Power efficiency means getting denominator right
Tuesday Mar 20, 2007
Lots of people are talking about getting the datacenter power down and measuring it in the right way. But the metric needs to be right.
The best way to build the proper metric is to base it on previously proven metrics. Price/Performance ($/perf) is a fine metric to look at. Because most datacenter people (and their finance people) are worried about watts because it is a cost to the business. Actually in the final analysis I'm more worried about it because of the environment.
Both of these metrics are a 'lower is better' metric, so the marketing people who like big numbers may not like it, but they just like bravado. What businesses want is a smaller number here (less cost, less watts)
Price/performance
watt/performance
...it just makes sense. And it follows that when you look at datacenters and
add in watts to cool this metric also shows the right things.
So tell anyone interested in gauging the power efficiency to please use
this metric. I'll admit that I've probably used performance/watt myself, but
that's what happens when you rush things.
More on this tomorrow its getting late...
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