December 2, 2008 -- Emerson Network Power has released its annual Data Center Users Group (DCUG) "Inside the Data Center" report. More than 165 data center, facility and IT managers participated in the survey.
Key findings of the report, according to Emerson, include the following:
-- Data center criticality is rising. Three out of four respondents to this year's survey said that the data center is more critical today than in past years. Many of these are large facilities that have had high availability goals for years.
-- Power densities across the room and within the rack are increasing sharply. In doing so, they're pushing facility capacity to the max -- and fast. In the last two years, average rack power density has risen from 6 kW to 8 kW. More than 10 percent of respondents said they will be out of data center capacity by the end of this year and a total of 68 percent expect to be at capacity within the next three years.
-- Despite tight capital equipment budgets, changes to the data center are still planned. Thirty-seven percent of survey participants responded that current economic conditions are impacting their ability to operate or expand their data center. However, in a sign of just how dynamic and critical the data center has become, more than 75 percent of survey respondents are still planning for changes to take place within their facilities.
-- Data center managers are unwilling to compromise availability for efficiency: Data center managers will be taking into account corporate initiatives to improve energy usage throughout the data center; yet, this directive is challenged by the understanding that availability remains the top priority. On a continuum of one (reducing energy usage is main priority) to seven (maintaining high availability is our main priority), 69 percent of respondents identified a priority level between five and seven in favor of high availability.
-- Energy usage strategy still missing: A comprehensive energy usage strategy remains elusive for a majority of businesses despite one in four respondents having completed an analysis of the efficiency of their data center equipment. Only 28 percent of survey respondents have a documented strategy to reduce energy usage.
The entire DCUG "Inside the Data Center" report is available here.
On the Web:
www.datacenterug.org
www.liebert.com
www.emersonnetworkpower.com