Metrics for Assessing Flexibility and Sustainability of Next Generation Data Centers

Recent advances in energy efficient data center (DC) design in combination with predictive optimization techniques have led to the emergence of DCs that are able to adapt their operation to their environment. Current approaches towards assessing the operational efficiency of the DCs are mostly static, disregarding the flexibility aspects of modern DCs, also failing to reflect the effects of DC optimization on their sustainability profile. In this context, eight EU research projects have joined forces to present new metrics allowing for the evaluation of DC flexibility as well as of the effects of DC optimization to their general operational efficiency. The present paper presents these metrics along with the verification methodologies employed for the evaluation of the obtained measurements and results.