Server energy footprint grows

Added by The Editor, about 1 month ago.

Leave Comment

The amount of energy used by servers and data centres continues to grow at a rapid rate, according to new research from IDC.

The report, which analyses the energy footprint of the server infrastructure in Western Europe, shows that the energy used by servers and data centres grew 13 per cent between 2006 and 2007.

Servers alone used 16.3 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity throughout the region in 2007 - equivalent to twice the annual power required to operate every street light and traffic signal in the UK.

More worryingly, IDC estimates that consumption levels at the data centre were even higher, exceeding 40TWh in 2007 and expected to grow to more than 42TWh in 2008.

As well as the environmental aspects, the report points out that most organisations do not grasp how much money they are wasting through inefficient server usage and poorly designed data centre infrastructures.

"What few companies seem to grasp is the extent to which energy will impact the IT infrastructure bottom line in the next year. At a cost of €10.71 per kWh, electricity is a large source of costs. Last year,

€1.6 billion was spent on powering servers throughout Western Europe, which translated into €4.4 billion for entire data centres," said Nathaniel Martinez, program director for European Enterprise Servers at IDC.

He added: "Unless a drastic change in products and company practices occurs, things will not get any better in the future. In 2012, we could face a scenario where for every euro spent on buying new servers, more than €0.80 will be needed to power the existing data centre infrastructure."