1E’s Server Energy and Efficiency Report

In conjunction with its release of NightWatchman Server Edition, IT power management company 1e published the findings of a survey it conducted with the Alliance to Save Energy about energy use from servers.

From the introduction to the report:

Each server costs several thousand dollars to run every year; it’s not just hardware; each needs software licences, operational support and of course energy. Wouldn’t you like each and every one to be useful? The chances are that one sixth of your servers are unproductive for your organization, one of the startling findings from this study amongst many others. The potential savings are large, globally $3.8 billion in energy costs alone and $24.7 billion in the total cost of running non-productive servers. …

The trends toward internet based services, cloud computing and more and more data being saved centrally mean server numbers are increasing, as is electricity use and therefore carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, U.S. data centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity in 2006, representing 1.5% of all U.S. electricity consumption and double the amount consumed in 2000v. We can no longer deny that server energy consumption is a problem, and one that’s only getting worse. The good news is that organizations want to do something about it.

In partnership with the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE), 1E commissioned independent research into the awareness and behavior of server administrators in the world’s largest companies. Overall, the survey found that IT staff tasked with server management know that a significant proportion of their servers are not doing any useful work but they do not have the tools to identify them. They overwhelmingly want better knowledge of power utilization and efficiency of their server estates. Surprisingly the majority are also concerned with or doing something about virtual server sprawl, an uncontrolled rise in virtual servers, which in turn increases overall IT costs.