Interact team | Dec. 5, 2022

What’s the Problem?

We’ve worked with more than 300 customers in the last couple of years, and the one challenge they all face is how to increase the energy efficiency of their data centres. Most of our customers are skilled at implementing energy efficiency measures based on the infrastructure of data centres. However, when it comes to the energy efficiency of the hardware inside these data centres, it’s often seen as a bit of a mystery. Unless our customers are focusing on the energy efficiency of the facility, most of them don’t even know where to start.

This is the reason why we created a simple, straightforward mechanism to help our customers measure the energy efficiency of their server estate.

Start Where You Are

As the IT infrastructure is responsible for 65% of the energy load of data centres on average, it makes sense to tackle hardware energy efficiency if you want to make significant energy reductions.

However, there’s more to energy efficiency than looking at the hardware. Consolidation of server estates, refresh strategies and provisioning new systems are far from straight-forward processes. It is not only the make and model of the server that impacts the server’s energy efficiency, the server’s configuration has the single largest impact. Not only should the age of the machine need to be factored into the decision-making process, but also the components that the server is made up of. In a nutshell, component level changes drive efficiency.

The fact that a per server configuration is what provides Interact’s simple mechanism is what makes it so unique – this is something no one else is looking at.

Interact’s Efficiency Grading

To get started with energy efficiency projects, we provide a grading scale for each individual hardware configuration.

Our grading classifies your server estate from the most performative to the least. All we need from our customers is five pieces of information (number of CPUs, type of CPUs, make and model of server and total RAM). In return, we send you a report grading your servers from A+ (most efficient) to F in transactions per watts.

Our grading report is the only place you’ll get an energy efficiency grade specific to the configuration of the server as well as to the make and model. This grade is the most important piece of information on which to base your decisions. Published results are only based on one particular configuration of the server, which means that Interact’s configuration-specific efficiency metric is simply not available anywhere else.

Grading for Project Management

The simple report enables you, the customer, to concentrate on your worst performing servers. You can choose to decommission them, consolidate data onto more efficient servers or replace them with refurbished servers. This enables you to concentrate on the most impactful projects for your business. This could be identifying prime candidates for decommissioning or reconditioning to improve energy efficiency or identifying servers for product life extension to limit scope 3 carbon emissions. Alternatively, it could be identifying the most beneficial consolidation strategies or even planning a new data centre build, based on the most efficient servers for your business.

It is a relatively small project that delivers significant energy efficiency, carbon reduction and financial wins immediately and with no compromise to data security.

Your Digital Transformation Strategy

Interact also provide consultancy packages for data centre optimisation and ultimately for digital transformation.

We can help you plan projects that have highest impact for your business – to reduce scope 2 and 3 CO2 emissions, reduce total cost of ownership, decrease number of facilities, increase available space or optimise density within the racks.

Building New

Whether managing a legacy facility or planning a new build, data centre managers will soon have to provide figures on how efficient the hardware they are running is.

Our grading plays a useful role for new data centres because it allows management to identify the most efficient make, model and configuration for the particular workload they are running.

It enables customers to get a snapshot of their server estate in terms of energy efficiency even if they have little knowledge of the hardware.

The result? Whether colocation or enterprise, data centres using the Interact solution can identify millions in cost savings and begin seeing the benefit of this from day one.

Enterprise Solutions

We have also built a custom-built API for larger enterprise businesses or DCIMs, that allows us to directly integrate with your DCIM, CMBD, ITAM software and provides real-time grading without any need to be on premise . We offer this as an annual licence.

To find out more about Interact’s solutions, get in touch.