1E Server Energy and Efficiency Report 2009
1E Server Energy and Efficiency Report 2009
Each server costs several thousand dollars to run every year. It's not just hardware; each needs software licenses, operational support and of course energy. Wouldn't you like each and every one to be useful? The chances are that one sixth of your servers are unproductive for your organization, one of the startling findings from this study amongst many others. The potential savings are large, globally $3.8 billion in energy costs alone and $24.7 billion in the total cost of running non-productive servers. If this concerns you, read on.
Since its inception 11 years ago, 1E has been committed to helping our customers cut operating costs while reducing their environmental footprint. 1E pioneered PC power management and continues as the global market leader with its flagship product, NightWatchman. Today, NightWatchman is deployed on 4 million PCs worldwide. Since its launch over 9 years ago, it has cumulatively saved organizations over USD $360 million in energy costs. This reduction in energy usage has prevented 2.7 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere - this is the equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of half a million passenger vehicles.
The trends toward internet based services, cloud computing and more and more data being saved centrally mean server numbers are increasing, as is electricity use and therefore carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, U.S. data centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity in 2006, representing 1.5% of all U.S. electricity consumption and double the amount consumed in 2000v. We can no longer deny that server energy consumption is a problem, and one that's only getting worse. The good news is that organizations want to do something about it.
In partnership with the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE), 1E commissioned independent research into the awareness and behavior of server administrators in the world's largest companies. Overall, the survey found that IT staff tasked with server management know that a significant proportion of their servers are not doing any useful work but they do not have the tools to identify them. They overwhelmingly want better knowledge of power utilization and efficiency of their server estates. Surprisingly the majority are also concerned with or doing something about virtual server sprawl, an uncontrolled rise in virtual servers, which in turn increases overall IT costs.
That's where 1E comes in. We have always innovated based on research rather than traditional wisdom. Our latest solution, NightWatchman Server Edition, helps differentiate which servers are doing useful work and when, so that decisions such as decommissioning wasteful servers are made much simpler; even with productive servers energy savings can be further enhanced with our Drowsy Server technology, and finally just using a software solution we can provide accurate analysis of the energy and efficiency of each and every server.
Money Is Easily Wasted
Every large organization has a long list of IT demands and corresponding operating costs. But in leaner times, how does one balance user needs with the need to conserve costs? Together with the Alliance to Save Energy, 1E commissioned Kelton Research to conduct a survey among 100 IT professionals who work with servers at global companies with 10,000 employees or morevi.
The 1E / ASE survey finds IT departments are currently wasting money and energy running unused servers. More than 15% of servers are simply not doing anything useful. Instead they are being run 24/7, managed and upgraded without being actively used on a daily basis. We estimate that at least 4.7 million servers needlessly costing IT departments over four thousand dollars per server per year in operational costs, a primary concern for all organizations.
Though virtualization has held its promise of reducing data center power consumption, the operational costs associated with running a server are many times that of the energy cost. The ease of provisioning virtualized servers commonly leads to uncontrolled growth and more unused servers. This is known as virtual server sprawl and is starting to become a real concern. In fact 84% of IT professionals said they are experiencing or are concerned about virtual server sprawl. There are also inefficiencies in the virtualization process itself as 65% of IT professionals say they have virtualized an unused server.
Servers Have a Powerful Impact
Let's take a moment to look at the energy and environmental costs of servers. The world's 44 million servers are consuming a growing portion of the global electricity supply due to growing demand for the services they provide. The U.S. government is taking note. For the first time the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) will operate a national data center efficiency program to develop protocols, metrics and Energy Star specifications for the 11.8 million servers across the country.
According to the EPA and DoE:
U.S. data centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity in 2006, representing 1.5% of all U.S. electricity consumption and double the amount consumed in 2000
Based on current trends, the EPA estimates that energy consumed by data centers will continue to grow by 12% per year
Since a significant portion of the world's 44 million serversx are not used, it's clear that a large amount of energy is being wasted. Supposing for a moment that the world's servers were deployed in a similar fashion to a large company and that the world paid U.S. utility rates, which tend to rest in the middle on a pricing scale with other markets the resulting waste per year comes to 11.8 million tons of carbon dioxide the equivalent of 2.1 million cars. In the U.S. alone, this comes to 3.17 million tons of carbon dioxide, or 580,678 cars.
Understand then Manage: A Case for Useful Work
Faced with rising energy prices, budget cuts and new EPA data center programs, organizations are rightfully trying to determine if their servers are being used productively; that is running applications that are actually being used, as opposed to running redundant applications which have fulfilled a historic need or whose users have migrated onto a new server.
An overwhelming 83% of IT Professionals admit they would benefit from a better grasp of their overall server utilization. But utilization itself means very little, it measures overall usage but does not reveal if the server is doing Useful Work'. A server may appear to be busy at times when in fact it is only running management and maintenance processes.
The survey finds that organizations are not measuring or do not have the tools to measure server efficiency. Nearly three quarters (72%) reported using CPU utilization as a measure.
What's more, their systems for identifying servers to decommission or reallocate are not systematic or automatic. According to the chart below, less than four in ten (37%) use an automated reporting tool to search for low utilization, while others are more likely to carry out manual assessments (28%) or wait for something to go wrong (19%).
As well as not measuring, three out of four (75%) have responded that their company's mandate to deliver high levels of IT service gets in the way of making their servers more efficient. It seems that employees may be expecting their IT tools to work all the time with no exception and as a result, IT staff must spend time achieving so-called perfect service, rather than implementing changes that may improve efficiency.
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