Posted by Brian Gracely - Sr.Manager, Virtualization Architecture and Marketing (data from Mark Skiff, NetApp)

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, it's been pretty difficult to miss all the discussions about Cloud Computing these days. What I'd like to talk about is an aspect of Private/Internal Clouds that many IT organizations aren't really aware of, the costs of operating the building. The costs of powering the building, powering the equipment, and then cooling it to keep the equipment operating properly.  

<span style="color: #2d2d2d; "><span style="color: #2d2d2d; ">NOTE</span></span>:  If you're planning to move your IT operations to Public Clouds, ITaaS (or whatever you call "I don't own the building or equipment anymore" Clouds), then you can stop reading now as this is focused on companies maintaining the Data Center facilities.

Everybody is also talking about Green IT these days, but the reality is that many CIOs don't get the utility bill. It goes to Workplace Resources, and they allocate a percentage of the bill to IT, typically based on square footage (space) usage. So while IT might be buying equipment that is greener, or using the equipment more efficienty

, it's very likely that the two groups aren't collaborating on the best way to drive down the overall costs of their Data Centers. 

So why am I bringing this up when we typically focus on virtualization in this space?  Because virtualization is driving much of the change within your Data Center, and the groups driving virtualization adoption have an opportunity to be the catalysts for improving the operations of the Data Center as well. With that in mind, we believe we have some knowledge here at NetApp that could help you.  

<span style="color: #2d2d2d; ">NOTE:</span> I've mentioned this before

, and we presented much of this data at the SVLG Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit

.  

Introducing PUE

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PUE, or Power Utilization Effectiveness is simply a way to
measure efficiency of the data center infrastructure relative to the data
center equipment or rack load.  It
represents the following ratio:

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