Financial Times Article, Awareness a Rack uses Electricity Like a Giant Electric Oven for 5 Turkeys
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 4:46AM This Financial Times article doesn't have anything really new, but it was interesting they chose to use a giant oven cooking 5 turkeys to explain to the financial community how much power a rack of servers consume.
IT going green: Temperature rises push heat up the agenda
By Dan Ilett
Published: July 8 2008 16:33 | Last updated: July 8 2008 16:33
A rack of computers in a data centre uses the same amount of electricity as a giant electric oven – “an oven cooking about five turkeys,” says Steve O’Donnell, senior vice-president of IT for First Data, and author of thehotsisle.com.
Heat is a big problem for data-centre operators, especially as temperatures rise in the northern hemisphere’s summer. But to remove it with air conditioning is expensive and uses more power.
“As the thermometer level increases, so does the headache for the IT director,” says Osca St Marthe, principal consultant at technology consultancy Morse.
“Power costs are coming on to the radar of the board – some people have seen electricity costs double,” he says. “All technology operates within certain temperature parameters and as the temperature increases, the efficiency of your systems decreases. ”
“People are finding they can’t get enough power into the data centre and are, therefore, worrying about adding more air-conditioning units. In fact, at one data centre I visited people were worried that plugging a phone charger in might tip the balance, let alone more air-conditioning units.”
Reader Comments (1)
Interesting that you picked up the Turkey analogy. How do you get a CFO to get an understanding of what 20KW is like and Christmas came to mind for me with the oven on full blast. Had a lot of comments that this was a good way of explaining it.
Steve