Blade Watch

The EPA finalizing Energy Star specs has to be good news for the vendors and end users alike, establishing a base line of best practice or specifications helps vendors consider their server design and relative energy efficiency of their server which I know many are already doing. It will be interesting to see how this moves forward and what developments in industry standards or best practice this brings.

Being able to view information about the energy efficiency of the server might make end users think about what it is they need, and consider how they’re using their IT.

We need not fear Energy Star ratings on the server, the network or the storage, understand that I am not going to change my purchasing, my behaviour overnight. That there may be a reason that I have chosen that platform specifically, just because my server is a B, does not necessarily mean I wont purchase it, there may be specific application requirements, it might cost more to re-write to port the application than it would to power and support this server.  Buying a server is like buying a van, it’s a commodity business transaction, I should be buying whatever server is appropriate for the task, naturally I should be thinking about energy efficiency, support and energy costs, but if it’s a truck I need, a 16 core super fast super size bad boy server I need, then a super fast super size bad boy server it shall be.

Energy ratings can be debated, statements can be made, Dell vs HP, IBM vs Dell etc, but remember how you configure your data center, your infrastructure, the server and the application all affects how the server performs, that you haven’t got the right airflow means the server cooling works harder which uses more power which makes your bills higher. Think big, start of small by all means, energy efficient power supplies, lower voltage memory and processors, SAN storage possibly, but remember the operating system settings, the application code and requirements – can we not shut down when it’s not needed etc?

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