Aaron Cohen: Kill a Watt -- Power Meter now Bundled with Try and Buy Program

It's never been easier to cool down your data center.

Did you know that starting today that Sun's Try and Buy program at Sun just got cooler?

It's never been easier to cool down your data center.

Did you know that starting today that Sun's Try and Buy program at Sun just got cooler?  Now Sun is including a Power Meter with your order of a Sun Fire T1000 or Sun Fire T2000 eco-responsible computers (yes, the ones with breakthrough energy-savings and that are eligible for the PG&E Rebate if you are in their region.  This allows you to quickly test your installed servers with your new order to see just how energy efficient it is.  And from that you can easily figure out how much money you're going to be saving your company.  This is the first time IMHO that any vendor is doing something like this.  And from that you could win a server, just buy submittting your results.  

Simply put, how cool is that?  I attached some pictures.  All the details can be found here.

OK, a Few Detail (and more photos) below:

• As part of Sun's Power Meter program, each Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 system shipped as part of the Try and Buy program will be supplied with a free P4400 Kill A Watt power meter from P3 International, supplied by Teledynamics LLP.  (We don't endorse one power meter over another, but believe the more inexpensive ones do a good job of giving you an idea).  This lets customers measure and compare power consumption in their actual datacenter environment.  This one is regularly priced at thirty bucks.  Also - some fine print - since power meters are region-specific this is best for North America use only.

• Sun will also supply Try and Buy customers a guide to demonstrate how to use low cost power meters with the Sun Fire CoolThreads servers.  The quick-start guide to get you started to measure your power measurements is here, though once you get serious you'll want to go here.
  

• Sun also provides a formula to calculate the Performance per Watt metric.

• Divide the performance the server delivers (i.e. simultaneous users, transactions per minute, etc.) and divide by the power consumption reported over the duration of the benchmark test.

• Additionally, by plugging results into Sun's SWaP calculator you can reveal the true level of performance, power and space efficiency of the servers.

Equipment:

• P4400 Power Meter

• 1:3 outlet converter