Authored By: Tim George, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, VMware
The latest release of VMware Aria Operations brings in some great capabilities for those looking to run a greener cloud. A few releases ago, we introduced the calculation of a “Green Score”. This is a calculated metric that can set the standards for our sustainability goals. It was an overall benchmark that takes into consideration our clean demand, lean operations, and green supply. Now, that score can be taken even further. We can use physical data centers to break down the Green Score to get a result in each of our data centers. Let’s take a brief look at each of these pieces to get a feel for how the new features work.
Green Score
The VMware Green Score is used to measure sustainability in digital operations through data center virtualization. The VMware Green score comprises multiple parameters for effective measurement of the score. Virtualization plays a crucial role in optimizing resource utilization, helping reduce hardware footprints in the data centers and further enabling savings in power consumption and floor space. This improves the overall efficiency and curbs carbon emissions resulting from IT infrastructure and operations. The score is based on five crucial aspects that contribute toward a green data center and makes certain calculated assumptions, based on deep research, with respect to the weightage of each. The five components and their respective weighting towards the overall score is as follows:
- Workload Efficiency – Contributes to 22.5% weightage Efficiency = Non Wastage / (Wastage + Non Wastage)
- Resource Utilization – Contributes to 12.5% weightage based on the utilization of hardware from the absolute capacity without considering buffers and HA
- Virtualization – Contributes to 15% weightage
- Power Source – Contributes to 37.5% weightage – scoring based on the carbon intensity of the power source used
- Hardware Efficiency – Contributes to 12.5% weightage, based on the fact that newer generation hardware will be more energy efficient.
From the Launchpad, we can see our organizational Green Score, power consumption, carbon footprint, and environmental impact, as well as the trend of our score.
Physical Data Centers
We have also introduced the ability to set up physical data centers. We can get to this page from the administration tab.
From here we can edit existing physical data centers to add new cloud accounts or add new data centers in order to distinguish them from each other, around the world. To add a new physical data center, click add from this screen, choose the cloud accounts you wish to be included, name the data center, and enter a location on the map.
Green Score Drill-Down
To get our overall organizational Green Score, there is nothing special we need to do. Once our cloud accounts are set up, the Green Score is calculated. We can see the score along with a plethora of other metrics in the out-of-the-box dashboards under “Sustainability”, but what if we want to see how green our data center is in Virginia vs our data center in Washington? This is where setting our physical data centers comes into play with our Green Score.
There is one final step before we can truly see how each of our data centers stack up against one another. We need to configure the Green Score calculation for each of our physical locations. We might have different levels of virtualization, different power sources, or different hardware at each location that needs to be set first. Each of these parameters will factor into the calculation of our Green Score as well as the carbon footprint.
Once we have configured the data for our virtualization ratio, power sources, and hardware age, a new calculation for each location’s Green Score will begin. This process takes a few minutes and then we can go back to the Sustainability page from the Launchpad and see how each physical data center stacks up against the rest.
Once we get back to the Sustainability section, we can see a map with all of the locations we just set up. If nothing is selected, the overall organizational Green Score will be displayed. However, we can now click on any location that has been configured and drill down to see individual Green Scores along with those we might not have configured yet.
This new feature will help us determine which physical data centers are consuming the most/least power, has the highest/lowest carbon footprint, and the data center that has the most/least impact on the environment. This information can empower us to make the decisions necessary to run the greenest clouds possible! Check out the Release Notes for more information on the latest releases and our TechZone page to learn more about VMware Aria Operations.
