How Microsoft is improving data centre power efficiency

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 22 April 2010 12:42

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft is aiming to significantly improve the power efficiency of its data centres in the next two years.

Microsoft has already significantly improved the power utilisation efficiency (PUE) of its data centres, but believes it can do even better.

PUE is calculated by dividing the amount of power entering a data centre by the amount of delivered to the IT and communications equipment. It therefore reflects losses that occur during power conditioning, etc, and the power needed to cool the equipment.

The closer the PUE is to 1, the greater the efficiency.

John Dwyer, area data centre manager - international at Microsoft, told iTWire that Microsoft's PUE was 2.0 in 2005, but it has now been reduced to 1.6. This was achieved in part thanks to the company's Dublin (Ireland) data centre, which takes advantage of the mild climate to use fresh air cooling.

Doing away with traditional cooling systems saves power and also reduces water consumption. For comparison, the Microsoft data centre in San Antonio (US) uses 1.8 million litres of recycled water per month.

So what is the Dublin PUE? Find out on page 2.