Server refreshes can slash energy bills, says Intel

Chip giant says IT chiefs should act now ahead of new EU rules

Technology refreshes in the datacentre can result in an energy cost reduction of as much as 95 per cent, according to a senior Intel executive.

Alan Priestley, marketing director for server and cloud, Intel, argued that replacing servers bought in 2005 – the year many eneterprises replaced the systems they purchased in the late 1990s to tackle the millennium bug – could slash energy bills.

Priestley, who was speaking at the Samsung CIO Green Forum 2011 in Munich late last week, explained that refreshes were key to maintaining energy efficiency within the datacentre.

He said that 15 racks of Intel Xeon single core servers could be replaced by a single rack of Intel Xeon 5600 based servers, resulting in a 95 per cent annual energy cost reduction.

Similarly, if the 15 racks were replaced by 15 containing the new servers the datacentre would see performance increased 15 fold.

Priestly went on to say that there are many elements inside the datacentre that need to be monitored, including the number of devices being used, the power draw by model, power management, cooling efficiency and UPS efficiency.

Outside the datacentre, Priestly said that technology chiefs should be monitoring the number of desktops and laptops, the power draw by model, and user behaviour – whether their desktops are active, idle on sleep or off and whether they are using LCD.

"There is a strong business case for sustainable computing and IT business leaders need to get ahead of the curve. There will be a host of regulations coming out of the EU related to this but it makes sense to pre-empt these regulations and make changes fit the natural equipment cycle of a datacentre," said Priestly

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