[LINK] Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image - NYTimes.com

[Tom Worthington]

On 26/09/12 10:04, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:

> The idea that servers that are more fully utilised are more efficient
> is simplistic and may be wrong. ...

In general, a more fully utilised server is more efficient in its use of
power. It is difficult to throttle a server down to save power and still 
have it ready to meet demand quickly. You can slow the CPUs a bit, but 
the rest of the server keep running at full power.


On 26/09/12 11:10, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:

> Third part data centre operators have a conflict of interest ...

No, one of the measures used to rate data centres is power efficiency.
If the data centre owner crams in too much equipment, the power
efficiency drops.

The way this efficiency is rated at present is crude but such measures
exist, such as Data centre infrastructure efficiency (DCiE):

DCiE = (Main IT equipment energy consumption)/(Total facility energy
consumption) * 100

Of course if the customer doest care about efficiency, then the data
centre owner is not going to care either. But government agencies and
large companies ask about efficiency.

More at: http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/centres.shtml


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation

Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/