Wall Street Journal: Running Wild

Servers have gotten much more powerful in recent years. But they've also gotten hungrier.

In 2006, businesses world-wide spent about $55.4 billion on new servers, according to market-research firm IDC. To power and cool those machines, they spent $29 billion, almost half the cost of the equipment itself -- and that number is rising.

Servers have gotten much more powerful in recent years. But they've also gotten hungrier.

In 2006, businesses world-wide spent about $55.4 billion on new servers, according to market-research firm IDC. To power and cool those machines, they spent $29 billion, almost half the cost of the equipment itself -- and that number is rising.

With the average server system, the customer spends "more on power and cooling over its entire life cycle than what they will spend up front," says Michelle Bailey, research vice president at IDC.

Even worse, a lot of that money simply goes to waste. Many companies overcool their data centers -- meaning they run the air conditioning high in the whole center when only a portion of the servers really need the cool air at any time.

As the high cost of running servers drives down sales of the machines, vendors are working on new technologies that help their customers save power and cut costs -- and keep buying computers. Hewlett-Packard Co. has created sensors that can adjust the air conditioning in data centers to focus on the spots that need it most. Sun Microsystems Inc. has released a power-saving microprocessor and is working on a new version that packs in more computing strength. International Business Machines Corp. offers software that monitors servers' power use.

Power consumption has been on the minds of chief information officers and information-technology professionals for years, but analysts say the problem is just now coming to a head. One reason is the sheer volume of servers. In 2006, there were 28 million installed servers sucking power around the world, up from roughly 14 million in 2000, according to IDC.

Making matters worse, servers today use more power than they have in the past, an average 400 watts a year versus around 200 watts annually in 2000. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the utility that supplies power to central and northern California, estimates that data centers in its coverage area use at any given time as much as 500 megawatts, or enough power to light up 300,000 homes.

Paul Perez, vice president of storage, networks and infrastructure for H-P, says cooling is a big part of the problem. On average, for every dollar of electricity spent to power a server in most facilities today, $1.50 is spent to cool that same machine, he says.

"If people are spending a lot more on electricity at the data-center level, most of that cost goes to cooling," Mr. Perez says. He adds that overprovisioning a data center can increase power usage by up to 200%.

H-P plans to introduce a way to attack the overcooling problem: a technology called dynamic smart cooling. Sensors will measure the temperature of servers in a data center versus their respective workload. The sensors then send the measurements to a central computer that adjusts the air-conditioning levels, so that only the hardest-working sections of the data center get more cool air.

H-P says that in its test data center, it reduced the power used to cool 1,000 servers to 75 kilowatts over half an hour from 116 kilowatts. Overall, H-P says, the technology can help a company that overcools cut its cooling-related energy costs by 25% to 40%. H-P says specific pricing for the system won't be available until it makes its debut in the second half of 2007.

IBM, meanwhile, last year released software called Power Executive, which is offered free to existing customers or with any server purchase. The software helps customers monitor how much power they're using per server and limit the amount of power any one server or server group can use at any point.

IBM is also working on a software solution that automatically monitors, detects and takes action against overheated areas of the data center. The technology, which IBM calls Thermal Diagnostics, scans servers for metrics such as temperature and performance. When it senses an approaching heat problem in the data center, it finds the cause and automatically seeks to correct it.

Other vendors, such as Sun, are focusing on cutting power usage by the microprocessor -- one of the biggest energy-eating components in the server. Sun's Niagara chip, introduced in late 2005, uses only 70 watts of power, versus 150 for most microprocessors, according to Sun. The company says a Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 server built with a Niagara processor uses a total of 188 watts or 340 watts, respectively; the average server uses 400 watts, according to IDC.

A new version of the Niagara chip, due later this year, will double the computing power while adding a slim amount of wattage, says Rick Hetherington, distinguished engineer and chief architect for the Niagara processors and systems at Sun.

So far, Niagara machines have been popular among existing Sun customers, says Vernon Turner, general manager for IDC's enterprise-computing group. But, he says, competing power-saving chips have kept Niagara from making big inroads with new customers.

But not all the power-saving advances are coming in the data center. Some vendors are helping their business customers save power in their desktop computers instead.

In September, personal-computer giant Dell Inc. launched the first in a series of desktops designed in part to use less power and save on energy costs.

At no additional cost, the desktops use power-management settings that power down components of the computer -- from the microprocessor to the hard drive to the fans that cool the machine -- when it's not in use. By using the settings, customers can save up to $63 a year per desktop, the company says.

Margaret Franco, product marketing director for business desktops at Dell, says power is an issue of growing concern for Dell customers. "Really, money is the primary issue," she says. "Power is expensive."

Moreover, he says, there's always a bit of a performance hit when you power down parts of the computer that aren't being used. When the user needs to use them, it takes a few seconds to spin them back up again. "If you want the highest performance, you basically want everything always on," he says.

Read the original article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116974913653887953.html?mod=googlenews_wsj