Monitoring data center energy use at an aggregated level, as well as at the system level can provide data center owners and operators with critical insight that in turn, can help them reduce energy use. This report focuses on how monitoring data center servers can reduce energy consumption and enable more cost-effective operation.
More specifically, this report reviews opportunities to leverage existing internal (onboard) server sensors for monitoring rather than external sensors for physical parameters such as intake air temperature and input power. Such an approach has many benefits for data center management, including higher data resolution and lower overall costs. Accessing onboard sensors is potentially a disruptive technology since hundreds of servers can be monitored without any external measurement equipment.