You don’t have to be an advocate for combating global warming to care about how much energy the systems in your data center consume. The simple profit-and-loss economics of running your business will tell you all you need to know: When your computers use less energy, they cost less to operate which increases your company’s profits. It does not get any simpler than that.
However, the progress of technology has worked against that basic model. While today’s computers offer higher processor speeds and more memory at a lower acquisition cost than ever before, they cost much more to operate. While newer server-class computers are smaller and more powerful than previous models, the increased processing power, larger memory size, higher storage capacity, and other peripheral devices require more electricity to operate. In addition, the smaller size and greater power of recent server-lass computers have enabled IT managers to easily fulfill escalating user access demand by increasing the number of servers housed in their data centers.
The power consumption problem is not confined to applications servers. Advances in system and network design have allowed mass storage to exist within the network domain; this storage is external to the servers and PCs they service. These storage devices also rely on today’s very powerful, but energy-consuming and heat-producing processors and disk drives. The energy problem is further compounded by network gateway and firewall devices, such as routers, switches and security appliances of various types, all which contain components using newer and higher energy-consuming technologies.
Energy consumption and heat generation are not new problems for the computer industry. Processor, memory, and disk drive designers and engineers have consistently found methods to reduce the energy requirements and heat dissipation characteristics of their products, even as the computing performance and capacity points have increased. However, these energy advancements have been off-set by accelerating user demand, as well as heightened security needs and network complexity, causing dramatic increases in the demand for computer processing power and storage capacity, which in turn drives the need for more energy.
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