Green Power and Cooling Tools and Calculators

January 10, 2009 – 8:10 pm

In the course of doing research and consulting work with various IT organizations, VARs, trade groups and vendors over the past couple of years, not to mention in preparing for my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach), I have come across (see a list here) several tools, calculators and modeling or sizing utilities pertaining to power, cooling, floor-space, EH&S (PCFE) also known as green topics.

Many vendors and organizations including APC, Dell, EMC, Emerson, IBM, HP and Sun among others have various types of green and related calculators in support of PCFE, performance and related sizing activities. These and other tools differ in what information they provide as well as the level of detail and configuration information, however, the tools are also evolving. As an example, EMC blogger Mark Twomey aka Storagezilla has a new post discussing an updated version of their updated calculator that is now web based tool for PCFE and green sizing.

In addition to the tools, several industry groups including SNIA GSI, SPC, Greengrid among others are actively working on (watch for some news soon) and expanding metrics and measurements to help gauge energy usage and energy effectiveness for determining productivity on a go forward basis. These and other related themes are covered in my new book titled �The Green and Virtual Data Center� (Auerbach), in my blog or at www.storageio.com where you can download various reports, white papers, videos, pod casts, tips, presentations and other related information.

Cheers Greg Schulz