The Power in IT's Struggle
All eyes are still on Washington as we watch the aftermath of the power struggles over the debt ceiling extension. But there’s a quieter power struggle unfolding in the CIO’s office, and the energy-hungry data center may be on the endangered species list.
Sustainability has been moving steadily up the corporate agenda, driven by public awareness, shareholder activism, and pressure from employees. Gartner says that 60 percent of CEOs of major North American and Western enterprises will make improving sustainability a priority by 2015.
“Sustainability is no longer a ‘soft’ and tangential aspect to organization performance,” said Simon Mingay, research vice president at Gartner. “A sustainable approach to business activities is generating tangible business benefits for organizations today, through a combination of operational efficiencies and market growth opportunities.” (Gartner news release)
Corporate data centers are a great place to look for power savings. According to a report by the EPA, data centers consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006, about 1.5% of total US consumption. That is more than the electricity consumed by color televisions, and is equal to the amount consumed by 5.8 million average US homes. The real problem is that data center power consumption is rising faster than overall demand.
“Under current efficiency trends, national energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double again in another five years (i.e., by 2011) to more than 100 billion kWh (Figure ES-1), representing a $7.4 billion annual electricity cost. The peak load on the power grid from these servers and data centers is currently estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants. If current trends continue, this demand would rise to 12 GW by 2011, which would require an additional 10 power plants.”
No one crunches the numbers better than Kenneth Brill of The Uptime Institute. Brill argues that spending on power per $1000 spent on CPUs is skyrocketing:
Note that as chips consume more power they also dissipate more heat, which in turn requires more cooling. Brill also believes that the power demands of microprocessors are on a collision course with Moore’s law.
Compounding the issue is the rapid expansion of mass consumer services like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, driven by growing membership, usage, and access devices. Every comment, like, and tweet has a carbon footprint.
Many of these services are cooperating in an initiative called The Green Grid, which is bringing together vendors and data center operators to establish efficiency measures and share best practices. (Disclosure: salesforce.com, my employer, is a member; only publicly available material is referenced here). The results are sometimes challenging to conventional wisdom. For example, spare capacity is usually viewed as a good thing. But a survey of members found that four-fifths of data center operators never look for unused servers. Those that do look find that ten percent of all servers are running idle. As TGG’s Andy Hawkins notes, sooner or later, you are talking about real money:
And what about the four-fifths of data center operators that aren’t on the hunt for idle machines? There could be an even greater percentage of unseen energy sinks draining resources and wasting energy.
I’m all for putting data centers on an energy diet. But the true savings kick in when the enterprise goes on a data center diet.
Vivek Kundra, the outgoing federal government CIO, has closed 39 data centers this year. And Kundra wants to eliminate as may as 800 of the current total 2094 by 2015. A big part of that shift will be accomplished with a “cloud-first” policy. Kundra is after megabuck savings that will reap megawatt benefits.
Study after study shows that the larger cloud-scale systems are more energy efficient than typical data centers. The latest one, by AT&T and Verdana found that companies could save $12.3 billion off their energy bills, and reduce carbon emissions by 85.7 million metric tons by 2020. Those savings won’t eliminate the stresses on the nation’s electrical grid, but it will help. And planet Earth will benefit, even if we have to accept that Server Corporatum Gigantus is added to the endangered species list. The battle for the survival of the fittest in technology— now that’s a power struggle.
