturers. Updating the Models Library after you have implemented Sunbird’s DCIM software helps to ensure that you are using the most accurate and up-to-date model information. This information also ensures that your data center change management tickets and reservations are error free. Can’t find a specific make and model...
Modern data centers and labs are growing in density and complexity as IT devices require more and more power to racks. As such, many data center and lab managers deploy overhead busways for their reduced installation costs and better flexibility, scalability, reliability, and aesthetics. However, without a software solution to monitor and manage your busways, you likely aren’t getting the full value out of them. Leading data center and lab managers are increasingly leveraging DCIM software to centrally manage all their busways and tap boxes. Here are eight ways that DCIM software helps you get the most out of your existing data center busway deployment. Remotely visualize your busways on...
We are proud to share that Sunbird was recognized by Datacenter Insider as silver award winner in the Datacenter Innovations category in their 2021 IT Awards. According to Datacenter Insider, this year's IT Awards received a record 64,000 reader votes. Datacenter Insider's readers were able to choose from one of the nominated companies available for selection as their favorite by online voting and were able to suggest other companies as well. For a total of of 20 weeks, from spring to late summer 2021, Datacenter Insider's readers were asked to provide their votes. For each category, the editors suggested a shortlist with the ten most important companies in the last twelve months. Sunbird is...