A Comparative Study of Monitoring Data Center Temperature Through Visualizations in Virtual Reality Versus 2D Screen

Abstract: Due to constantly increasing amount of data, the need for more efficient data center management solutions has increased dramatically. Approximately 40% of the costs for data centers is associated with cooling, making temperature management of data centers vital for data center profitability, performance, and sustainability. Current data center hardware management software lack a visual and contextual approach to data center monitoring, overlooking the hierarchical and spatiotemporal data structures of data center data in its design. This study compared two potential data center temperature visualizations — 3D visualization in virtual reality (VR) and 2D visualization on 2D screen — in terms of time to task completion, accuracy rate, and user satisfaction. Results of a within-subject user study with 13 data center specialists indicated that users perceived three-dimensional data center racks and devices more efficiently in VR than in a 2D visualization, whereas a two-dimensional graph was interpreted more efficiently and accurately on a 2D screen. The user satisfaction of both implemented visualizations scored over 80 in a System Usability Scale (SUS) survey, showing that the implemented visualizations have significant potential to improve data center temperature management.