Hewlett-Packard has developed server rack technology
that it claims can reduce datacentre electricity costs by
40%.
Power is one of the largest costs for datacentre operations.
Analyst firm Gartner has estimated that average annual electricity
costs range from £319,000 to more than £22m.
The Bladesystem C-Class rack provides active management of
electricity usage to control the amount of power consumed by each
blade in a server rack. Cooling is also automated to minimise fan
usage.
Jonathan King, industry standard server business development
manager at HP said the approach could reduce electricity costs by
as much as 40%. From measurements with an HP beta user, running
costs were 60p per minute - or £316,000 per year. A 40% reduction
would cut the annual electricity bill by £126,000.
HP’s vision is to offer the c-Class rack as a scalable platform
which would allow users to add blades, network attached storage and
even build a Superdome or NonStop server, module by module.
See Gartner research paper on the website on 27 June 2006