Cisco has put up a new video in their “Seminar and Webcast Series” talking about “Energy Efficiency in the Data Center.” It may be produced by Cisco but the key points are pretty much vendor-neutral – starting with the idea that “Green” computing is a political/PR buzzword, and the way enterprises should look at the problem is one of efficiency and of sustainability.
Data center power consumption has more than doubled since 2001; the worry is that the trend will continue on an exponential pattern. This power consumption mainly comes from cooling the servers, rather than powering the servers; and with each 1U server (running 24/7/365) requiring the same amount of energy per year as it would take a Toyota Camry to drive 15,000 miles, energy efficiency is crucial.
Part of the solution is to buy more efficient components that cost more up front but pay money back. Another part of the solution is virtualizing servers, consolidating servers, and decommissioning servers.
They also mentioned using provided utilities to step-down the voltage if the server was underutilized – a trick laptop owners have been doing to get more life out of their batteries on the road. Same concept – if you don’t need all the power, consume less of it.
As far as the network goes, data center consolidation brought on by advances in WAN optimization is a big step towards reducing utility costs. Another step is taking advantage of the movement towards putting tools in the network infrastructure itself rather than as separate appliances – for example, putting SuperAgent network monitoring software (shameless plug) into Cisco’s WAAS.
These are all some common sense solutions and probably not the first time you’ve heard them. But the key point of the video-seminar was that just as we keep harping on the fact that you need to baseline your network performance to ensure that the changes you make to your network are having the desired effect, you also need to baseline your power costs as you make improvements.
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