Designing an energy-efficient data centre

More and more data centre owners and ICT managers use the EN 50600 for setting up data centres and server rooms. The standard not only provides insight into the design process – from strategy determination to operation – but also into KPIs, best practices and data centre operations. The effective use of the EN 50600, to design an energy-efficient data centre, remains a challenge for many data centre owners and ICT managers though. That is why data centre supplier Minkels – part of the publicly traded company Legrand (NYSE Euronext Paris: LR) – has launched a new white paper on this topic.

According to the EN 50600, the following pillars together determine the quality of a data centre: energy-efficiency, availability and security. At an early stage, it is possible to estimate costs for, for example, a certain energy- efficiency. The standard provides guidelines for determining which level is desired in these areas. White paper 10 “An energy-efficient data centre using the EN 50600” discusses the pillar energy-efficiency. This white paper will guide you through the different parts of this standard and will highlight aspects of energy-efficiency.

In part one, the reader discovers how the EN 50600 can help in making data centre design choices – to build and operate an energy-efficient data centre in accordance with the intended goals. This part of white paper 10 discusses strategies and objectives, business risk analysis and availability, resource efficiency and availability choices, the use of KPI’s when designing a data centre and what different standards have to say about energy-efficiency.

Part two of white paper 10 deals with energy-efficiency aspects of all the components in the data centre and relates these to the recommended practices and other relevant parts in the EN 50600. The white paper roughly follows the sequence of the consecutive parts of the EN 50600 and links the recommended practices and discusses the energy-efficiency properties of the corresponding data centre products.

To stimulate the use of energy-efficient solutions in data centres, there are several authorities that run programs to reach this effect. In and outside of Europe, the EU code of conduct on energy-efficient data centres and the best practices within this code, have been the reference for local programs. In part three of white paper 10, the situation in the Netherlands and in the UK are discussed as an example.