%0 Journal Article %A Moises Levy %A Daniel Raviv %T An Overview of Data Center Metrics and a Novel Approach for a New Family of Metrics %J Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal %D 2018 %V 3 %N 2 %P 238–251 %R 10.25046/aj030228 %U https://www.astesj.com/v03/i02/p28/ %> https://www.astesj.com/?sdm_process_download=1&download_id=4029 %X

Data centers’ mission critical nature, significant power consumption, and increasing reliance on them for digital information, have created an urgent need to monitor and adequately manage these facilities. Metrics are a key part of this effort as their indicators raise flags that lead to optimization of resource utilization. A thorough review of existing data center metrics presented in this paper shows that while existing metrics are valuable, they overlook important aspects. New metrics should enable a holistic understanding of the data center behavior. This paper proposes a novel framework using a multidimensional approach for a new family of data center metrics. Performance is examined across four different sub-dimensions: productivity, efficiency, sustainability, and operations. Risk associated with each of those sub-dimensions is contemplated. External risks are introduced, namely site risk, as another dimension of the metrics, and makes reference to a methodology that explains how it is calculated. Results from metrics across all sub-dimensions can be normalized to the same scale and incorporated in one graph, which simplifies visualization and reporting. The new family of data center metrics can help to standardize a process that evolves into a best practice to help evaluate data centers, to compare them to each other, and to improve the decision-making process.

%K Data center %K Mission critical %K Metric %K Measurement %K Performance %K Efficiency %K Productivity %K Sustainability %K Operations %K Infrastructure %K Management %K Risk %K Site