Turn Off Your Servers?

The Sustainable Computing blog asks if it's time to consider turning off servers the way we turn off laptops and desktops (some of us, anyway). It's an idea that hasn't generated a lot of traction, but things might be starting to change. Here's the rationale behind it:

In general, an idle server consumes about half the amount of power consumed by a server running under high load. Server utilization for most data centers runs in the range of 10 to 20 percent, which means there are a lot of machines idling (systems using energy, but not being used).

Obviously you can't go turning off Web servers and mission-critical applications, but if you look around your data center you'll probably find a couple of instances where you can save power and cooling energy by powering down. The blog has a couple of small case studies that demonstrate what can be done, as well as six tips to get you started in powering off.

Microsoft Research also has a couple of papers on the topic you can download:

• Write Off-Loading: Practical Power Management for Enterprise Storage
• Power-Aware Server Provisioning and Load Dispatching for Connection-Intensive Internet Services

Speaking of sustainable computing, Microsoft recently launched an environment site at www.microsoft.com/environment.