An Anthology on Server Power Consumption

Wikipedia defines anthology thus:

An anthology, literally “a garland” or “collection of flowers”, is a collection of literary works, originally of poems, but its usage has broadened to be applied to collections of short stories and comic strips.

With due apologies to literature, here is an anthology of sorts – a collection of articles on the topic of server power consumption and some (selective) pieces of information pulled out from each.

Data Centers’ Growing Power Demands: A new report quantifies the electricity consumption of servers, revealing a startling trend. (By Kate Greene, Feb 15, 2007 – MIT Technology Review)

• In 2005, servers and their auxiliary equipment accounted for an estimated 1.2 percent of all power consumption in the United States and 0.8 percent worldwideâ?¦
• â?¦ overall electricity used by servers–computers that make up the networks of organizations, from small businesses to giant financial institutions–doubled between 2000 and 2005.
• â?¦ server power consumption in the United States was the equivalent of that of the entire state of Mississippi in 2005; that year, 20 other states used less power.

Power could cost more than servers, Google warns: Computer equipment power consumption could “spiral out of control,” affecting affordability of computing, Google engineer says. (By Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com, December 9, 2005)

• Fears about energy consumption and heat dissipation first became a common topic among chipmakers around 1999â?¦ coming up with solutions, while providing customers with higher performance, has proved difficultâ?¦
• Over the last three generations of Google’s computing infrastructure, performance has nearly doubled â?¦ But because performance per watt remained nearly unchanged, that means electricity consumption has also almost doubled.

Server Power Draw Overstated, But Still Considerable (By Andy Patrizio, internetnews.com, February 16, 2007)

• Almost all of this growth is attributable to growth in the number of servers, particularly volume servers, with only a small percentage associated with increases in the power use per unit.
• Most servers run at around five to 10 percent load, which is driving the trend toward virtualization â?¦ if you can take 500 servers running at five percent capacity and consolidate to 100 servers running at 25 percent, then you can get some savings there.

Note that virtualization and consolidation are just two possible solutions for improving performance and reducing power consumption. There are few others out there.

Implementing these makes business sense for organizations that are running their own data centers since it can be translated into real cost savings over time.

Added bonus: Saving electricity and helping the world. :)

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