Saving the planet one datacenter at a time
Tuesday Sep 11, 2007
Huge reductions can be made in datacenters with existing technology by just changing a few datacenter practices & metrics!
Things that make a HUGE difference (factors = big percentages):
- Turn off un-used servers, figure out how to turn more off
- Drive up utilisation up to 60% utilisation on all servers (this can decrease power by a factor of THREE TIMES (even if you have the latest power throttling chip features!)
- If you need virtualisation software to drive up the utilization get it, but make sure it is very efficient no overhead virtualisation like Solaris zones. Remember CPU overhead means your are burning watts, or at least measure the CPU overhead on your virtualisation software to pick the most efficient alternative.
- Put the datacenters utility bill in the IT department! Motivate people!
- ...spread the word, as this knowlege virally spreads larger and larger number of people get this happening in their datacenters!
Things that make some Difference (percentages):
- datacenter layout (5-10%)
- More efficient airflow & air conditioning (maybe 10-20%)
- tune your application performance, the faster it goes the more efficiently it goes
more details at: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/eco_actual_fancy_power_saving
...everything above this was above the line!
What NOT to measure:
- Do NOT judge which server to buy by the TDP of the processor --- it is the whole server st*pid
- Do NOT judge which server to buy by the in-lab measurements of the CPU-only --- it is the whole server st*pid
- perf/cpu-watt is misleading, use server-watt/perf (just like $/perf)
- Do NOT assume perf/watt is server metric, you must ask!
- Do NOT compare servers at 30% utilization, that is like judging which commuter car to buy by looking at vendor stats that compare overloaded SUV uses less gas going up a 20% road grade?!? -- you need to look at the full-memory config/CPU MHz you are buying at the good utilization 60% or more that you should be running your datacenter at!
- Do NOT judge which server to buy by looking at performance of fastest GHz CPUs at full utilization & full memory and then judging energy efficiency of low-GHz CPUs at 30% utilization and small memory. All benchmarks should have measured server watt/perf on every SPEC & TPC benchmark.
I think the above hints are much more useful than the following story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/09/08/tech.green.credentials.ap/
final note:
Now go home and buy some CFLs, and turn off your lights when not in use...
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