9 by 9

When I am not traveling, my weekday routine starts like this:

6.10 am: Alarm goes off. I take my phone, check the emails that have come through the night, check Facebook and check how many Instagram likes I've received (I never seem to get any photos over 20 likes). I could say this is the first time I am measuring anything for the day, so let's call this - measurement #1

6.20 am: I go downstairs, turn on the espresso machine, and while it warms up I go and weigh myself. If I've gone down it means I'll have a good day, if I'm up a bit, that usually means my team is going to have a bad day - measurement #2

6.45: I'm out of the house on the way to the gym. I call my guy in Hong Kong to see how he is. 

6.55: I call my guy in India to see how he is.

7.05: I am in the gym, and my first exercise is a HIIT session on the treadmill. I turn on my 'workout app' on my watch - measurement #3

Whilst running I will alternate between 45 seconds jog then a 45 second run - measurement #4

7.25: After HIIT, I skip. Initially, I was thinking there was no way I could do it, as I'd skip like a 6yr old girl. It turns out that whilst I do skip like a 6yr old girl, I enjoy it very much. I will do 1000 skips per session. I have an app for skipping and I monitor the skips I do, and how long it takes me (approx. 8 mins for a 1,000) - measurement #5

7.40: I box for 15 mins. I set a timer and I'll box for 2 minutes, rest for 1 minute and then box again for a further 2 mins - measurement #6

I use the workout phone app again to measure my heart rate to determine calories lost (and to make sure I don't collapse) - measurement #7

8.00: I'll fit in 15 mins of weight training. I'll pick 2 muscle groups and I'll do 10 reps of one exercise and go straight into a further 10 reps of the other exercise for the other muscle group. I measure my progress through an app to help me keep a note of the weight I am lifting - measurement #8

8.25: I'll measure out my protein shake - measurement #8 - before I shower. A really weird habit I have created is I weigh myself again on the gym scales. I find they are broken most times as it claims I am heavier than my scales at home - measurement #9

8.45: I am on my way to work, which is around 10 mins away.

I really searched for a tenth measurement as 10 is a nice round number for a blog headline, but I guess 9 by 9 also has a ring to it.

Do any of you have a similar affliction to me? I was surprised actually how many things I measure and it got me thinking about the number of things we measure in our daily lives and life in general, that we may not be aware we do.

We measure our children- their growth, their development at school; even before they are born we measure their progress through equipment that tells us how healthy they are or when they will be due.

We measure ourselves; our weight, our waist, our strength, our blood count, our cholesterol, all health indicators as to how we are doing.

Measurement gives us the ability to determine the status of something. To compare it to the norm, or what we consider is acceptable. If I didn't weigh myself, I wouldn't know if I was getting to where I want to be (think Tom Hardy - currently shape equals his distant cousin, Oliver). I'm not sure if I'll get there, but like any stretched goal, if you can get close to it, you may end up achieving something satisfactory.

Power measurement in the data center could be one of the most important capacities to measure (and by that rationale, monitor) on a frequent basis. Without power functioning your assets, nothing is going to work. Monitoring the power gives us a heads up if power is behaving itself; it's just as important to be able to know if power is decreasing, just as much as if it's increasing. 

And size is no barrier either, be it the size of your waist or the size of your data center - large or small - there are innovative solutions to ensure you are able to measure, monitor, and manage your energy, be it lung capacity or capacity planning.

Data centers continue to grow and expand, and the human race continues to find ways of making new applications to run within them. We rely on access to the information like never before and that will not be stopping any time soon. The necessity to ensure business continuity through maintaining uptime is a core goal for all data center operations.

As one CIO told me a few months back; "Our top 3 priorities are Availability, Availability, Availability" and he invests all of their spending into ensuring those 3 Goals are achieved.

At Server Technology, we've taken all the hard work out of monitoring your data center power usage with our Sentry Power Manager software, helping over 60,000 customers to reduce downtime, improve power usage and drive efficiency in the data center...So you can spend less time worrying about saving pounds and more time on shedding the pounds!