The average data center uses the equivalent of about 2 tons of coal (or 80 barrels of oil) per day; a datacenter with 2,500 servers uses enough electricity in a month to power 420,000 homes for a year. A 30,000 square foot data center with 1,000 racks needs $4.2 million a year to power and cool the computing processing power you are using (including maintenance and amortisation costs).
Those figures are from HP, Sun, the Carbon Trust and Forrester Research, and make disturbing reading.
The result the of last example would also generate 44,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere; in the EU you can offset that using the Emissions Trading Scheme, but it would cost you an additional 700,000 Euros to do so.
CFLs provide the same amount of brightness as a standard incandescent bulb, just use less energy - for example a CFL of 15W is equivalent to an incandescent of 60W in terms of brightness, it just uses a quarter of the energy.
CFLs provide the same amount of brightness as a standard incandescent bulb, just use less energy - for example a CFL of 15W is equivalent to an incandescent of 60W in terms of brightness, it just uses a quarter of the energy.
There are three main approaches to lowering the power requirements of your computing equipment:
Power-saving equipment
The Sun Niagara T1 CPU, Intel's Core Duo and Core 2 Duo series, VIAs Eden/C7 CPUs, IBMsX3 chipset and AMDs Cool'N'Quiet technology all aim to provide the same processing power, while using significantly less electrical power in the process.
The chips use different technologies - the T1 uses a high number of cores and execution units with a lower speed to provide equivalent power, Intel and AMD uses a variety of power switching and speed stepping technology to lower the overall power requirements, particularly effective in the Opteron CPU used in many servers. IBM's X3 uses the better conductivity of copper and Silicone-on-insulator (SoI) technology to get better power usage out of their CPUs and chipsets.
There are three main approaches to lowering the power requirements of your computing equipment:
Power-saving equipment
The Sun Niagara T1 CPU, Intel's Core Duo and Core 2 Duo series, VIAs Eden/C7 CPUs, IBMsX3 chipset and AMDs Cool'N'Quiet technology all aim to provide the same processing power, while using significantly less electrical power in the process.
The chips use different technologies - the T1 uses a high number of cores and execution units with a lower speed to provide equivalent power, Intel and AMD uses a variety of power switching and speed stepping technology to lower the overall power requirements, particularly effective in the Opteron CPU used in many servers. IBM's X3 uses the better conductivity of copper and Silicone-on-insulator (SoI) technology to get better power usage out of their CPUs and chipsets.
This week, I'm going to be looking at issues of power consumption, techniques for reducing your power usage, and way of adjusting how you use, pay for and supply the power you need.
We'll start with a straightforward question:
Worried about power consumption in your datacenter?
There's a good rundown of the 6 things you can do now to fight power and cooling problems. There are some common tips here, but the article also mentioned the approach by many manufacturers to try and lower the power consumption of their CPUs and platforms, rather than simply relying on changing the way you use and deploy your computing power.
This week, I'm going to be looking at issues of power consumption, techniques for reducing your power usage, and way of adjusting how you use, pay for and supply the power you need.
We'll start with a straightforward question:
Worried about power consumption in your datacenter?
There's a good rundown of the 6 things you can do now to fight power and cooling problems. There are some common tips here, but the article also mentioned the approach by many manufacturers to try and lower the power consumption of their CPUs and platforms, rather than simply relying on changing the way you use and deploy your computing power.
Repairing those patches on your lawn can be a fun and rewarding experience. Putting patches on trousers can be a trend setting - or breaking -experience. Some may enjoy the process of patching up their networking to get the best out of their network hardware and infrastructure, but few people I know enjoy patching their computers.
Why do we hate it so?
Well for one, patching can cause more problems than it solves. Untested patches cause faults, and having incompatible patches on different machines can cause interoperability and stability issues. Even just applying patches effectively is problematic. Failing to commit a patch can be just as bad when a virus or problem hits.
Repairing those patches on your lawn can be a fun and rewarding experience. Putting patches on trousers can be a trend setting - or breaking -experience. Some may enjoy the process of patching up their networking to get the best out of their network hardware and infrastructure, but few people I know enjoy patching their computers.
Why do we hate it so?
Well for one, patching can cause more problems than it solves. Untested patches cause faults, and having incompatible patches on different machines can cause interoperability and stability issues. Even just applying patches effectively is problematic. Failing to commit a patch can be just as bad when a virus or problem hits.
One of the biggest problems for the current crop of gadgets, as outlined in The Digital Camera Fights for Survival, is that to keep people buying the gadgets, you have to continue giving people reasons to do so.
For example, I've been using my mobile phone for four years - why didn't I upgrade? Because I couldn't see a reason to do so. Even now, the only reason I upgraded was because my original phone was going wrong. Hardly a compelling reason for everybody. The same is true of Digital Cameras. My old one was 3 years old before I replaced it recently, and I can't see me changing it any time soon.