Finding the Energy Efficiency Balance

The whole point of the focus we're seeing on data center efficiency is because data centers consume so much energy and keep on growing. One of the drivers could be an idea that's been around for awhile: the idea that you centralize all your computing resources and access them through a thin client or browser. It's an idea as old as computing itself.

But aside from the focus on servers, the storage equipment in the data center is not to be overlooked either—all those spinning disks could use some help from solid state based storage.

And while we're at it, let's step up a level higher still. The real issue isn't about just reducing energy consumption in one type of hardware or in one segment; we need to understand the consumption across applications and deliver an array of solutions that collectively has the highest efficiency possible over the entire product lifecycle.

So let's keep our eyes open for opportunities and balance. If we are too aggressive, it may end up costing more ($ or kWh) than is being saved. The flip side, of course, is that we wouldn't be aggressive enough and it wouldn't help as much as it could. We need to find just the right balance.

Michael Sporer, Regional Sales Manager, Micron Technology, Inc.

Comments

[steve]

Interesting post. Do your ideas have impliciations for data servers like the servers Google run to service the huge number of people that need to access their GMAIL 24 hours a day? Are you saying that instead of having spinning harddrives to support these servers (services), that they could implement solid-state storage solutions which would not have to be *using* energy 24 hours a day?

I'm also very much interested in dialogues about small ways each of us can try to reduce our energy consumption needs. I recently posted an entry on my own blog about ways to save energy in the kitchen: http://eplebel.blogspot.com/2007/10/art-of-cooking-efficiently.html