Having looked at the positives of a credit crunch for data centres, it’s equally important to consider what other implications there are for the industry.
As has been widely reported, utility prices – particularly electricity – are going up. An average 3 bedroomed house is said to use around 4,000 kW hours of electricity per year.
Put in monetary terms, at 9 pence per kilowatt hour, this would cost £360 per year to run.
Data Centres use huge amounts of power, just one rack of equipment (with power and cooling) will average around 42,000 kW hours of electricity in a year.
An article I wanted to highlight to illustrate the concerns about the cost of running data centers, at the same time, how small changes in the way we manage our data centers, in the way we manage the servers, can make real financial differences. Replacing even 10% of the server estate with newer more energy efficient servers or virtual machines could provide an impressive rate of return. Is this why the downturn might present opportunities in virtualization, consolidation and data center consolidation? I don’t mind spending a few million pounds if I can save that in 6 months. Do check it out.
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