kilowatt meter
 

You can purchase a meter to measure the kilowatts that your servers and such are using. They are pretty inexpensive and can help you determine if you need to take steps to be more energy efficient.

Yes I could see how this could come in handy to help measure the energy that servers are using and to help you start a plan to reduce energy use. And as you say, it is a very inexpensive tool.

Hardware is actually fairly easy. As mentioned, point power measuring devices are plentiful, inexpensive and simple to install. The harder part of managing data center efficiency is getting a handle on energy used for cooling. This is especially challenging when data centers share cooling capacity with other functions in mixed-use buildings.

Ken

Yes these tools can be helpful when coming up with a way to measure energy use before and after implementing new energy efficiency systems. It is true that one of the bigger problems is coming up with energy efficient cooling options.