The Green Grid has developed two interesting standards, one now in final comment stage and one TGG sanctioned. The propose Open Standard for Data Center Availability (OSDA) is now at final draft form awaiting for formal adoption, while the Performance Indicator (PI) metric is adoption-ready. Both will be featured at DCD Webscale in San Jose on July 19-20.

TGG’s claim for the OSDA is that it will modernize current data center facilities-level uptime availability standards. “TGG took on this challenge,” says Lex Coors, Amsterdam headquartered Interxion’s DC tech and engineering chief, “because today’s data centers require a dynamic availability model that allows IT to continue to innovate in areas like design and power sources, while simultaneously driving new levels of sustainability and energy efficiency.”

Schneider’s Ivonne Valdes, VP, cloud and service-provider will join with Lex to chat up the OSDA.

Dealing with unplanned outage
In the vein of what keeps data center owners awake at night is capacity constraint and unplanned outage and downtime. TGG has introduced both a white paper and a tool called the Performance Indicator (PI) as a way to “holistically assess and visualize cooling performance,” says David Wang, infrastructure engineering principal at Microsoft. “By addressing availability, capacity and sustainability simultaneous, PI is intended to help maintain safe, suitable IT thermal operations without losing sight of efficiency.” TGG PI provides a predictive calculation and visualization method for continuous cooling performance improvement. Joining Wang on the TGG panel will be Future Facilities CTO, Mark Seymour, and ABB data center strategist Marina Thiry.

“These two new efforts by TGG demonstrate its continued leadership in the resource efficiency and sustainability of data center infrastructure,” says Bruce Taylor, conference chair of DCD Webscale. “with the IT demand growth of hyperscale and cloud services, operators need industry-wide open, collaborative movements like this to help them meet the challenges of both operational sustainability and the requirement for eco-sustainability. Those are knowledge content constants for all DCD conferences.”