One of the burdens of the digital age is the energy consumption by computer servers. There are nearly three million data centers across the US where about 12 million machines provide the services we get from the internet. This infrastructure consumes about 10 billion watts of electrical power, roughly the output of 10 nuclear power plants.
A number of the largest companies in the business are working hard at being efficient and are even providing their own power. Google and Apple are examples of companies whose servers are largely off the grid.
Unfortunately, the giants like Google, Apple, Facebook and eBay account for only about 5% of total data center energy consumption in the US. The other 95% are not so efficient. At the myriad corporate data centers, small- and mid-size server rooms and so-called multi-tenant data centers across the country, up to 30% of the installed machines are drawing power without actually doing anything.
These zombie servers are a huge example of energy waste in data centers. These idle and useless machines keep running because either nobody is aware of them or because nobody is willing to take the risk of unplugging them for fear that they might be needed down the road. Data center managers are paid to keep their systems running, not to maximize their efficiency.
If all these data centers were to reduce their consumption through efficiency measures and by eliminating zombie servers, the electricity savings would amount to nearly 4 billion dollars a year. Fighting zombies isn’t just for the movies.
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“Zombie” Servers and Inefficiency Drive Energy Waste at Data Centers
Photo, posted December 3, 2013, courtesy of Bob Mical via Flickr.
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Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.