Sustainability Overview

As networks scale up exponentially to meet the rising bandwidth demands, energy consumption also goes up at a similar pace, substantially increasing the power required to run the networks uninterrupted. This not only increases the enterprises' spending on power requirements, it also contributes to global carbon footprint. So, organizations set goals for optimizing power consumption and for reducing carbon emissions. Access to real-time power and emission data and recommendations to optimize power consumption are helpful in planning network upgrades, while complying with organization's sustainability goals.

Measures such as identifying and resolving power-related anomalies in the network and shutting down unused or underutilized devices or components help conserve power. This in turn supports the transition from an "always-on" model to an "on-demand" model. That is, by turning off devices or their components during off-peak periods that consume less bandwidth, you can save power. This in turn helps reduce both power consumption and carbon intensity.

Data Center Assurance provides you actionable insights that enable you to conserve power and monitor GHG emissions. The sustainability dashboard provides real-time visibility into how the devices in the network are consuming power. The sustainability features in Data Center Assurance provide granular visibility into the power consumption pattern of devices and their components, and metrics on which devices or components are underutilized or are in idle state. You can shut down such devices or components without impacting network traffic.

The power forecast feature predicts energy requirement based on historical data and the cost for the same. In addition, it forecasts GHG emissions based on the power consumed. Both these features come in handy when you plan power budgeting or when you consider an upgrade or replacement of a device in the network. You can use these data for preparing sustainability report for the organization as well.

The sustainability feature also enables faster troubleshooting of power-related anomalies in the network. For example, when power fluctuation occurs in a network, you can easily identify the devices that are causing issues. From the top power consuming devices, you can identify the device that is causing spikes in power consumption, and address the issue before it leads to an outage.

In summary, the sustainability feature in Data Center Assurance provides these capabilities:

• Observability—Enables you to monitor the energy and thermal profile, track GHG emission and power cost, and identify the top power consuming sites and devices through easy-to-use tables, charts and graphs.

• Insights on Sustainability Metrics—Provides trends and AI-generated forecasts based on historical data, and metrics for SBTi compliance reports.

• Energy Optimization—Provides recommendations to shut down unused or underutilized resources on the network to optimize power consumption.

The Data Center Assurance dashboard provides a high-level view of the sustainability data for the entire organization. To view detailed insights for the organization, site, or device, click Energy from the main menu and select the organization, site, or device from the list. Figure 1 displays sustainability insights for an organization in DC Assurance.

To receive sustainability insights from the network, you must enable sustainability feature on the Organization > Settings page by specifying the power cost, carbon intensity, and the port threshold values.