Data Center Energy Use Skyrockets
According to a study authored by a leading energy-efficiency expert, U.S. data centers are consuming twice as much energy as they were only five years ago.
Randy Allen, corporate vice president in the Server and Workstation Division at AMD, revealed the findings of the study at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit in New York last week.
Authored by Jonathan Koomey, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and consulting professor at Stanford University, the study concluded that the industry needs to step up efforts to increase energy-efficient computing.
“This is no surprise to anybody,” said Gordon Haff, a senior analyst at Illuminata. “But how energetically you address power consumption in your data center depends on your individual circumstances.”
The power consumption issue is a larger priority for corporations in New York or California with heavy server investments than it is for midsize manufacturing companies in the Midwest with fewer computing demands, he added.
By the Numbers
With that said, Haff stressed that the issue should be on the radar screens of all companies that use significant computing resources. The study found that in 2005, total data center electricity consumption in the U.S., including servers, cooling, and auxiliary equipment, was approximately 45 billion kWh.
That resulted in total utility bills amounting to $2.7 billion, with total data center power and electricity consumption for the world estimated to cost $7.2 billion annually.
Allen called the study results a wake-up call for the I.T. industry, as well as global business, government and policy leaders. “This study demonstrates that unchecked demand for data center energy use can constrain growth and present real business challenges,” he said.
Allen also noted that new generations of energy-efficient servers are now able to help provide I.T. departments with a path to reduce their energy consumption while still achieving the performance they require.
CIO Impact
Haff said…
