Today I’m proud to announce the iMasons Data Center Performance Index (DCPI), a new global rating system that measures the actual performance of colocation data centers. The index applies letter grades to a data center across three categories – Availability, Efficiency and Environmental. The intent is to give colocation customers a way to see how a datacenter performs over time, helping them make more informed decisions. It also provides a common mechanism for providers to showcase their performance to the industry. You can download the DCPI paper here.

DCPI Availability measures the uptime of the data center’s shared power, cooling and dedicated fiber pathways in an availability zone. Any simultaneous loss in these systems that causes disruption to IT services, is considered and incident. Grades are applied to the number of incidents and the seconds of downtime. Whichever is greater.

DCPI Efficiency measures the average PUE and WUE performance of a data center availability zone based on IT load in specific climate zones. Grades are applied to the efficiency achieved in that climate zone.

DCPI Environment measures the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions of a data center availability zone over a given year. Grades are applied to the carbon reduction values achieved in that availability zone.

We have held three working sessions in California, Colorado, and New York to tune the DCPI rating system. I am very grateful to the more than 150 members who spent quality time discussing and debating the details and merits of the new system. We still have more work to complete, but we have made tremendous progress in a very short time. 

If you would like to participate in the continued development of DCPI, you can join us at our upcoming members only Local Edition meetings in Phoenix, Monaco and San Francisco.

You can join Infrastructure Masons here.