Data centers consume approximately 2 percent of the nation’s electrical energy, and roughly half of that is consumed by the IT equipment. Berkeley Lab researcher Henry Coles and Berkeley Research Computing HPC consultant Yong Qin recently published a paper with implications for improving the efficiency of energy usage in data centers.
In this paper, they examine the energy use and efficiency of different brands of commercially available servers that appear to be similar in design and performance. The energy use and performance measurement methods presented in this report can help groups that purchase IT equipment to select models and configurations that minimize energy use, given a specific level of performance. Coles and Qin will be presenting their results later this week at the 2014 Data Center Efficiency Summit held in Santa Clara, CA.