Energy Consumption for Fabric hardware kWh per CU

[searl]

I have a puzzle. I want to find out the energy consumption of Fabric Hardware. In context, I am undertaking a project in sustainability. I am measuring the CUs of a current PBi semantic model (and maybe dataflows) as a baseline and want to improve their use of resources. I am using the Fabric capacity metrics report to do this. I need to convert CUs to KWh but can find no documentation online. The CUs are consumed from the compute resources allocated to our Fabric capacity - so that would be a MS datacentre in the UK. Does anyone have  or know where I can find information as to the energy consumption of a UK MS datacentre server and how many CUs it can support per hour so that I can make an estimation of kWh per CU.

Any help would be hugely appreciated as I am getting stuck online!

[v-linyulu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi, @searl 

Your ability to use Fabric capacity metrics is a commendable skill; however, at present, we have not been able to locate the information you require. However, we can make an estimate based on the information I have gathered so far:

1.Firstly, regarding server energy consumption. A typical server consumes between 500 and 1000 watts per hour. If we take an average of 850 watts, this equates to approximately 20.4 kilowatt-hours per day (850 watts × 24 hours) or around 7,446 kilowatt-hours per year.

 Below is a screenshot of my reference document:

UK Data Centres – Carbon Neutral by 2030? | UKERC | The UK Energy Research Centre

2.Secondly, concerning the number of compute units (CUs) per hour. The number of CUs a server can support varies depending on the workload and configuration. Unfortunately, specific documentation detailing how many CUs correspond to a given server's energy consumption is not readily available. However, you can estimate this based on the server's average performance and the expected workload.

3.Finally, for estimation: assuming a server consumes 20.4 kWh per day and supports 100 CUs, we have:

\text{kWh per CU} = \frac{20.4 \text{ kWh}}{100 \text{ CUs}} = 0.204 \text{ kWh per CU}

Of course, this is my estimated result, and the actual power consumption will need to be calculated by you.

4.Certainly, I have also found the following link for you, which provides detailed information about the energy consumption and water usage of Microsoft data centres, including efficiency metrics such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE):

Measuring energy and water efficiency for Microsoft datacenters - Microsoft Datacenters
 
Of course, if you have any new discoveries or questions, please feel free to get in touch with us.
 

Best Regards,

Leroy Lu

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[searl]

That's brilliant, thank you for answering. I had been considering using an 'average' server energy consumption and CU support capacity if I couldn't find any specific microsoft values and your detailed answer has not only confirmed that but also given me a lot to think about.  Your links are really useful too.

Thank you so much for your help 🙂