How Much Does It Cost to Power One Rack in a Data Center?

Today’s organizations face an unending stream of requests for IT resource capacity to store and process the data and applications necessary to support innovative technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. This has a massive impact on modern data center environments and drives their ever-increasing complexity and density.

Although technological advancements in intelligent rack PDUs and compute devices often provide greater efficiency, the energy cost to power a single server rack in a data center in the US can be as high as almost $30,000 a year depending on its configuration. In a data center with 100 cabinets, the cost to power those racks each year can be nearly $3 million. As such, data center professionals need to ensure that they are properly monitoring energy consumption and efficiently managing capacity.

The table below provides the average annual cost to power a single rack in a data center in the US for a variety of rack PDU capacity and rack input options.

Try the "What Does It Cost to Power a Data Center Rack?" Calculator

Our "What Does It Cost to Power a Data Center Rack?" calculator is a valuable tool that can help you identify your power costs and estimate your potential return-on-investment with Sunbird's Auto Power Budget feature that automatically calculates an accurate power budget number for each make and model instance of a device based upon the actual measured load of that device in your environment running your applications.

Try the calculator to learn:

• Your power capacity per rack
• Your total annual power cost at 100% usage charge
• Your annual power cost per rack at 100% usage charge
• Your total stranded power
• Your stranded power per rack
• How many racks' worth of stranded power you have
• The value of stranded power you can find and use with Sunbird's Auto Power Budget feature
• The saved cost of new server-ready racks with Sunbird's Auto Power Budget feature

Improve Energy Efficiency with DCIM Software

By following data center management best practices and leveraging Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, you can reduce costs, improve uptime, and comply with corporate sustainability and energy efficiency initiatives.

DCIM software enables you to:

• Monitor data center energy consumption. Used in combination with intelligent rack PDUs and other smart devices, DCIM software allows you to collect real-time power data down to the outlet level as well as environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. This data can be stored, trended, and reported on over long periods of time, and you can set thresholds on collected data to be alerted if consumption reaches warning or critical levels of capacity.

• Find and eliminate stranded capacity. DCIM software with an Auto Power Budget feature leverages machine learning algorithms to automatically calculate power budget profiles for every compute device instance in your data center. Auto Power Budget greatly improves utilization of resources by enabling you to use more of your existing capacity and defer capital expenditures.

• Report on data center KPIs. DCIM enables data-driven decision-making for smarter, more effective data center management. Use DCIM software to automatically calculate KPIs such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and display real-time data in zero-configuration dashboard widgets and reports.

• Consolidate and virtualize compute resources. Reduce energy consumption by reducing the amount of physical hardware you have via server virtualization and consolidation. With DCIM software, track where your applications are located, how much of your physical space and assets is utilized, and how your capacity is allocated to virtual machines versus physical hosts.

• Efficiently design your data center. An efficiently designed data center is the foundation to decreasing energy consumption. Create your own data center floor maps in DCIM software and account for hot/cold aisle containment, floor PDUs, CRACs, perforated tiles, and ventilation before the physical build out to ensure you have adequate space, power, and network capacity for your equipment.

• Drive energy efficient behaviors. Encourage your internal or external customers to practice energy efficient behaviors by charging them back for their energy consumption. DCIM software takes the data collected in your environment and displays it in billback reports by customer, data center, or even rack.

It’s expensive to power data center racks. Leverage a second-generation DCIM solution to get the most out of your existing capacity while maximizing uptime.

Want to see for yourself how Sunbird’s DCIM software can help you manage your data center? Test drive Sunbird’s award-winning DCIM today.