JDPFu.com 2025

Most new IT efforts have a Green Component to them. At a minimum, the amount of power used is to be minimized for any new equipment. Other projects involve consolidating servers with a 4:1 or higher reduction. That reduction, when combined with fewer total number of CPUs, hence fewer licenses, more efficient storage architectures and significantly more efficient servers from a power consumption perspective really lowers the power usage overall.

As an example, a recent server review showed 14 servers. Our efforts so far had added 2 new highly efficient servers and removed 4 older servers. The two new servers deployed VMware and were using approximately 20% of the CPU and 50% of the RAM (generous RAM allocations to start) after migrating the 4 physical servers into virtual servers. We are targeting a peak CPU utilization of 60%-80%, so a few more virtual servers may be added to each system. That will reduce the total server count from 14 to 8 (14-4+2-4) with more manageable systems overall, easier disaster recovery, and significantly lower power consumption – perhaps 2/3rds less power.

One of the older, already retired systems used over 500VA of power just for server idle with nominal processing. The new servers at idle use approximately 80VA each. On average, the other servers used about 300VA of power, 3x more than the new servers.

The savings aren’t just in direct power use reductions. The UPS system has costs too. As the required power load is reduced, it is important to resize down the UPS system so battery charge maintenance and AC—> DC conversion loses are minimized. Required cooling is also reduced, which is important in warmer clients.

At my home, I’ve used a Kill-A-Watt to measure power use of my systems and a TV.

New Core2Duo system with 4GB RAM – Peak 126W, Nominal 80W, off 8W

3 Yr Old Core2Duo system with 2GB RAM – Peak 173W, Nominal 126W, off 0W

Toshiba 37" LCD – Peak 147W, Nominal 104W, off 0W

Clearly newer systems are more efficient than older systems. Similar performing nVidia graphics cards are in each server, both with 2 internal disks as well. A RAID card is installed in the older system, which could be the main power impact. Motherboards are different between each box, but other than age, believed to be comparable. Also, the older box has a high efficiency power supply – over 90% efficient with the newer server using a normal case power supply.