Every January first, people around the world make new year’s resolutions, things they are going to change or do differently. It is great if you are in the gym business (busy January.) Unfortunately, once February rolls around, all of those gym memberships have started to expire and people are back to their old ways.
Last January I resolved to climb as many feet on trails on my mountain bike as I flew on my primary airline. Considering that I live in Austin, Texas and spent about a third of the year out of town, this was a pretty good challenge. I didn’t make it, but only because October threw me for a loop. In 5 weeks I put on close to 45K miles. But I still felt like I gave it a good try.

This the 3,457^th blog that you will come across this week talking about New Year’s resolutions, but I implore you to take this one seriously.  Because this one really matters to your business – let’s talk about power resolutions for 2011.

How much power is your data center consuming?  Do you even know?

Step 1 is figure out how to get a handle on this number if you don’t know today.  You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Step 2 is to calculate your Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).  PUE is a measurement developed by The Green Grid that shows the ratio between a how much power comes into your data center and how much power is actually being used to run your IT equipment (vs. the power used for cooling and other support.)  The Green Grid even allows you to report your PUE as well.

Step 3 is to look at your servers.  While this is only a portion of the overall power, it’s the area most near and dear to my heart (although this is not the only place to begin.)  Today’s processors are far more power efficient than those that are in some of your older “end of life” servers.  How many servers do you have kicking around in your data center that you keep because they are “paid for” already and of low value in terms of replacing?  Shouldn’t these servers be retired, or at the least, virtualized?

Replacing old servers with newer, more energy efficient servers can help drive down your total power costs and let you regain valuable power headroom in your data center.

Resolve to start buying more energy efficient processors.  The AMD Opteron^TM 4100 and 6100 Series processors both include an HE (low power) model and the AMD Opteron^TM 4100 Series processor family includes an EE (ultra low power) model as well.

In addition, were you aware that there are low power versions of DDR-3 memory as well?  I did a quick check on the HP ProLiant DL385 G7 and found that the price difference between regular and low voltage memory was as little as $4.75/GB.  Think not only about the power savings, but also the additional power headroom that this could deliver for your data center.

Resolve to start looking at your server configurations. Are you enabling power management?  Most operating systems have this on by default and the drivers are pre-loaded.  You’re not changing this, right?  That would be crazy because power management, like the AMD PowerNow!™ technology, is designed to throttle down your server when loads are lower.  You don’t put your car in neutral and rev it up at stoplights?  Why run a server without power management?

There are other things that we are doing for you behind the scenes, like AMD CoolCore™ technology which helps save power without you ever having to think about doing anything.  All of these architectural features are added to help with your power management and work in the background, without requiring any of your attention.

Finally, the fun part.  Step 4 is to re-measure your power consumption and recalculate your PUE to see how lower power processors, lower power memory, power management features and everything else is working together to make your data center more efficient.  If you are consuming less power you are saving your company money.  And if you are saving more power, you are opening up the untapped potential of your data center.  With lower power consumption you have more headroom for future growth. So even if your department is not picking up the tab for electricity, it has an impact on you, and saving power is a great way to ensure that as your business needs start growing and expanding in 2011, you’ll be ready, with the capacity that you need.

And that is a resolution worth sticking to.

To find out more about the benefits of becoming a member of the Green Grid, visit their site. Between the tools and best practice sharing, as well as advocacy for data center efficiency, there is something that every business can take advantage of.  And if you join now, you’ll be in a great position to take advantage of the yearly Green Grid Technical Forum and member’s meeting that happens in March – the perfect way to make sure that your energy diet for 2011 stays on track.

So, what am I doing for 2011?  My target this year is 120,000 feet of climbing.  And with my first weekend of the year, I’m only 116,500 feet short of my goal.  Progress is small, but it adds up over time, just like power efficiency in your data center.

 John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products at AMD.  His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.