Meta has created a new metric to measure real-time server fleet utilization effectiveness against its carbon emissions.
The new metric adds a kind of depreciation schedule for server hardware’s carbon emissions measured against its utilization.
“We have created the Real Time Infrastructure Accounting for Sustainability (RETINAS) initiative, which seeks to study and understand the impact of server reliability, performance, and operational optimization on Meta’s Scope 3 emissions,” the company said in a blog post announcing the new metric.
The metric is calculated by combining the hardware’s utilization against its useful life over a set timeframe. For example, servers purchased in 2023 with 1,000 units of CO2e Scope 3 emissions, depreciated over a period of useful life of four years, would give 250 tons of CO2e.
The social media firm said the real-time server fleet utilization effectiveness metric enables the company to take action to reduce the emissions associated with the embodied carbon of its data center servers and components.
By optimizing the utilization of its server fleet, the company claimed it could reduce its Scope 3 emissions. Real-time server fleet utilization effectiveness provides a framework for effective measurement and integration of embodied carbon into existing metrics to drive server fleet resource usage decisions.
Combining depreciated Scope 3 emissions with power usage effectiveness (PUE) and hardware usage effectiveness (HUE) metrics allows Meta to standardize measurements along with other fleet health measurements for a defined period of time.
“This metric borrows depreciation concepts from finance and accounting practices and applies them to aspects of server reliability, efficiency, and useful life. The concept of depreciation is used to showcase the expected useful life of acquired assets. This concept also allows for tracking of acquisition and disposition of server resources at fleet scale and is reported on an ongoing basis.”
