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. But have no fear, this is precisely why data centre supplier Minkels – part of the publicly traded company Legrand – has launched a brand new white paper on this very topic.
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.
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 discusses the different parts of this standard, highlighting 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 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.
Written by Niek van der Pas, lead data centre expert at Minkels, white paper 10 can be requested at www.minkels.com/whitepapers.
