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Data Center Kpis: Dcim That'S Easy, Fast, and Complete

40 KPIs para data centers

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
311 views55 pages

Data Center Kpis: Dcim That'S Easy, Fast, and Complete

40 KPIs para data centers

Uploaded by

embsbr
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Top 40 Data Center KPIs

DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete.


Table of Contents
Introduction
Capacity KPIs
Cost KPIs
Asset KPIs
Change KPIs
Space KPIs
Power KPIs
Efficiency KPIs
Cooling KPIs
Connectivity KPIs
Conclusion

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 2
Introduction
Modern data center managers are under constant pressure to do
more with less while simultaneously being tasked with maximizing
uptime and optimizing for efficiency and capacity utilization. In today’s
ever-changing data center environment, insights from data provide
a critical competitive advantage to help tackle these challenges.

To gauge success and ensure business objectives are met, data center managers are
increasingly turning to big data analytics to provide the necessary information, but with the
massive volume and variety of data generated by data center devices, they don’t always have
the time or training to be able to collect that data, analyze it, and ultimately derive value from
it. Plus, when using legacy tools like Excel and Visio, it’s simply not possible to holistically see
and analyze this data.

So how do you know where to begin, what to track, and what your goals should be? Based on
our conversations with hundreds of customers in our global user groups for our Data Center
Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, we’ve consolidated feedback on what data
matters the most and compiled a list of the top 40 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that all data
center managers should monitor to improve the overall health and efficiency of their data centers.

If the list seems overwhelming, know that measuring these KPIs is easy with DCIM software. In
fact, with a modern DCIM solution, many of the KPIs come right out of the box in dashboard
widgets and reports requiring zero configuration. Start monitoring the Top 40 Data Center KPIs
in your environment and enjoy smarter, more data-driven decision-making across all facets of
data center management from asset management to capacity planning to energy efficiency.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 3
Capacity KPIs

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1. Capacity by Key Data Center Resource (Space, Power,
Cooling, and Data/Power Port Connections)

Having accurate, reliable, real-time information on the physical


space, power, cooling, and network connectivity capacity in your
data center is essential for making the most informed, data-driv-
en decisions when you need to reserve space and deploy new
IT equipment, use power resources more efficiently, save on
operating expenses, or convince management you need more
capacity. Being able to monitor real-time capacity at the site,
floor, and cabinet levels greatly simplifies how you can find and
reserve resources.

Did you know?


In a survey by EMA, 57% of IT executives reported that their top pri-
ority is reclaiming and/or re-purposing hardware and software that is
underutilized.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 5
2. Capacity by Logical Groups (Space, Power, Cooling, and
Data/Power Connections by Function, Department, etc.)

For an extra level of granularity, plan and manage your capacity


not only by data center resource, but by logical groups such as
function, department, business unit, and customer. Data center
projects are often assigned according to these logical groups;
therefore, you should monitor each group’s capacity utilization
to properly allocate resources.

Did you know?


Traditional spreadsheets and CAD drawing programs make the
intricacies of data center capacity management unnecessarily difficult,
inefficient, and unreliable. To simplify and accelerate capacity demand
planning, many organizations are turning to data center business intel-
ligence, dashboards, and analytics.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 6
3. Stranded Power Capacity Per Rack

Data center managers will often allocate more power to each


rack than is actually demanded by the IT equipment. This
causes stranded power that can be deployed elsewhere in the data
center to save costs. For a single rack, a few kilowatts of
stranded power may seem unremarkable, but when you factor in
hundreds or thousands of racks, stranded power could account
for as much as 50 percent of all available power. Monitor power
consumption in your data center to identify stranded capacity.
Then, deploy that power with confidence and delay spending
millions to build your next data center.

Did you know?


Through tests in its own data center, Raritan determined that even at
peak power consumption, 83% of their servers were using 60% or less
of their nameplate rating.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 7
4. What-If Analysis

What-if analysis charts for space and power capacity can help
you understand the potential net impact of changes in your
data center—particularly additions and decommissions—without
impacting equipment in use. Conducting what-if analysis on a
per-project basis gives you the flexibility to add the same equip-
ment in different combinations and locations to multiple projects
so you can better determine when you will run out of capacity
and how long you can delay capital expenditures.

Did you know?


What-if analysis allows you to quickly and accurately predict the future
state of your data center and ascertain if you can postpone adding
additional resources or if you need to purchase more.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 8
5. DCOI Compliance

The US government created the Data Center Optimization


Initiative (DCOI) mandate to address the inefficiencies of its
federal agencies’ data center infrastructure. To comply with
the DCOI, agencies are required to have 100% of data center
infrastructure located in data centers that have power metering,
have a PUE of less than or equal to 1.5 (or 1.4 for new data
centers), have at least a 4:1 ratio of operating systems that
are fully virtualized, utilize servers at least 65% of the time, and
have at least 80% of the total floor area actively utilized for racks
contain at least one physical server.

Did you know?


Since 2016, the US government has saved almost $2 billion due to the
DCOI mandate.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 9
6. Weight Capacity of Raised Floor

Raised floors allow for underfloor air distribution, chilled


water piping, cable management, and water/flood protection.
For standard access floors, panel load ratings typically range
between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds. Know the weight load
capacity of the raised floor system in your data center and
monitor the total weight of your cabinets and equipment to
ensure that you are not exceeding the capacity and that you have
the weight capacity to deploy new equipment.

Did you know?


Properly using a raised floor can potentially reduce the cooling load by
as much as 40%.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 10
Cost KPIs

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7. Data Center Energy Cost

IDC reports that energy consumption per server is growing by


9% per year globally as increases in performance drives energy
demand. The cost of energy consumed can account for up to
50% total data center operating expenses, and as such, needs
to be monitored and intelligently reduced. Track your energy
consumption and costs by site, department, or applications/
services, and set targets to reduce consumption, bill back users,
meet corporate sustainability and green initiatives, and collect
energy rebates and carbon credits.

Did you know?


If all the data centers of the world were a country, they would be the
fifth-largest consumer of energy globally.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 12
8. Cost Per Customer

Colocation data centers that lease power, space, cooling, and


network resources to customers need to know what their costs
are on a customer-by-customer basis in order to determine
their prices. The amount of power needed for IT equipment and
cooling, the cost of space per square foot, and internet and
cross-connect charges should be monitored per customer to
ensure prices are competitive while remaining profitable.

Did you know?


Colocation customers who have DCIM software with an Auto Power
Budget feature and intelligent metering infrastructure can know exactly
what their power requirements are, ensuring they don’t overspend on
power.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 13
Asset KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 14
9. Asset Age in Months

Monitoring the age of all assets in your data helps you easily
understand how old your hardware is and when you should
look to begin your next refresh cycle. Filtering the data by
equipment type such as cabinet, PDU, data panel, and
device and by date-specific parameters such as purchase data,
installation date, and contract start and end dates grants you full
visibility into the lifecycle of all data center assets.

Did you know?


About one-third of the servers in a typical data center are more
than 4 years old. These aging servers consume 65% of the overall
energy while contributing only 4% of the data center’s total performance
capabilities.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 15
10. Asset Deployment Trends

Having historical data on the number of assets in the data center


lets you know your rate of growth and project future expansion
needs. Monitor your asset count, in terms of installations minus
decommissions, for a high-level view of your data center over
time. Drilldown by the assets’ functions for a more detailed view
of where your data center has been and where it’s heading.

Did you know?


DCIM software lets you democratize your data with secure, shareable
links that help you collaborate with cross-functional teams based on the
same information.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 16
11. Available Inventory of Devices and Field
Replaceable Units

Proper IT inventory administration practices are necessary for


organizations to effectively manage their systems and save
money by delaying the purchase of new IT assets.
Unfortunately, many organizations still rely on manual processes
and outdated spreadsheets to track their asset inventory, which
can be hard to maintain and error-prone due to limited budgets,
staffing shortages, and an overwhelming number of assets
to cover. Be assured that your available inventory is accurate
by using an asset tracking platform that delivers actionable,
real-time data about all your physical data center infrastructure.

Did you know?


After deploying a DCIM solution in their data centers, UF Health Shands
reported a 50 percent improvement in asset tracking efficiency.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 17
Change KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 18
12. Change Requests by User, Stage, and Type

In a typical data center environment, up to 30% of servers get


replaced annually because servers older than five years fail three
times more often and cost 200% more to support than new
servers. To maintain SLAs while improving efficiency and
productivity of data center staff, it is important to simplify the
management of moves, adds, and changes. Track the number
of change requests, tickets, and work orders, who is making
them, what progress is being made, and what types of changes
are being requested. Monitor and manage your requests from
creation to approval to ensure work order quality and
transparency while improving staff efficiency through improved
collaboration.

Did you know?


“High-performing” IT organizations are described as having change
success rates over 99%, spending less than 5% of time on unplanned
work, and having server to system administrator ratios greater than
100:1.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 19
13. Change Request by Length of Time per Stage

Data center managers need to know how long it takes to


implement a change from request to completion to ensure that
they are meeting their SLAs with customers. By monitoring how
long each stage of a change takes—from planning to approving
to implementing—you’ll have real data to compare against your
SLAs. Should changes take too long in your data center, you
can examine the data and identify why and in what stage the
bottleneck happening.

Did you know?


With downtime costing over $300,000 per hour on average, the
inability to provide reliable service can have grave consequences for a
customer.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 20
14. Completed Requests Over Time

It’s important for data center managers to know how much work
is being done in the data center. One method of doing this is by
monitoring the number of moves, adds, and changes over time.
By tracking data center activity and productivity in this manner,
you can determine whether the number of employees in the data
center is justified or not, troubleshoot outages more easily, and
be able to bill your customers more accurately. Your goal number
of completed requests should be relative to your specific data
center and the amount of people in your facility.

Did you know?


Being inadequately staffed can wreak havoc across the data center.
According to the Uptime Institute, 39% of data center incidents can be
attributed to human error caused by fatigue, lack of knowledge, or not
following proper procedures.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 21
15. Changes Per Person

Data center managers rely on KPIs to inform their


decision-making, but they need to trust that their data is accurate
and reliable. For the most accurate data, data center mangers
must hold their team accountable to properly log the work they
do in the data center. Track the number of changes per person to
make sure that every single employee is entering data, that they
are doing so correctly, and that they’re productivity is satisfactory.

Did you know?


The Uptime Institute reports that 61% of data center managers describe
having significant difficulty retaining or recruiting staff.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 22
Space KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 23
16. Available Floor and Cabinet Space Remaining

Intelligent space capacity planning is key to navigating data


center expansion and optimization. Track available cabinet
space by open rack units, including contiguous rack units,
to know how efficient your use of space is and to correlate
how much space vs. power capacity you have to deploy new
devices. You should also track available floor
space by open cabinet positions to know how
much white space is available to deploy new
cabinets on the data center floor. Include planned
decommissions and future planned deployments in your
reporting for the most accurate view of actual remaining
space capacity.

Did you know?


A single cabinet can consume up to 42 square feet of floor space after
accounting for hot and cold aisles, access corridors, and power and
cooling systems.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 24
17. Available Space by Rack Unit Size

Knowing how much available cabinet space is available in a


location is helpful to track efficiency and capacity for growth,
but monitoring available space by rack unit size, a KPI known
as rack unit fragmentation, provides an extra level of detail.
This KPI allows you to see how many items can be installed in
your data center based on RU height and lets you visualize the
correlation of equipment size to capacity. Ideally, you will see a
smooth decline in capacity as RU height increases. Otherwise,
as equipment gets larger, you may run out of space because
the space you have is already fragmented into smaller RUs.

Did you know?


Cabinets are getting larger, with shipments of cabinet sizes larger
than 42 rack units expected to outpace the industry standard soon.
Concerns about large racks include logistical limitations, increased
weight, more difficult cable management, and cooling issues.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 25
18. Rack Unit Capacity and Usage Trends

Another great way to gain insight on the cabinet space


capacity in your data center is to trend that data over time.
See the impact of installations, decommissions, and additional
space on capacity growth or decline in one glance to know
exactly when you will run out of space capacity.

Did you know?


The benefits of the standard 42U server cabinet are it provides room
to grow into, improves security with lockable doors, allows for proper
airflow, is compatible with a wide variety of vendors, and allows for easy
access and maintenance.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 26
19. Server/Network Blade Chassis Slot Usage

Blade servers minimize the use of physical space and


energy by being modularly designed and not having many
non-computing components. Each blade fits inside a blade
enclosure, or chassis, which holds multiple blades and
provides the necessary power, cooling, and networking.
Optimize the capacity utilization of each blade chassis in your
data center by monitoring the number of occupied and free
slots in both the front and back slots. You will know exactly
how densely populated your enclosures are and can easily
identify when you need to purchase additional enclosures,
blades, or both.

Did you know?


A blade system requires up to 85% less cabling compared to the same
number of conventional 1U rack-mount servers.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 27
20. Rack Units Used by Rail

When installing an IT device in a cabinet, the device may have


specifications that require it to be mounted to the front rail, the
back rail, or both. Understand your capacity for where you can
deploy equipment by tracking the number of rack units used
by rail. This will help you ensure that you have the space for
new devices that may have specific installation requirements.

Did you know?


Many new data centers are built with rows of empty racks to facilitate
proper airflow for the time being until there is a need to fill them with
servers.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 28
Power KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 29
21. Peak Power Load Per Cabinet Over Last 30 Days

Data center power resources are increasingly constrained,


while managing to uptime competes with driving efficient
power utilization. Data center managers need a
complete view of how much power is being used, how much is
available, and where efficiency can be improved. Measure
active power from rack PDU inlet readings over time and set
warning and critical alert thresholds for cabinet-level loads so that
you are immediately notified before there is an issue and able to
react before service is impacted. You will improve uptime and
discover stranded power capacity.

Did you know?


High-density data centers, where each cabinet consumes more than
10 kW, often have much lower operational costs due to increased
efficiency.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 30
22. Days of Power Capacity Remaining

Being able to monitor and manage resources in real time


is a key differentiator between data center managers who
are successful and those who are not. By leveraging a data
center monitoring tool that can identify your power
consumption trends and forecast the number of days until you
run out of power, you will know when you need to purchase
more long before you actually run out of capacity.

Did you know?


In the last 30 years, power consumption per rack has grown over 750%,
from 2.1 kW in 1992 to 16 kW today. Power capacity planning is now
a top concern of data center managers, who must leverage intelligent
PDUs and DCIM software to help reduce energy costs, analyze power
trends, and optimize rack level power.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 31
23. Cabinet Power Failover Redundancy Compliance

Cabinets in modern data centers are densely packed with


power-hungry hardware, and data center teams are under
pressure to deliver increasing amounts of power to these
devices. It is more important than ever to have a power
redundancy solution to ensure that power is always available
to IT equipment to minimize downtime. Track your cabinet
power failover redundancy with the goal of achieving 100%
compliance in your data center.

Did you know?


33% of survey respondents claimed that power outages were the
number one cause of downtime and 80% said their most recent outage
was preventable.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 32
24. Power Trends by Cabinet with Peak Load
Thresholds and Alerts

Maximizing uptime and improving data center health are key


concerns for all data center managers. Many organizations
likely take weekly or monthly measurements of their cabinet
power consumption, leaving them vulnerable to short team
peaks and potential overloads that are not detected. Monitor
your power consumption per rack in real time, trend that data
continuously, and set thresholds and alerts to ensure that you
are notified and able to react before there is a major issue or
users are impacted.

Did you know?


Monitoring power consumption at the server level will allow you to save
money on energy by identifying and shutting down ghost servers and
replacing power hogs with more efficient devices.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 33
25. Power Chain Breaker Utilization

When circuit breakers are not monitored properly, they can


become overloaded and cause downtime, create bottle necks
in the power chain, or be underutilized causing you to not get
the most out of your power resources. Optimize data center
health and efficiency by monitoring the utilization of all the
breakers in your power chain. For the most complete data,
monitor the budget load, rating, load per phase leg, highest
leg, lowest two legs, phase unbalance, and total load of each
breaker at each level of the power chain hierarchy including
rack PDUs, branch circuits, power panels, floor PDUs, and the
UPS bank.

Did you know?


Intelligent PDUs with modern DCIM software will provide complete
circuit breaker monitoring, allowing you to set thresholds for alerts when
a circuit breaker gets close to tripping.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 34
26. 3 Phase Load Balancing Percent Deviation

Managing the electricity load is one of the greatest


technical challenges for many data center managers. When the
system is unbalanced, power drops can occur due to one
phase drawing more power than other phases. There can
also be overheated phases or overheated neutral wires.
Monitor your power consumption on each phase in real time
and maintain a balanced load to maximize uptime, optimize
power resource utilization, and keep IT infrastructure safe.

Did you know?


A three-phase power whip can deliver 1.73 times more power than a
single-phase whip.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 35
27. UPS Load Factor

Load factor is defined as the ratio of the actual load of a


UPS to the maximum possible load that could have been
used in the same time. A high load factor indicates more
efficient energy utilization. Monitor your UPS load factors with
the goal of maintaining a factor of 0.5 or higher. Ways to
improve UPS load factor include shutting down some UPSs when
redundancy levels exceed N+1, installing scalable/modular
UPSs or a smaller UPS size to fit your present load capacity,
or transferring loads between UPSs to maximize load factor
for each UPS.

Did you know?


If you have a low UPS load factor, increasing it to industry standard
benchmarks could mean substantial savings.

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Efficiency KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 37
28. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

PUE, a metric developed by The Green Grid Association, is


the most commonly used KPI for reporting data center energy
efficiency. It is a ratio of the total amount of energy used by a
facility to the energy delivered to IT devices. You should target
a PUE of less than 1.5 and even 1.2 if you have a newer data
center or are moving to a newer colocation facility. If you have
a very high PUE, you have a large opportunity for cost savings
by implementing energy efficiency best practices in your data
center. Track PUE over time to see the impact of your efficiency
optimizations.

Did you know?


Other important efficiency metrics from The Green Grid include
Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness
(WUE) which are the ratios of a data center’s carbon emissions and
water usage compared to the total energy consumed by IT equipment.

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29. Percentage of Cabinets Compliant with
ASHRAE Standards
Maximize energy efficiency and ensure optimal
environmental conditions for your IT equipment by maintaining
your temperature and humidity within the ranges
provided by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating
and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Use environmental
sensors to identify hot spots, overcooling, and extreme
humidity levels by visualizing all sensor points in thermal
envelopes within ASHRAE’s psychrometric charts. Then,
track the percentage of cabinets in your data center that are
compliant with ASHRAE standards with the goal of maintaining
100% compliance.

Did you know?


Iron Mountain’s “The Underground” facility in Pennsylvania is located
220 feet below ground in a former mine, where limestone walls and
ceilings naturally absorb heat and provide a consistent temperature for
equipment to operate safely.

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Cooling KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 40
30. Latest Temperature Per Cabinet

A common mistake in data center monitoring is to monitor


the temperature at the room level rather than the rack level,
potentially leaving you blind to cabinets that are
operating at unsafe temperatures. Fortunately, with more
environmental sensors being deployed and software to collect,
monitor, and analyze the data, it has never been easier to track
temperature at the cabinet level. You should monitor each cabinet’s
temperature in real time to ensure that your equipment is
operating safely within ASHRAE standards, easily identify hot
spots, and save money by avoiding overcooling.

Did you know?


It is estimated that data centers can reduce energy costs by 4-5% for
every 1 degree increase in server inlet temperature.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 41
31. Hot Spot Occurrence and Duration

Hot spots are locations at the intake of IT equipment where


insufficient cooling causes the temperature to exceed the
recommended range, and they pose a threat to equipment
and increase outages. Proactively monitor and trend rack inlet
temperatures in your environment with the aim to minimize
the occurrence, size, and duration of all service-impacting
hot spots. To mitigate hot spots, ensure raised floor tiles are
placed properly, use appropriate tile perforation, implement
hot- and cold-aisle containment, position racks and CRAC units
correctly, and spread high-density servers throughout the
data center.

Did you know?


Implementing hot and cold aisle containment can help save up to
40% on cooling costs and provide return-on-investment in as fast as
one year.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 42
32. Delta-T Per Cabinet

Delta-T is the difference in temperatures between two


sensor readings at different locations of a cabinet. It is used to
measure the inlet temperature of IT equipment compared to
the heat emitting from IT equipment. You should monitor the
Delta-T for each cabinet in your data center to help
balance airflow volume, identify hot spots, and maintain a safe
environment. This will lead to maximizing your cooling
capacity, reducing operating expenses, and deferring capital
expenditures.

Did you know?


IT equipment airflow temperature rises at a constant rate for a given
load. Every kilowatt of electricity consumed by IT equipment becomes
a kilowatt of heat added to the flow of cooling air.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 43
33. Maximum Temperature Per Cabinet Over Last
30 Days

In addition to tracking the latest temperature per cabinet, you


should add a level of sophistication to your monitoring by
trending that data over time to identify spikes and irregularities.
By monitoring the maximum temperature per cabinet over the
last 30 days, you can ensure that your equipment is operating
within safe guidelines not just now, but all the time. If you see
temperature spikes, you’ll have data to identify what the issue
was and prevent it from reoccurring.

Did you know?


As temperature rises, so does the power consumption of IT
equipment. This is primarily due to increased fan power to boost airflow
and leakage current in server components.

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34. Airflow Efficiency

Airflow efficiency, a measure of the total fan power


required per unit of airflow, provides a high-level view of how
efficiently air travels through the data center from the supply to
the return. It is calculated by dividing the watts of fan power by
the cubic feet per minute (cfm) of supply and exhaust airflow.
Monitor the airflow efficiency of your data center with the goal
of not exceeding 0.5 watts/cfm. If your airflow efficiency greatly
surpasses this benchmark, this is an indicator that your
fan system is inefficient and design improvements may
be necessary.

Did you know?


Proper airflow management alone can provide up to 30% in
energy savings.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 45
35. Cooling System Efficiency

This metric characterizes the overall efficiency of a data


center’s cooling system in the ratio of average cooling
system power usage (in kilowatts) per average cooling load (in
tons). 0.8 kW/ton is a good benchmark, while 0.6 kW/ton and
lower is ideal. If your cooling system efficiency value is
exceedingly high, consider improving your chiller plant
efficiency by leveraging modularization, high-efficiency chillers,
all-variable-speed systems, increased chilled water
temperature, or a water-side economizer.

Did you know?


A “ton” of cooling load is the amount of heat removed by an air
conditioning system that would melt 1 ton (2,000 lbs.) of ice in 24
hours, or 144 British thermal units (Btu).

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Connectivity KPIs

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 47
36. Cabinets with Most Free Data and Power Ports

When provisioning new equipment, you should know the best


place to reserve cabinet space to achieve optimal utilization
of resources. This requires knowing which cabinets have
available data and power port capacity. By tracking
physical port capacity at the cabinet level, you can intelligently
provision new equipment, make more informed capacity
planning decisions, user power and network resources more
efficiently, and reduce operating expenses.

Did you know?


A modern DCIM solution with an Intelligent Capacity Search feature
will help you find the optimal cabinet to deploy IT equipment in mere
seconds.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 48
37. Data Ports Usage Per Connector Type

Capacity planning is more than just a hardware forecast for


the future. You need to know and understand your connectivity
capacity down to the port level in order to successfully plan
and implement data center projects. You should be tracking
the number of connected and free ports for each connector
type in your data center in real time for the most accurate and
granular view of connectivity capacity.

Did you know?


Having multiple connectivity options provides redundancy,
ensuring that your data center almost always has access to the outside
internet. This also provides protection against distributed denial of
service (DDoS) attacks.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 49
38. Assets Per Connected Power Supplies

Since IT equipment needs to be connected to multiple power


supplies to ensure redundancy, data center managers need
to keep track of how many power supplies are connected to
each of their devices. Use DCIM software to easily identify
servers that are not connected to the appropriate number of
power supplies. For example, a dual power supply device may
only have one power connection. Then, act on this information
to ensure that all devices have redundant power to avoid
costly downtime.

Did you know?


The N+1 redundancy configuration is cheaper and more
energy-efficient than other configurations such as 2N, but it has the
disadvantage of being less resilient.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 50
39. Data and Power Ports Usage Per Port Properties

A data center is a high-density, complex system with hundreds,


if not thousands, of devices from a multitude of vendors with
a plethora of power ports with different properties. Knowing
how many ports are connected or free is critical to effectively
managing your data center. Monitor your power port usage by
color, voltage, phase, and amp rating and your data port usage
by VLAN/grouping, protocol, data rate, and media to simplify
capacity planning and more easily manage your connections.

Did you know?


Telehouse’s London facility is the “most connected” data center in the
world with over 530 carriers, ISPs, and ASPs.

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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 51
40. Data and Power Ports Capacity and Usage Trends

How effective you are at planning and managing your data


center capacity is related to how accurate and insightful your
data is. Tracking capacity down to the data and power port
level provides granular data that clues you into how many
available ports remain. Monitor your usage and capacity by
connector type to ensure you never run out of free data or
power ports in your data center.

Did you know?


DCIM software will automatically validate the compatibility of your
physical connections and will not allow you to build connections across
incompatible ports.

®®

DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 52
Conclusion
It’s more critical than ever to integrate, analyze, and act on the KPIs that have the most impact
on your data center, but how do you begin to monitor so many metrics? With a comprehensive
DCIM solution, it’s easy.

A modern, second-generation DCIM tool provides all your most important KPIs right out of the box with
zero-configuration dashboard widgets, reports, and visual analytics. An enterprise-class data and health
poller gathers data directly from facility equipment to ensure accurate, high-quality information that leads
to deeper, more reliable insights. Second-generation DCIM makes it simple for data center professionals
to make smarter, more informed decisions to improve data center health and efficiency while dramatically
simplifying capacity management.

®®

DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 53
Take the Next Steps with Sunbird

®®

DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 54
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DCIM that’s easy, fast, and complete. Top 40 Data Center KPIs 55

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