60 billion kilowatt hours… and counting
12 October 2007I’ve spent quite some time perusing the EPA Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency. Quite frankly, the trends are disturbing. Regardless of whether you believe global warming to be caused by humans or just part of nature’s cycle, the fact is that data centers in the United States are requiring enormous amounts of electricity thus requiring ever more power production. Unless significant changes are made to how data centers operate, this electrical demand will almost double by 2011.
This is bad.
The EPA report outlines a number of steps that can be taken to curtail this anticipated massive increase in power consumption. In fact, the report provides three paths for the future, with the best case scenario resulting in a decrease in power requirements over the next five years. Besides being good for the environment, reducing power consumption also helps organizations save money once initial capital investments in new equipment are taken care of.
Virtualization is one technology that can, in a significant way, help in the efforts to combat the increasing power needs of burgeoning data centers. Read the report for more information as well. It is well thought out and, frankly, a little scary.
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