How important are the other components in the server in the energy equation?
People talk about how to increase consolidation and utilisation but disk arrays also need to be consolidated. Our approach is to use VMware for servers plus SAN consolidation. It’s also about the data centre’s layout, air-conditioning, and floor panelling, which all contribute to making the data centre more efficient. But within the box, the CPU, fans, hard disk and power supply are the main issues, as is the thermal design of the server — the CPU is only five pc of the whole chain. But despite that, the AMD CPU performed better from a compute power and energy use perspective. Q: Will the energy envelope within which IT managers can operate need to be reduced? A: Yes, there are environmental concerns, and energy costs are increasing. IT budgets haven’t included energy costs until recently but the paths of facilities managers and data centre managers are now crossing so data centre managers now have to take energy costs into account. Also, if you need more compute power, often the only
