Consolidation for Efficiency

Are you aware that the energy consumption by data servers in the EU is comparable to the energy required to operate 8 nuclear power plants? In this day and age in which we seek to reduce the human footprint on the globe, this amount of energy is mind boggling. A necessary focus of our technology and effort should be to reduce this consumption through developing methods of maximizing the efficiency of data servers in high demand networks.

Just such a focus has been endeavoured in the EU. A great model for the success of streamlining the efficiency of data servers is the German city of Bad Soden am Taunus. Bad Soden am Taunus is a small city of approximately 21.500 residents.

Some information needs are larger than others. The administration of large corporations and cities require immense amounts of information. The storage of that information can get costly and taxes our environment in energy usage.

consolidating and virtualizing the server’s infrastructure modernizing the city’s network the use of a virtual desktop infrastructure for the city employees consolidating the printer environment

There are products and techniques in use right now that are achieving great success in doing just that. Let’s have a look at one of them.

Memory options: Memory type- DDR-2 675 MHz (PC3200) registered DIMMs with ECC (128 bit plus ECC databus) Memory Capacity- 16 DDR2 DIMM slots (8 per processor)64GB maximum with 2 CPUS and 4GB DIMMs, standard 32GB

This greatly reduced the amount of space needed for storage by updating old hardware with new products that maximize CPU and overall performance specs. STRATO’s success was the combination of consolidation and energy efficient upgrades.

Many more case studies can be viewed at http://efficient-servers.eu/ for more information and opportunities to support this project as we continue to develop technology toward a more energy efficient IT future.