Executive insights: Scoping out sustainability eBook

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Scoping out sustainability Will digitization drive decarbonization in the data center?

Full insights into your data center, edge or colo infrastructure with DCIM. EcoStruxure™ IT Advisor A vendor-neutral planning, modeling and optimization tool.

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>> Contents

4 Introduction we’re obsessed with getting the data 5 Why center sustainability equation right

7

The road to net zero: Where do colocation providers stand?

5

9 Navigating net-zero in the data center 11

Major Panel: Navigating net-zero - CSR, regulation and transparent carbon accounting

Sustainability metrics with Rob 12 DCD>Talks Bunger, Schneider Electric

13 16

13 Demystifying data center Scope 3 carbon

18

Demystifying Scope 3 with Adam 15 DCD>Talks Compton, Schneider Electric 3 in the data center: Expectations vs 16 Scope reality

18 Leveraging DCIM to drive decarbonization DCIM 3.0 with Steven Brown, 21 DCD>Talks Schneider Electric software: The key to optimizing 22 Green operations? with Carsten Baumann, Schneider 29 Q&A Electric

22 29

>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

Introduction When it comes to sustainability in the data center, we tend to hear about the challenges faced by facility operators. But as 2023 draws to a close, we felt it important to highlight some of the wins and focus on what the industry has achieved.

For instance, cast our minds back a few years, data center operators didn’t even know what a Scope 3 emission was, let alone how to monitor or improve them. But now, thanks to new digital tools and technologies helping expand both our understanding of and visibility into data center ecosystems and supply chains, the industry has taken sustainable operations to a whole new level.

And with this tech only set to improve, this begs the question, is digitization the answer to decarbonization? In this eBook we take a deep dive into the importance of environmental responsibility in the data center, demystify Scope 3 and take a look at the software available today that will help lead us into tomorrow’s digital future.

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Why are we so obsessed with getting the data center sustainability equation right?

Pankaj Sharma Schneider Electric

Examining the ever-evolving landscape of sustainability in the data center

T

he potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and its various applications to profoundly change our lives is not entirely understood yet. However, one major impact of the technology is already clear – AI applications are escalating power consumption in data centers at a time when they need to become more sustainable.

Power-hungry AI applications Storing and processing data to train machine learning and large language models drives up energy consumption. AI applications use large amounts of processing power provided by GPUs or specialized AI accelerators.

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability I am sure many of you are familiar with generative AI applications like ChatGPT. Researchers estimated that creating GPT-3 consumed 1,287 megawatt hours of electricity and generated 552 tons of CO2 – the equivalent of 123 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.

We estimate that AI power demand will grow at a CAGR of 26 percent to 36 percent driving total demand to a potential range of 13.5 GW to 20 GW by 2028.

By 2030, according to another estimate, the power consumption of data centers could reach 35GW, up from 17GW in 2022 in the US market, which represents about 40 percent of the total globally.

So, as operators design and manage data centers, they need to focus on energy-efficient hardware, such as high-efficiency power and cooling systems, and renewable power sources to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions.

Now is the time for data center decisionmakers to implement more aggressive sustainability strategies through high-efficiency hardware and renewable energy sources > Pankaj Sharma Schneider Electric For instance, customers said the framework was too general, so we made it more data centerspecific. We learned that some framework categories had too many overlapping metrics while others had too few, so we revised those metrics.

Additionally, we added server utilization to the Energy category and added land use, land use

White paper revisited: Getting the data center sustainability metrics right The good news is that data center operators have options to reduce their carbon emissions in line with the UN’s net-zero goals. To help operators implement sustainability strategies, in 2021 Schneider Electric published White Paper 67: A guide to environmental sustainability metrics for data centers, which provides a framework to measure and improve sustainability.

I wrote a blog in 2022 about the white paper, and since then, I’ve had some follow-up questions from customers, partners, and the media about best practices. In preparing those best practices, I concluded our original framework needed some tweaking based on customer feedback. So, we decided to revise the framework to help data center operators accelerate their path to sustainability.

As operators design and manage data centers, they need to focus on energyefficient hardware, such as highefficiency power and cooling systems, and renewable power sources to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions

intensity, and noise metrics to the Local Ecosystem category. We also added battery recycling and e-waste to the Waste category and water replenishment metrics to the Water category.

We sought this feedback from customers and partners to enhance our original framework because it’s important to get the sustainability equation right. As an industry and global community, we must reduce carbon emissions for the planet’s future. Extreme weather events have become more frequent; they were a near-constant this summer.

Unfortunately, these events will become even more frequent unless we take decisive steps to reduce carbon emissions. For data center operators, this means driving efficiencies to reduce power consumption and carbon emissions.

Now is the time for data center decision-makers to implement more aggressive sustainability strategies through high-efficiency hardware and renewable energy sources. Otherwise, the data center industry risks rapidly falling behind in mitigating the adverse consequences of increased power consumption.

So be sure to check out our updated White Paper 67, tell us about your progress toward sustainability, and let us know how we can help. 

> Pankaj Sharma Schneider Electric

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The road to net zero: Where do colocation providers stand?

Anna Timme Schneider Electric

Sustainability study from Forrester and Schneider tells us more

S

ustainability is a hot topic of conversation for colocation data center providers, but how far along are they on their sustainability journeys?

That is a question that we, along with Forrester, set out to answer with a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Schneider Electric.

Forrester surveyed 1,033 colocation provider organizations across the globe to assess sustainability trends and practices.

I’m excited to preview highlights from the new Forrester study, ‘Reimagine colocation strategy with sustainability front of mind,’ with you in this article.

Sustainability is also critical for colocation tenants, so colocation businesses that are further along the sustainability maturity path are seeing direct positive business results.

reputation as a benefit, and

In fact, 84 percent of those who committed to early sustainability initiatives cite improved brand

OpEx savings that result from

82 percent have experienced increases in revenues and customer acquisition and/or loyalty. The gains in revenue and reputation are supplemented by direct sustainability-driven efficiency improvements.

Sustainability is good business First, it’s clear that sustainability has emerged as a top priority for the colocation industry. As a group, colocation providers identified sustainability as their number two business priority ­— r­ ight behind improving profitability.

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability Increased digitalization of infrastructure was the most frequent response when those surveyed were asked about their top sustainability priority for the next 12 months > Anna Timme Schneider Electric

The secret to colocation sustainability success What strategies and tactics have colocation companies adopted to make their sustainability programs a success? The Forrester study uncovered that strong sustainability partnerships are a key ingredient for successful companies. In fact, 96 percent of “high maturity” companies in the area of sustainability identified trusted partners as essential to achieving their sustainability goals.

Survey respondents also indicated that digitization of data center infrastructure was key to allowing

them to gather data and track sustainability initiatives. Increased digitalization of infrastructure was the most frequent response when those surveyed were asked about their top sustainability priority for the next 12 months.

So, how do colocation providers figure out whether they are measuring up on the sustainability front?

Forrester established a sustainability maturity model to help determine where firms are in their sustainable evolution. The maturity model, detailed in the new study, includes criteria such as operational

efficiency (and its impact on carbon emissions), level of corporate responsibility, sustainability commitments, and effectiveness at measuring environmental impact.

This model allows colocation providers to gauge where they are on the industry’s sustainability maturity curve and gain insight into what actions to take to achieve their sustainability targets.

Access the entire Forrester Consulting colocation sustainability study To learn more about how colocation providers are managing the challenge of designing and running sustainable data centers, download the full ‘Reimagine colocation strategy with sustainability front of mind’ study. You’ll discover how respondents rank sustainability drivers and common challenges along the path to sustainability and gain access to additional study data. 

> Talks ambition to action with Anna Timme, Schneider Electric

Click here to watch

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Navigating net-zero in the data center

Claire Fletcher DCD

The importance of strategy, standardization and transparency, when navigating the journey to netzero

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hen it comes to achieving net-zero in the data center, as American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, ‘it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.’ As wonderful as every organization crossing the finish line to sustainability in unison would be the utopia, it’s simply not realistic.

With environmental pressure mounting from customers, regulators and even local communities, sustainability is now an indispensable part of every center operator’s strategy. But, with high density workloads such as AI adding an extra layer of complexity, presenting both challenges and opportunities for the industry, we must be cognizant of the fact that not everyone is at the same stage on their journey toward net-zero.

So, how do we go about aligning the industry to achieve

this common goal? At our recent DCD>Connect event in Virginia, DCD’s George Rockett sat down with, Anna Timme, head of sustainability, Secure Power & Data Centers at, Schneider Electric; Matthew Pfile, CEO at Crane Data Centers; Vicki Worden, president & CEO of the Green Building Initiative and Miranda Gardiner, executive director of the iMasons Climate Accord to discuss just that.

Strategy and metrics With a topic as subjective as sustainability, it’s easy to get bogged down in the plethora of ever changing rules, regulations and metrics we ought to be measuring and therefore managing. But first, you need to understand where your business is currently at, and where you want it to go.

everything else will follow,” says Schneider’s Anna Timme. “You absolutely need to start with your own operations. There are a long list of metrics that we all can and should keep track of, but what’s really important before we get to metrics is what’s your strategy? What’s your goal? That then determines what the metrics are.”

And when we say ‘long list’, that is no exaggeration. Schneider Electric recently updated its white paper 67 ‘Guide to environmental metrics for data centers’ that now lists a whopping 27 sustainability metrics across five different categories.

Twenty-seven metrics might seem somewhat overwhelming, but it’s worth remembering that one size is never going to fit all. Therefore, matching your strategy with the metrics that make sense is an easy way to rise above the noise.

“Get your strategy right and

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“We've got companies that are

>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability one person, five people, and then the Googles and Metas of the world, too. So where you fall on that line can also help you determine which metrics make sense. For example I may select this because it's the right climate zone, I may select that because it's the right reporting metric I have for an ESG report,” says Miranda Gardiner of the iMasons Climate Accord.

Standardization So, once you have your strategy sorted, what’s next? A sensible place to start would be agreeing on a standardized approach to sustainability, starting with how we define it.

“One of the really interesting things right now is just trying to get our arms wrapped around ‘what is the definition of net-zero?’” says GBI’s Vicki Worden. “There are currently 18 definitions out there.

Right now the White House is working really hard to coordinate the entire building industry around one definition for net-zero.”

“The SBTi (Science-based Targets Initiative) has also set a very strong, very valid standard,” adds Anna Timme. “I don't think we, as a world, as humanity, can compromise on what science says is necessary.”

It might sound simple, but it is this standardized approach that will get us all singing from the same hymn sheet. However, Timme is concerned that establishing industry-specific targets could be distracting us from the urgency of actually reducing our emissions: “Personally I think some of the big focus around influencing standards organizations and frameworks means that we’re not putting enough time into reductions that are needed today.”

“Looking at the things we can take responsibility for wherever we fall in the line of our industry is going to move this forward,” concurs Gardiner. “Everyone needs to be participatory in this process.”

Greenwashing and transparency Sometimes, when it comes to sustainability, operators can feel a bit like they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Every day new accusations of greenwashing are rife across the media, and with the risk of reputational damage so high in an industry that hinges on trust, it’s understandable why some companies might not want to take that first step at all.

“The term greenwashing is completely overused,” says Timme.

“Greenwashing is when a company intentionally misleads the public on what they're trying to achieve.

It does not mean when a company sets ambitious goals, you have to set ambitious goals, and sometimes in that process, that ambitious goal has to change.

“We need to be very careful how we use that term, and not use it to punish companies who are trying to move in the right direction, but need to pivot along the journey.”

Worden adds, “When we have concerns about greenwashing it’s usually because a company has done mostly the right thing, but has bundled it up into one package.

What we really need to be doing is breaking it down in terms of reporting.”

And with the sheer amount of reporting now required just to satisfy investors and stakeholders, Worden advises the biggest thing any organization can do is take a holistic approach and do what makes sense for the business.

“At the Green Building Initiative we have a certification, so when it comes to what you’re doing specifically at a facility level, you have that transparency. You’ve got to make sure those big goals translate down into specifics.”

And she’s right, if we all focused a little bit more on sharing information rather than working in secretive silos, the industry would gain invaluable insight into the bigger picture, arming itself with the information needed in order to right size individual sustainable strategies.

Thankfully, the big players aren’t leaving the smaller fish to go it alone, helping to provide the tools and education needed to accelerate that net-zero journey industry-wide.

“At Schneider we’re giving away our services for free, we're buying our services for our suppliers to enable them to establish their baseline, to create a strategy, and to execute on it no matter where they're at in the world. Because there is no one solution to this,” says Timme.

No one company can curtail climate change alone, but together, through a combination of transparency and education, we all stand the best chance of navigating net-zero both today and beyond.

You can check out the full panel discussion from DCD>Connect Virginia on the next page. 

“You don’t need to do it all. If you don’t have the whole building data today, then report on exactly what data is going into achieving your carbon goals,” says Worden.

“If you haven’t done the analysis on embodied carbon, let’s report on the fact that this excludes embodied carbon. What are you doing today on site?”

As president and CEO of the Green Building Initiative, Worden also advises organizations seek out a third party review or third party assurance.

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

>Connect Major Panel: Navigating net-zero - CSR, regulation and transparent carbon accounting

Click to watch

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

>Talks

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Demystifying data center Scope 3 carbon

Paul Lin Schneider Electric

Indirect emissions your organization is directly responsible for? The new findings from Schneider Electric helping to demystify Scope 3

B

ased on Carbon Intelligence research, over 80 percent of a company’s emissions are Scope 3. But

for data centers, this is harder to assess. This is partly because data centers are energy intensive, and energy is largely Scope 2.

If a data center’s energy has a high carbon-intensity, then Scope 3 will be a smaller percentage of the data center’s overall carbon footprint, and vice versa. But Scope 2 is easier to calculate compared to Scope 3, which makes calculating the total carbon footprint over the lifetime of the data center somewhat of a mystery.

Although reporting on Scope 3 emissions is not a mandatory requirement yet, it is beneficial for data center operators to understand the major drivers of Scope 3 emissions.

As the management guru Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In other words, you can’t fix what you can’t measure.

Understanding Scope 3 emissions is a key step for data center operators to prioritize carbonreduction efforts to achieve their environmental sustainability ambitions. Scope 3 will be the next frontier in key performance

indicators for the data center industry.

Scope 3 emissions are by far the most challenging to report Scope 3 includes all indirect emissions from sources such as purchased goods and services (e.g., data center construction); capital goods (e.g., computers, power systems, cooling systems); business travel (flight, train, rental cars, hotels, etc.); employee commuting (cars, buses, etc.); and waste management (e-waste, batteries) across a data center organization’s value chain.

Quantifying and reporting on Scope 3 presents a significant

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability Understanding Scope 3 emissions is a key step for data center operators to prioritize carbon-reduction efforts to achieve their environmental sustainability ambitions > Paul Lin

Key insights from our study We broke out carbon footprint

by Scope, GHG source category, lifecycle phase, and data center subsystem to identify the largest emission sources. We found that: •

Depending on the carbon intensity of purchased electricity, Scope 3 emissions can be the largest contributor to total carbon footprint.

•

Capital goods are the largest driver of embodied carbon.

•

The composition of Scope 1, 2, and 3 varies throughout the lifetime of a data center. Scope 1 emissions represent a small percentage (0.2-0.5 percent) of the total carbon footprint while Scope 2 emissions represent 3161 percent. Scope 3 emissions represent 38-69 percent of total carbon footprint. However, as the data center uses more renewable energy, the Scope 2 emissions percentage decreases.

•

The total cumulative carbon footprint of a data center increases year over year due to continuous fuel (diesel) combustion, energy consumption, and value chain activities.

•

The core and shell of the data center building represents only

Schneider Electric challenge for data center operators.

This is mainly due to a lack of three resources: • Reliable supplier data • Quantitative tools • Accounting and reporting methodology.

After half a year of research, we released White Paper #53, Recommended inventory for data center Scope 3 GHG emissions reporting. This inventory includes nine emission source categories and their data center specific subcategories as a framework for data center operators to account for and report their Scope 3 emissions.

We then began researching and collecting data to develop tools.

The first comprehensive attempt to quantify data center Scope 3 Robert Bunger, Victor Avelar and I have developed a new White Paper #99, Quantifying data center Scope 3 GHG emissions to prioritize reduction efforts.

core and shell construction, IT equipment configuration, energy efficiency, equipment lifespan and replacement frequency, value chain activities, etc.

Our intent is to provide a baseline and an educational tool to advance Scope 3 accounting, reporting, benchmarking, and management for the data center industry.

Key assumptions of our hypothetical data center Our model assumes an onpremise data center to isolate the quantification of its carbon footprint, allowing us to ignore colo and cloud services. Other assumptions include: 1MW IT capacity, Tier III, 50 percent loaded; 1.34 PUE; 6 kW/rack, N+1 power and chilled water cooling; VRLA batteries replacement every four years; IT equipment refresh every four years; 511 kg CO2e/MWh average US electricity emission factor.

In this newly released paper, we use a single hypothetical data center to demonstrate how to quantify Scope 3 emissions and identify the largest emission sources.

We also developed a calculator titled, Data Center Lifecycle CO2e Calculator, which can be used to estimate a data center’s lifecycle carbon footprint.

Carbon emissions vary significantly depending on many factors including data center size, redundancy level, electricity emission factor,

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Depending on the carbon intensity of purchased electricity, Scope 3 emissions can be the largest contributor to total carbon footprint

optimistic implementing prefabricated solutions will have lower embodied carbon.

•

carbon, energy-efficient, and have good circular economy properties like durability and recyclability. Specifying products based on embodied carbon is critical to minimizing a data center’s carbon footprint.

Design and operate for high utilization from IT to the facility: The more you can load an existing data center, the more you can delay data center expansion, which will lower your overall Scope 3 emissions.

This includes monitoring and improving server utilization, designing for higher facility utilization and higher rack density, and reducing stranded capacity.

•

Reuse existing building for data centers instead of new construction: This is an effective way for data center operators to minimize this environmental impact.

Research from Serverfarm shows that, “Modernization of data centers, which reuses existing buildings while expanding capacity, can deliver embodied carbon savings of 88 percent when compared with the material carbon cost of new projects.”

Optimize IT demand: The lowest carbon data center is the one you don’t have to build.

In other words, optimizing IT demand to avoid over-building plays an important role in data center carbon reduction.

More and more data center operators are making Scope 3 carbon reductions a priority. We recommend that they integrate sustainability into their evaluation criteria when selecting data center equipment suppliers and service providers to minimize Scope 3 value chain carbon footprint.

Evaluate modular and prefabricated construction methods: Although we haven’t performed a quantified environmental analysis between modular prefabricated solutions vs. 100 percent stick-built construction, we’re

Vendors need to commit to reducing the embodied carbon of their product portfolio. Data center equipment suppliers must make Type III Environmental Product Disclosure (EPD) documents freely available and easily understandable for their products. 

> Paul Lin Schneider Electric about 6.6 percent of total Scope 3 emissions before power is turned on (i.e., start of year one – embodied carbon only.)

Seven proposed Scope 3 carbonreduction actions With the Data Center Lifecycle CO2e Calculator, data center operators can make better informed decisions in site selection, design choices, construction, operation, and maintenance to minimize Scope 3 emissions. We recommend the following seven actions to reduce Scope 3 emissions based on our findings: •

•

•

Use more renewable/ clean energy: This is a significant lever in reducing the emissions from Scope 3 GHG Category 3 – fuel and energy-related activities. There are organizations that help data centers increase their renewable energy mix such as Neo Network.

Extend server lifespans: Our study shows that if we extend the server’s lifespan an extra year, we can reduce the cumulative data center embodied carbon by about 16 percent. However, we need to note that server replacement must be weighed against performance and energy efficiency gains of newer IT equipment to minimize the sum of embodied carbon and energy-related carbon emissions.

•

•

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Purchase efficient and low carbon products: Products should be low in embodied

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

Steven Carlini Schneider Electric

Scope 3 in the data center: Expectations vs reality Scope 3 explained

I

f you are operating a data center, you probably already know that you should be reporting (or getting ready to report) emissions from your emergency generators which are Scope 1, the carbon footprint of your utility supply, your carbon usage effectiveness (CUE), your water use and water use effectiveness (WUE), which are Scope 2.

You may also be hearing rumblings about the need to start looking at value chain/supplier

emissions which are Scope 3. But what is this Scope 3 really all about and is it something a data center operator should concern themselves with? The short answer is that Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are significant for data centers and will become a higher percentage of emissions going forward.

There is no shortage of “for profit” and “not for profit” industry organizations giving guidance for Scope 3 sustainability reporting.

However, current guidance isn’t typically data center specific, so it is not as helpful for data center operators. This motivated us at Schneider Electric’s Energy Management Research Center to produce white paper 53, ‘Recommended inventory for data center Scope 3 GHG emissions reporting.”

Data center Scope 3 emissions categories We took the GHG Protocol and

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recommended allocating a data center’s Scope 3 emissions into nine key GHG source categories and subcategories that would be useful for data center operators: 1) Purchased goods and services • •

Core & shell (materials) Cloud services

2) Capital goods • • • •

IT equipment Power equipment Cooling equipment Others (i.e., rack, fire protection, lighting)

3) Fuel- and energy-related activities • •

Fuels (i.e., diesel, natural gas) Energy (i.e., electricity, cooling)

4) U pstream transportation and distribution •

Shipments via road, rail, air, and marine

5) Waste generated in operations • •

Solid waste management Wastewater management

6) Business travel • •

Air, rail, bus, and automobile travel Hotel night stays

7) Employee commuting • • •

Automobile travel Public transport Others (e.g., telecommuting)

8) Upstream leased assets • • •

Leased vehicles Leased buildings Leased colocation data center space (i.e., U-space, rackspace, IT room, or even the whole data center.)

9) Downstream leased assets • •

were operating an enterprise data center.

So, as you review, you can probably conclude that some categories like number four, upstream transportation and distribution will have negligible effect on data center Scope 3, while categories like number two, capital goods will have a big effect.

There also could be significant Scope 3 for IT operations in category one, purchased goods and services – cloud services, but while part of an enterprise’s IT Scope 3, it is not associated with a single data centers Scope 3.

The same can be said for number eight, upstream leased assets and number nine, downstream leased assets. If a data center operator wants to prioritize and isolate the Scope 3 operations from a single on-premise enterprise data center, they can now access our new white paper #99 ‘Quantifying data center Scope 3 GHG emissions to prioritize reduction efforts’ and the ‘Data center lifecycle CO2e calculator’ TradeOff Tool. This tool modeled and highlighted the largest drivers of Scope 3 for a single 1MW enterprise data center over a 20-year lifecycle.

Top takeaways from data center CO2e calculator •

Scope 3 emissions are much higher than Scope 2 over the lifetime if servers are changed every 3-4 years.

•

IT Servers are the largest drivers of embodied carbon Scope 3 by far.

•

If the IT server refresh is extended to every eight years, Scope 2 and 3 are very close over the lifetime.

•

The carbon intensity of the utility/location has a large effect on Scope 2 and hence the Scope 2/ Scope 3 ratio.

•

Scope 1 is very small.

•

IT/Facility infrastructure

Multi-tenant data centers Single-tenant data centers.

Prioritizing data center Scope 3 reduction efforts Our nine categories provide a comprehensive list of Scope 3 emission categories to take into consideration. However, we did not quantify which categories were the most interesting or significant if you

embodied carbon starts off around 50/50 in year one and is 80/20 cumulative by year 20.

•

Core & shell represents only 8-15 percent of all Scope 3 over the data center’s lifetime.

•

There is a “fuel and energy” component of Scope 3 that is not in Scope 2 that is quite large.

•

Drilling in on physical infrastructure Scope 3, power systems and cooling systems are about equal representing 30 percent each.

Charting a path to reduce Scope 3 emissions Of course, ‘your mileage may vary’ as they say, and every data center is different and is also a living organism with varying Scope 3 emissions year to year.

Because of this variability, we encourage you to use the Data center lifecycle CO2e calculator to assess how various scenarios impact the sustainability of your data center. This will provide you with a deeper understanding of the factors that drive emissions, including IT and physical infrastructure attributes. 

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

Leveraging DCIM 3.0 to drive decarbonization

Steven Brown Schneider Electric

Optimizing operations in the colocation data center with next-gen DCIM software

A

recent Forrester study revealed that 75 percent of colocation firms are losing business because they lack adequate sustainability measures.

With increasing government regulation and customers requiring operators to have a sustainability strategy in alignment with their own, colocation operators can take another critical step toward improving sustainability by leveraging a sometimesoverlooked asset – data center infrastructure management (DCIM) technology.

DCIM helps colocation operators better understand and optimize the energy efficiency of whitespace across their facilities. Through monitoring and management tools, DCIM enables detailed data capture at a granular level, aiding in sustainability reporting. Colocation operators can monitor real-time PUE, real-time cooling control, and share client data down to the rack level.

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Improving colocation whitespace efficiency with DCIM 3.0 A newer approach, called DCIM 3.0, can help colocation providers ramp up decarbonization efforts by better managing IT hardware and infrastructure equipment.

The following DCIM 3.0 capabilities provide enhanced visibility to colocation operators, but also open up a new level of sustainability reporting for clients, a key feature to help secure sustainability-minded tenants.

Real-time power usage effectiveness (PUE) PUE is the key metric used to understand how energy flows in a data center. While colocation operators are likely tracking their facility-wide PUE, DCIM enables this in real time. It also allows partial PUE per client, so customers can understand the impact of power consumption.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and real-time control DCIM’s monitoring capabilities are helpful on their own. Still, one of the best ways to use this information is through CFD simulation to understand hot spots and how to improve efficiencies within the cooling infrastructure.

Operators can then take this to the next level with real-time cooling control that leverages artificial intelligence to optimize airflow and dramatically reduce cooling energy consumption.

Client-level/rack-level reporting and tenant portal DCIM 3.0 allows operators to include carbon impact, total efficiency, and other metrics to show each client specific opportunities to reduce their energy consumption.

It also introduces the opportunity for creative rebates and other opportunities to incentivize tenants

to become more efficient, which reduces costs related to surplus cooling and stranded capacity.

Optimize capacity and minimize risk As per the above point, colocation operators should focus on minimizing stranded capacity.

Automatically tracking a data center’s key performance indicators is essential to uncovering opportunities for incremental business within existing infrastructure.

Whether your business needs to accommodate an unplanned expansion of a current tenant or must rapidly transform wholesale suites into retail-ready cages, using DCIM to simulate these changes will minimize the risk of exceeding available cooling and power capacity and allow for faster implementation.

Through simple integrations with third-party systems such as CRM or ticketing software, DCIM can be fully integrated into existing workflows to empower colocation sales and operations teams.

Simplify multi-site operations Many colocation providers operate more than one data center in disparate locations, making it difficult to ensure consistency and simplicity.

Inconsistencies impact both data center operations, as it makes it harder to deploy engineers across multiple sites or centralize technical expertise, and the tenant experience, as enterprises want to partner with standardized colocation platforms as they scale hybrid IT globally.

EcoStruxure IT from Schneide Electric is used to manage the widely disaggregated sites associated with Edge environments.

It excels in multi-site colocation applications by providing operators a global view with the ability to drill into more granular site-level details as needed.

Increasingly, tenants also expect similar levels of visibility into their IT and consider their own tailored digital experience as “table stakes” to be included in a colo’s offer.

Luckily, EcoStruxure IT is not only an operational tool. It also includes a permissions-based multi-tenant portal, allowing customers to view DCIM information specific to their own IT including rack elevations, capacity KPIs, and energy use down to the device level.

A tenant portal immediately enhances a colocation provider’s product, especially as tenants need this data to quantify their total IT sustainability impact as part of their company’s “green IT” journey.

Competitors and companies providing public cloud hyperscale capabilities – that is the ability to achieve massive scale in computing – such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon aren’t sitting idly by, but are moving swiftly to develop their Metaverse initiatives

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> Tony Pialis Alphawave Semi

>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability While colocation operators are likely tracking their facilitywide PUE, DCIM enables this in real time. It also allows partial PUE per client, so customers can understand the impact of power consumption > Steven Brown Schneider Electric

center specific analytics capabilities coupled with open APIs means it easily becomes an integral part of existing data center workflow.

Try out DCIM 3.0 now Streamline reporting and billing Colocation pricing models vary but typically are based on the space, power, and networking requirements of the tenant. Until recently, only very large tenants received a metered pricing contract that billed actual power consumption rather than a flat rate.

As most major markets continue to struggle with expensive, volatile energy prices, colocation operators need to consider more granular power metering and billing to maintain both profitability and customer satisfaction.

Rack-level billing is now feasible for most colocation operators with the latest generation of rack power distribution units, an accessible solution to accurately report energy consumption with +1 percent accuracy. Without the right monitoring software in place, however, rack-level metering can introduce complexity without business benefits.

EcoStruxure IT, with roundthe-clock monitoring, not only enhances day-to-day operations but also becomes a scalable and simple reporting and billing engine. Its data

Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxureTM IT platform delivers advanced DCIM 3.0 capabilities to help colocation providers track energy usage, improve PUE, and reduce their carbon footprint.

With EcoStruxure IT, operators can create Advanced Custom Solutions (ACS) that enable data collection and reporting on specific sustainability metrics aligned with their carbon-reduction goals.

DCIM 3.0 allows operators to include carbon impact, total efficiency, and other metrics to show each client specific opportunities to reduce their energy consumption > Steven Brown Schneider Electric

EcoStruxure IT’s comprehensive portfolio includes monitoring, management, analysis, and modeling capabilities. In addition, it is vendor-neutral, so operators can leverage it to get a comprehensive view of their entire ecosystem, no matter how spread out.

One colocation provider, EcoDataCenter in Sweden, implemented EcoStruxure IT and other Schneider offerings to achieve a PUE of 1.15 and substantially improve energy efficiency.

Colocation and data center operators looking for help with their sustainability strategies can request a demo by clicking here. 

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Click here to find out more

>Talks

Click to watch

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

Green software: The key to optimizing operations?

Peter Judge DCD

We have spent years looking at cooling systems. Now it’s time to make more efficient code

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H

ow do you make a data center more efficient?

When we asked Paul Calleja, director of research computing services at the University of Cambridge, we got a surprising answer: “It’s all about the software,” he said. “The gains we get from hardware, in terms of output per megawatt, will be dwarfed by the gains we get from software.”

That might come as a shock to data center designers. When they consider the environmental footprint of a facility, they start with the energy used at the site.

They focus on the waste heat produced, and the cooling systems which remove it. In the IT equipment itself, they look for servers that perform more calculations per Watt, or storage that has a lower idle power consumption.

They sometimes (but too rarely) look at the embodied energy in the data center – the emissions created by the concrete it is built from, and the raw materials in the electrical components.

But the thing that is almost always ignored is the factor that caused the creation of the building in the first place, and drives every single action performed by the hardware.

All data center emissions are caused by software. Without software, there would be no data centers. If we want more efficient data centers, why do we start with the hardware when, as Calleja says, it is all about the software?

Why don’t we have green software?

“Going back to fundamentals, software doesn't emit any carbon by itself,” says entrepreneur and academic David Mytton.

“It's not like it's combusting or generating anything physical. The question is, what is the impact of the infrastructure the software

is running on? And the first step is to try and improve how the infrastructure is behaving in terms of electricity, and the energy that's going into the data center.”

Regulators and corporate green leaders can specify the amount of power that a building can use, and the type of materials it is made of, and data center builders can demonstrate that they are working towards the best practice in these areas.

But beyond that, it’s down to software – and, as Mytton says, “there's been less focus on the characteristics and behavior of the software itself.”

“Operational engineers and hardware engineers have really been doing all the heavy lifting up until now,” says Anne Currie, an entrepreneur and developer who, together with Sarah Hsu and Sara Bergmann, is writing a book, Building Green Software, for the publisher O’Reilly. “Software engineers have all been ‘Lalala, that's their problem.’”

Efficiency is not a hardware problem, she says: “The steps that we have left to take in data centers are software related. And a lot of the steps that we have to take in people's homes are software related as well.”

To be fair, the sector has already effectively cut data center emissions.

In the early years of this century, researchers noted that data center energy use in the US was growing rapidly. In 2011, it was predicted to continue growing out of control, but in fact, stayed at around 2010 levels.

This was because software became more efficient.

Virtualization made it possible to consolidate applications within a data center, and cloud services offered these benefits automatically.

Virtual servers, in centralized cloud data centers, started to replace standalone servers.

The gains we get from hardware, in terms of output per megawatt, will be dwarfed by the gains we get from software > Paul Calleja University of Cambridge

centers, by utilizing the hardware better.

“The advantage of the cloud over traditional data centers is the use of software to get much much higher server density within data centers,” says Currie.

Use fewer cycles That is the infrastructure. But when you are making new applications, how do you make them more efficient?

Green software should be engineered to be carbon-efficient.

As Currie, Hsu, and Bergman put it: “Green software is designed to require less power and hardware per unit of work.”

Programmers think there is a simple answer to this, but Currie says it is almost always wrong.

“My co-authors and I speak at conferences, and every time we

If you rewrite your applications in C, you might well get 100fold improvements in efficiency - but it will kill your business

Virtualization software literally reduced the need to build new data

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> Anne Currie Green Software Foundation

>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

In networking, watts per byte is a clear measurement, but what is the unit of work when it comes to software? > David Mytton

speak, someone gets up at the end and says, ‘Should I just be rewriting my applications in C?’” Everyone knows that C is efficient because it handles the server hardware more directly than a higher-level language like Java or Python. So, programmers expect Currie and her co-authors to tell them to go use it. But it’s not that simple.

“It's hard to say no, that’s not the answer, because if you rewrite your applications in C, you might well get 100-fold improvements in efficiency,” she says. “But it will kill your business.”

She explains: “In the old days, I used to write big servers and networking systems in C, where performance was really critical. This was in the ‘90s. All the machines were absolutely terrible. The Internet was terrible. Everything was 1,000 times worse than it is today. You had to work that way, or it wouldn't work at all.”

There have been improvements since then, but “that 1,000-fold increase in the quality of machines has not been used to deliver machine productivity. We've used it to deliver developer productivity.”

Higher-level languages make programs easier to construct, but there are layers of interpretation between the program and the hardware. So less efficient software has soaked up the added hardware power. As the industry adage puts it: “What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.”

It is inefficient, but it’s been necessary, says Currie. Writing in higher-level languages is easier, and that is what has enabled the speed and volume of today’s software development. We couldn’t go back to lower-level languages, even if we tried.

“We just don't have the number of engineers,” she says. “If we were writing everything in C it wouldn't touch the sides. It just takes ages

to write everything in C or Rust.

It’s slow. Most businesses would be killed by doing it this way – and I don't want everybody's business to be killed.”

Code better where it counts Improving code is not straightforward, says Mytton: “It's always more complicated.

We'll leave the simple answers to politicians, the real answers really come down to what you are trying to improve.”

Physics tells us that energy is power multiplied by time, so if you want to reduce the carbon caused by your energy use, you can reduce the power used, or improve the characteristics of the power by moving to clean energy.

“That reduces one part of your equation,” says Mytton. “But the time variable is often what software engineers and programmers will think about. If I reduce the time, by making my code faster, then the amount of energy consumed will be reduced.”

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Of course, this assumes there are no other variables – but there usually are more variables, he says: “To give two examples, memory and CPU are two separate resources. Optimizing those two can be difficult, as you get different trade-offs between them.

“A second example is where you could reduce the time by running the code across 10,000 different servers, but you may have increased the power used. You need to figure out what you're trying to optimize for.”

For most of us, Currie says it’s about optimizing software “where it matters. Where it matters is things that are going to be used by loads and loads and loads of people, because it takes ages to do this stuff.”

As the book puts it: “Don’t waste your time optimizing software that hardly anyone is running. Before you begin, consider how much hardware (servers or devices) and energy (data and CPU) in aggregate an application is likely to cause to be used everywhere it is run. For now, target only what’s operating at scale.”

They go on: “The best application of your effort is always contextspecific, and when it comes to going green, pain does not equal gain.”

The things that need to be optimized are generally the shared tools that underlie everything we do. So most IT departments should be operating as enlightened consumers, demanding that these tools are efficient.

“For most people in an enterprise, it is not about your code, it’s about your platform,” says Currie. “This is really about managing your supply chain. It's about putting pressure on suppliers. Every platform that you're running on needs to be green.

“Take the standard libraries that come with the very common, popular languages. Are those standard libraries optimized? Those standard libraries are used all the time, so it's really worth getting the people who are writing those languages to tune those libraries, rather than just tuning your code that runs on top of those libraries.”

Customer pressure will make platforms “actively great,” she says.

“If the platform is rewritten in Rust, measures and checks itself, and has made itself as efficient as possible, that's much, much more effective than you doing it just for your own stuff.”

Mytton says: “I think the goal of sustainable computing is to make it so that consumers don't have to think about this at all. They can just continue to use all the services that they like, and they are automatically sustainable and have minimal or no impact on the environment.”

The start of the movement The green software movement began as an informal effort, but in the last couple of years has increased its profile. Sami Hussain, a cloud advocate at Microsoft, formed a focus group which in 2021 was launched as the Green Software Foundation, at Microsoft’s Build conference.

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability

“As sustainable software engineers, we believe that everyone has a part to play in the climate solution,” says Hussain. “Sustainable software engineering is inclusive.

Whatever sector, industry, role, technology – there is always something you can do to have an impact.”

Hussain is now Intel’s director of green software, and part-time chair of the Foundation, which operates under the Linux Foundation. It has backing from organizations including Accenture, Avanade, GitHub, UBS, Intel, and Microsoft, and even apparently got the blessing of former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

“The idea was to answer the question: is this a software problem or is it a hardware problem? And the answer is it's both,” says Currie. “But while data centers were addressing it, the software industry really wasn't – because it just wasn't something that was occurring to them.”

The Foundation wants to be a

Turn off stuff that isn't being used. Be lean. Turn off test systems overnight.

Get rid of data, or move it to long-term storage. The biggest win is always do less > Anne Currie Green Software Foundation

grassroots organization, rather than trying to get top-down regulations: “We did talk about whether we should be lobbying governments to put rules in place, but it's not really our skill set. At the moment we are completely focused on just pushing people to be aware, and to measure, rather than getting the law involved.”

The Foundation has produced a report on the state of green software, and the three O’Reilly authors are all members.

Making measurements “A lot of the focus of the Green Software Foundation has been about measurements,” says Currie, “because if you can measure then you can put pressure on your providers and your suppliers.”

The idea is to create a measure that will be called Software Carbon Intensity (SCI), which measures how much energy is used (or how

26 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

much GHG is produced) for a given amount of work.

But it’s difficult. “Watts per byte is a key measurement criterion in the networking industry, but it isn’t in the software industry,” says Currie.

“Because in networking, watts per byte is quite clear, but what is the unit of work when it comes to software?”

The basis of the SCI is a “relatively simple equation, which looks at things like the energy consumed by the software, the embodied emissions of that software, and where that software is actually running,” says Mytton.

The unit of work is a bit less clear: “The functional unit can be something like a user call or an API call, or running a machine learning job.”

Combining these components gives a score, to help understand the overall carbon intensity of software, says Mytton, who is not directly involved in the SCI work: “I believe the goal of that is to be able to look at improvements over time. So you can see how changes to your software architecture or the components, reduce or potentially increase your score. And the long-term goal is to be able to compare different pieces of software – so you can make choices based on the carbon intensity.”

The goal of comparing software with SCI is still a way off, as different vendors define their system boundaries differently – and the SCI measure is still emerging.

The Foundation explains it “is not a total carbon footprint; it’s a rate of carbon emissions for software, such as per minute or per user device, that can serve as an important benchmark to compare the carbon intensity of a software system as it is updated over time; or between similar types of software systems, such as messaging apps or video conferencing solutions.”

Importantly, for SCI to work,

software must be aware of where it is running, what electricity it is causing to be consumed, and the local carbon intensity of that electricity.

The good news is that modern processors from suppliers like Intel and AMD now routinely include tools to report on their energy consumption, but these are still evolving.

Mytton again: “Intel’s tool only works on Intel CPUs, and it’s different if you want to get data from AMD. And so far, as I’m aware, Arm chips don’t have anything available.

Given that more systems are moving to Arm [for reasons of energy efficiency] on mobile, some laptops, and in the data center as well, that’s a problem.”

These measurements are going to be important, because organizations may need to balance efficiency improvements against performance. However, Greg Rivera, VP of product at software intelligence firm Cast says there won’t be many such cases.

“Research from the Green Software Foundation is finding that making your software greener, typically makes it perform better, and cost less, and it makes it more resilient,” he says.

Coders making systems work well might sometimes hit on methods that trade performance and efficiency, however – and that might have an effect on efforts to give users the best experience.

“It can increase the amount of energy used, if you deploy your code very close to your user on a less efficient set of equipment, versus putting it in the middle of nowhere on the very highest efficiency equipment in the highest efficiency data center,” says Mytton.

The cloud might reduce the power, but increase the delay: “You need to figure out these trade-offs: you could increase CPU processing, because you’ve got a faster

processor that can reduce the time.

And memory has an energy cost as well.”

There’s a whole piece of work to do there on the software efficiency of mobile applications, he says.

Phones are built to run efficiently, because the customer needs them to keep operating for a long while between charges, but they don’t always divide software in the same way.

“There is almost a philosophical difference between Android and iOS,” says Mytton. “Android typically wants to do more in the cloud and offloads a lot of things to it, whereas iOS devices are doing more and more on device. That’s partly to do with how Google and Apple think about their infrastructure and where their core competencies lie – and there’s a privacy element behind that.”

Just run it in the right place There’s another very significant added complexity. The same software can have a different carbon footprint at a different time or place, because it is being run on more efficient hardware, or on a server powered by low-carbon electricity.

This observation leads to another major plank of green software.

Software can be made which reduces its power consumption and the emissions it causes, by changing where and when it operates.

“Green software also attempts to shift its operations, and therefore its power draw, to times and places where the available electricity is from low carbon sources like wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, or nuclear,” say the book’s authors.

“Alternatively, it aims to do less at times when the available grid electricity is carbon intensive. For example, it might reduce its quality of service in the middle of a windless night when the only available power is being generated from coal. This is called carbon awareness.”

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability “I’m a huge fan of this,” says Currie. “Google have been working on this for years, and they have done some really interesting stuff.

They’re really, really looking at time shifting. There are jobs that really aren’t all that time-sensitive; things like training a machine learning system. They can be delayed a couple of hours to when the wind’s blowing, or when the sun’s about to come out.”

The practical example Google talks about is the encoding of YouTube videos. “When you upload a video, you want it to be available relatively soon,” says Mytton. “But it doesn’t matter whether it’s half an hour or an hour after you upload it.

Processing and encoding is a onetime job, and they are able to move it to a region with more clean energy.”

Google can do this because owns a lot of data centers, in a lot of regions, and has the data. At present, that data is not yet fully available to customers. “It’s only very recently that all three of the big cloud providers have started allowing customers to get carbon intensity information from the workloads that they’re running,” says Mytton.

Once users have that information, they could re-architect their distributed applications on the fly, to send workloads where the carbon intensity is lowest. But they need accurate and comparable data, and early implementations from the major players tend to be dashboards designed to show their own service in the best light.

“The data just hasn’t been available and generally still isn’t available for the most part,” says Mytton. “This is a particular challenge – and the Green Software Foundation has a working group that is looking into access to data and making that open source.”

If that’s solved, then users can start to do environmental load shifting for real: “By that, I mean things like moving workloads to

regions where there is more clean energy available at a particular time, or choosing how you’re going to schedule jobs based on the availability of clean energy.”

Those managing software – even underlying infrastructure software that is heavily used all the time – very often don’t rate efficiency highly enough.

And beyond that, load shifting could also address other metrics such as water consumption, and the embodied energy in the manufacturing of the hardware.

Cloud vendors “want to make sure that the usage of their resources has a minimal or zero environmental impact, which is why they’re putting all their efforts into trying to be carbon neutral and get to net-zero,” says Mytton. “They tell you all of the good things they’re doing around buying renewable energy and all those kinds of things, rather than necessarily focusing on how to use fewer resources – because those are things that they’re charging you for.”

Of course, moving workloads to follow clean energy supplies would have an effect on the footprint of data centers, because it could leave machines idle, and this would make their embodied carbon becomes more significant in the overall footprint of the system.

“If the servers are not being used all the time, then then they need to last longer,” says Currie. “So if we solve our problem, it’s gonna give you [hardware] guys a problem.

Delaying work is not a no-brainer, it means we have to balance these things.”

In the past, idle servers were a heretical suggestion, as the wisdom of a Moore’s Law world was that assets needed to be used continuously and replaced quickly with more performant versions.

That world is over now. New generations of hardware won’t have the same performance boosts, and older generations will be kept in use for longer – especially as organizations move towards reducing embedded emissions and a circular economy.

Can we make it happen?

Green software creators are serious about changing things, but they will have to work against the instincts of the industry that more is always better.

Big data center operators believe they can carry on with untrammelled growth, if they are carbon neutral.

Mytton notes the Green Software Foundation has a lot of backing from Microsoft, but praises its work: “The GSF has done a good job at being independent from Microsoft cloud products or anything like that, although a lot of Microsoft people are involved. But we’re seeing a lot of competition between the cloud providers now about who can be the greenest.

“Google has been leading on this for quite some time – but I think Microsoft is doing a very good job as well. They’re just looking at different things and they’re on different timelines,” he says, noting that Amazon Web Services is lagging on transparency and environmentalism.

The Green Software movement’s answer to these questions boils down to a simple guideline.

“Turn off stuff that isn’t being used, be lean,” says Currie. “Don’t do things just in case, and turn off test systems overnight.”

“Are you storing more data than you need? “, she asks. “Get rid of it all, or move it to long-term storage like tape. The biggest win is always do less.” 

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Q

Q&A Q&A

Carsten Baumann

Carsten Baumann Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric DCD talks all things sustainability and digitization at the Edge with Carsten Baumann, Director of Strategic Initiatives & Solution Architect at Schneider Electric Rumor has it that by 2030, all the power consumed by Edge deployments combined will dwarf that of hyperscalers. With this in mind, what sustainability metrics should operators of Edge facilities be monitoring?

Based on various research reports, as well as internal projections of data center capacity requirements, we believe that the combined power consumption of all Edge applications will exceed the power capacity demand of all hyperscalers combined.

Consequently, Edge data center capacity needs to be developed in a sustainable and responsible way. With that, it is important that Edge data center operators plan to measure sustainability metrics accordingly. Regardless of where data center capacity is being deployed, the underlying fundamentals between an Edge and hyperscale aren’t much different.

As a result, White Paper 67 (A guide to environmental sustainability metrics

for data centers) serves as a pertinent guide to measure sustainability across five major categories, which include Efficiency, GHG emissions across Scope 1, 2 and 3, Water, Waste, and the impact on the local ecosystem. It also describes the journey any data center operator can undertake, from the beginning to the leading stages of maturity.

With Edge data centers, there seems to be an ‘out of sight’ out of mind attitude, particularly when it comes to unmanned deployments. How can operators gain the visibility they need to monitor, manage, and control their facilities?

The actual deployment of Edge data centers may still require a certain number of local resources, though drastically reduced, as one can easily envision that many forms of Edge deployments are preconfigured, tested, and validated prior to their actual deployments.

This will significantly reduce the

amount of onsite personnel needed and simplify and speed up data centers across a wide range of deployments. With the advent of IoT devices and greater network connectivity, data center operations, not only the IT equipment, but also the underlying physical infrastructure are all becoming digital connected devices. With that, it allows for more effective monitoring, maintenance, and control for frequent remote deployments.

This becomes critically important as specialized operational and maintenance staff will not be easily available in these numerous remote deployments. Using DCIM, such as Ecostruxure IT Expert and IT Advisor, Power Monitor Expert and other digital tools will provide full remote visibility. It will allow users to manage inventory remotely, benchmark performance parameters, provide centralized alarming, device management and conduct health and cyber security assessments.

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>> DCD eBook | Scoping out sustainability The key to decarbonization is to digitize information and electrify operations. Looking at one’s own operations on large and complex data sets tabulated in spreadsheets will only get us so far > Carsten Baumann

challenge a bit more manageable. We can help with a structured approach to identify gaps and allow data center operators to make significant progress on understanding and reporting on their Scope 3 goals. We also recommend that data center operators read WP53. It lays out a clear pathway for inventory for data center scope 3 GHG emissions reporting.

Schneider Electric Is it more difficult to monitor Scope 3 emissions at the Edge?

If so, what sort of unique challenges does this pose?

Monitoring Scope 3 is not more difficult, just because assets live at the Edge. One could say it’s easier for Edge deployments, simply because their size is smaller, resulting in less materials and equipment that needs to be calculated. The process though, is the same.

By definition, Scope 3 emissions in a data center, regardless of its location, are defined as indirect emissions, related to the supply chain and waste.

From a supply chain perspective, data center operators need to review their upstream GHG emissions related to the overall embodied carbon footprint. That means calculating all products and services that lead to building and operating a data center.

First, a comprehensive inventory list needs to be compiled, which should include everything that makes up that data center, such as concrete and other building materials that were used to construct the facility.

Scope 3 emissions also include all the power, cooling, lighting, equipment that is being installed to transform the core and shell into a functional data center. Then, you need to compile an accurate list of all IT assets, including servers, storage, networking, cabling, etc.

Once the inventory has been accounted for, the next step is to obtain embodied carbon data from all vendors, which can be a difficult process at times. Unlike Schneider

Electric, many vendors do not offer full transparency about embodied carbon in their products. Having access to this data is critical to tabulate an accurate Scope 3 GHG emissions profile.

Schneider Electric offers Environmental Product Documents (EPD), which includes a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of its products. As of the end of 2023, about 80 percent of Schneider Electric’s revenue comes from products that have that data available. Here is a sample Product Environmental Profile (PEP) document that provides all relevant information, including recyclability, CO2e emissions, water usage and other relevant information.

Now, this is not a hopeless and unattainable effort. There are online calculators that allow data center operators to fairly and accurately estimate their Scope 3 emissions.

Schneider Electric’s Data Center Lifecycle CO2e Calculator provides users with a good overview of their overall GHG emissions profile, including Scope 3.

These emissions can be filtered in various forms to provide the information necessary. However, this free tool is not being used to provide actual reporting information, but it is a fairly accurate estimation.

Furthermore, new Data Center Infrastructure Monitoring (DCIM) modules will allow the creation of an inventory list and provide reporting on environmental impacts.

Additionally, we recommend establishing a process or strategic plan to help make the Scope 3

With Edge facilities being smaller deployments, does the challenge of ‘greening’ the Edge also present an opportunity for, for instance, the utilization of renewable energy (geography depending)?

The short answer is yes and no.

Traditionally, many data centers procure renewable energy through Power Purchase Agreements (PPA).

PPAs make more sense at a certain size. For example, it would be economically unrealistic to try to source a PPA for a 250kW Edge data center deployment.

However, considering that a particular data center provider may offer tens or hundreds of these assets, the aggregated power consumption could now be relevant enough to acquire renewable energy through a PPA. The renewable energy sources through a PPA are typically geographically disconnected from the actual power consumption of a particular data center.

More recent conversations around sustainable onsite power generation are gaining traction, suggesting substituting traditional diesel generators for backup power or to integrate renewable onsite assets, such as photovoltaic (PV.) Integrating fuel cells and other Distributed Energy Resources (DER) is of great interest too. This concept is much easier for smaller data centers. It is much easier for them to manage a smaller amount of land, or rooftop space required to generate electricity with PV in a meaningful capacity, as well as source and store green hydrogen.

Access to natural gas (NG) or

30 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) is also less complicated. To summarize it all, one could conclude that the smaller the data center asset, the easier it is to find sustainable solutions that are economically feasible and technically doable.

In terms of security concerns at the Edge, how does one achieve sustainable operations, but at the same time does not sacrifice resiliency, or performance for that matter. How do you have it all?

When speaking of security, two categories are most important: physical security and cybersecurity.

Both require special attention for potentially remote Edge data center applications. As fewer personnel, or even no personnel will be onsite, the Edge data center needs to be fully protected. Now, not every Edge application is in the middle of nowhere. As a result, physical asset protection is subject to the deployment and the circumstances surrounding them.

From a cybersecurity perspective, the IT assets and autonomous control and operation of the entire data center infrastructure must be protected. Applications such as Ecostruxure, which offer cloud-connected digital services, inherently comply with the latest cybersecurity standards. Yet, a data center operator needs to develop a cybersecurity strategy, deploy the necessary tools and assets, and maintain their integrity over the life of a deployment.

Do you think a large part of the journey to net-zero, not just at the Edge but in the core data center as well, is a matter of education?

As of late 2023, the majority of data center operations, Edge and core, are early on the journey to net-zero operations. While hyperscalers lead the pack, some have made good progress, while others haven’t even started. Education is certainly a key component.

However, what we have observed is

that the path to success as it relates to a net-zero operation frequently starts with executive commitment.

Once this is established, a strategy and plan need to be developed and implemented. Of course, it also needs to be funded and resources to be committed. Education plays a critical role in this process.

What needs to be measured and monitored is as critical as establishing a baseline to compare any progress. There are useful white papers that can help on the educational side. The Guide to environmental sustainability metrics for data centers outlines five categories (Efficiency, GHG Emissions, Water, Waste, and Local Ecosystem), and a total of 28 key metrics. It also recommends three maturity stages (Beginning, Advanced, and Leading). This allows for an easier entry with only six metrics to start with and then mature throughout the journey.

Furthermore, many organizations simply don’t have the expertise nor the resources available to embark on the journey toward net-zero.

Fortunately, there are external resources available to tap into the complexity of tracking, reporting sustainability efforts, including setting an appropriate and realistic goal. Even purchasing PPAs isn’t as simple as it may sound.

As important as having a trusted partner on that sustainability journey is invaluable, does Schneider help ensure its clients can use the tools to be as self-sufficient/autonomous as possible?

Schneider Electric offers many different resources that can help data center operators on their sustainability journey. A trusted partner can take on many forms such as assessing one’s current operation to improve efficiency, helping to develop a sustainability strategy, sourcing renewable energy, and implementing digital tools to measure and monitor operations including sustainability.

However, depending on the resources and expertise available within data center operators, relying on an external partner can be tailored to meet the needs of a particular client. Today, many of the large data center operators rely on the services that are provided by Schneider Electric’s Sustainability Business on a global basis.

A scientist from Cambridge University recently told DCD that the efficiency gains we can derive from software will eclipse that of what we can achieve from hardware. Would you agree with that statement, or does it really need to be a combination of both?

Software is a critical tool. In different client engagements, we are using AI to optimize data center infrastructure from an operational perspective and reduce maintenance requirements.

Fewer interventions and resources lead to cost savings and gains in operational efficiencies. The combination of those lead to reduced unplanned downtime, which in return improves the bottom line amongst other less tangible benefits.

However, software runs on hardware and the use of hardware can benefit from software.

Talk to us about ‘digitizing’ the Edge. Will digitization be the key to decarbonization – at the Edge and beyond?

The key to decarbonization is to digitize information and electrify operations. Looking at one’s own operations on large and complex data sets tabulated in spreadsheets will only get us so far. More products are becoming digitally connected IoT devices. This allows software tools to perform predictive operations and predictive analytics. Soon, and certainly at the Edge, we will shift to more autonomous operations.

In the context of Edge Data Center applications, digitization is the key to the future of net-zero operations. 

31 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

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with less risk.

EcoStruxure™ for Data Center delivers efficiency, performance, and predictability.

• Rules-based design accelerates the deployment of your micro, row, pod, or modular data centers.

• Lifecycle services drive continuous performance.

• Cloud-based management and services help maintain uptime and manage alarms. #WhatsYourBoldIdea se.com/datacenter

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