Servers & SUVs: Both Get 15 MPG

Since the time Tim Berners Lee decided to create the web, we have been required to consume power to distribute information. From the servers that store information to the computers we use, we create a constant energy draw. How much power are we really talking about, and are we truly using all of it?

According to Global Action Plan, “Nearly 40 percent of servers are under-utilized by more than 50 percent.” Put another way: Almost half the servers in use are not being used to their fullest capacity, theoretically wasting energy. Can the software that runs these servers be a culprit as well?

Lewis Curtis, infrastructure architect and advisor at Microsoft says “Sloppy code is wasteful. Not only is it slow, error prone, and often not extensible, it usually wastes energy and utilizes unnecessary computational resources.”

Trewin Restorick, director of Global Action Plan said that the average server has roughly the same annual carbon footprint as an SUV doing 15 miles-per-gallon. Restorick also noted that information communication technology accounts for 3 to 4 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

What’s Next

A number of companies are already reducing their impact by shutting down servers while not in use. But, it could be a much brighter future if the power itself came from renewable energy. David Geary designed a direct-current datacenter with the ideal energy-efficient layout. For redundant sources of renewable energy, the design includes:

• A solar panel array
• Wind power
• Zinc flow batteries
• Fuel cells

With bio-diesel or gas hybrid backup generators, this is one of the cheapest ways to operate a datacenter.

Along the same lines, Microsoft designed a modular datacenter powered using fuel cell technology and reducing operating costs with a chiller-free cooling system.

For Next Year

Robert Aldrich, director of datacenter solutions at Cisco, predicts for 2009 that we will see a wealth of energy management applications, dubbing the collective thinking of green datacenter tech into “Green IT 1.0.”

Lewis Curtis also notes that this is the year when businesses will “positively impact the bottom line.” Virtualization and consolidation projects will be on the forefront of green IT projects.

For Now

If you don’t own a datacenter or run an IT department, you still have choices for utilizing green IT applications. One easy way is to find green datacenters through signing up for Host It Green’s mailing list. Also, you could replace your current servers with energy-efficient, low-power systems from Dell, IBM or other participating manufacturers. If you are using a managed host, your provider might already have energy-efficient servers available.