Google datacenters: good, better, best

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This just in from Twitter (hi, @datacenter), a link to an article at Data Center Knowledge posted today with details of Google’s data center energy use:

Google today disclosed details of its data center energy usage, confirming that it operates some of the most efficient facilities in the world. Google said it is averaging a Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.21 across its six company-built data centers, and one of its facilities is operating with a PUE of 1.13, the lowest ever published and just above the “perfect” efficiency score of 1.0.

According to the article, a typical datacenter PUE is 2.0, and …”the lowest claim in our travels here at DCK is a PUE of 1.28 for Sun’s data center in Santa Clara, Calif.”

“We reduced the energy-weighted average overhead across all Google-built data centers to 21% versus the average of 96% reported by the EPA,” Google says in a new section of its web site dedicated to data center efficiency. “In other words, compared to standard data centers we’ve reduced the overhead by more than fourfold. To our knowledge, no other large-scale production data center has ever operated as efficiently. In fact, one of our data centers is running at an even lower overhead of only 15%, a sixfold improvement in efficiency.”

Interesting, interesting article with a peak inside a traditionally very secretive tech company. If you are responsible for a datacenter, you need to read it.