By Gemma Simpson, 28 September 2006 16:00
NEWS
With server rooms growing and electricity costs rising, IT departments need to embrace energy efficiency to save the planet and money, according to Gartner.
The analyst house names high-density servers as the main culprits for excessive energy consumption as they use between 10 and 15 times more power than traditional server environments.
Even worse, the energy costs double when you factor in all other aspects of a standard data centre - including the air-con, storage devices and uninterrupted power supplies - compared with the energy cost of the servers alone.
This will have a major impact on IT budgets in future, said Gartner, with energy costs rising from less than 10 per cent of the budget to more than half within the next few years.
But most CIOs will not be able to convince the board to simply increase budgets.
And the potential to overspend on power will impact on the IT department's ability to grow and meet business needs in the future, Gartner predicts.
Instead IT leaders must adopt 'greener' approaches to data centres. The analyst advises CIOs to optimise use of existing equipment to delay moves to the high density systems that eat up the most power.
Vendors also have an important role to play in developing more energy efficient kit - though Gartner admits much of the technology to limit power consumption will not be available within the next five years.
Comments
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1. Richard Barrington
Too Little too late...Don't Gartner analysts read the press? We've been 'banging' on about this for at least 12 months and contrary to their reports along with the likes of AMD are producing low carbon servers that are massively more energy efficient and performant!!
Come on get with the programme!!!!
2. Mad Cabbage
So high density (aka blade servers) are to blame? Despite having fewer power supplies and generating less heat than their rack-mount cousins?
The figures of 10-15% greater power consumption do not mention the fact that you get a double the number of servers in the same space...("double the no of servers for only a 15% power increase (as opposed to a 100% increase) - I'll buy that!")
...And, as the previous poster says, AMD have been pushing low-energy servers for a couple of years, and even Intel is do getting in on the act!
I can only guess that this paper was a holiday project for an intern...