Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a ratio of the total amount of power used by a data center to the power delivered to IT equipment. The PUE metric was developed by The Green Grid to measure the overall energy efficiency of data centers, and it has been one of the most popular data center KPIs since its introduction in 2007.

Data center capacity refers to key data center resources (i.e., power, space, cooling, and power/network port connections) that are available to meet the requirements of current and future IT demand. Accurately planning and managing data center capacity is essential for maintaining uptime and increasing efficiency. Failure to do so can be very expensive and detrimental to the business.

After becoming increasingly popular in the mid-2000s, cloud computing has revolutionized the data center industry. Aside from providing cost-savings, security, mobility, and scalability benefits, cloud computing was also expected to be more environmentally friendly than other data storing and processing methods. By being highly efficient, cloud operators can reduce the use of electricity and other materials that typically increase a data center’s carbon footprint.

Cooling systems are one of the most important components of a data center. They often consume about half of all the data center’s total energy and are necessary to maintain a safe operating environment. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) thermal guidelines recommend that the ideal temperature for server inlets is between 64.4° F and 80.6° F with a relative humidity between 40% and 60%.

Do you know what your power density per rack is? How about what it costs to power each individual rack for a year? Or all your racks combined? The fact is that most data center managers don’t know this information, which can be incredibly valuable when it comes to power capacity planning, energy management, and maximizing the utilization of existing resources. That’s why we created a simple and free tool to make it easy for you to understand your power density and data center energy costs.

As modern data centers grow increasingly complex and distributed, data center technology and infrastructure can become more difficult to manage, and it becomes harder for IT decision-makers to find qualified candidates. According to Uptime Institute, 50% of data center owners and operators are struggling to find qualified candidates. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated industry trends such as remote data center management, deepening the already severe data center skills gap.

What a difference a year makes. Each year, data center, lab, and edge sites become more complex, more distributed, and more difficult to manage. Managers must stay up to date on the latest trends and advancements in data center management best practices and technologies to maintain uptime, increase the efficiency of capacity utilization, and improve the productivity of people.

Data center managers often struggle to accurately track and manage their data center parts inventory. Legacy management tools like Excel spreadsheets are commonly used, but they fail to support the complexity and distributed nature of modern data center environments. They are hard to use, difficult to maintain, time-consuming, and error-prone.

Modern data centers and labs are growing in density and complexity as IT devices require more and more power to racks. As such, many data center and lab managers deploy overhead busways for their reduced installation costs and better flexibility, scalability, reliability, and aesthetics. However, without a software solution to monitor and manage your busways, you likely aren’t getting the full value out of them.

We are proud to share that Sunbird was recognized by Datacenter Insider as silver award winner in the Datacenter Innovations category in their 2021 IT Awards. According to Datacenter Insider, this year's IT Awards received a record 64,000 reader votes. Datacenter Insider's readers were able to choose from one of the nominated companies available for selection as their favorite by online voting and were able to suggest other companies as well.