Energy consumption vs % utilization?

Tue Oct 26 18:27:55 UTC 2004

Erik Haagsman wrote:

> 

> Which means you have to make sure the revenue generated by those 98% 
> underutilized servers covers your powerbill and other expenses, 
> preferrably leaving some headroom for a healthy profit margin. As
> long as that's the case there's no real waste of energy, the services
>  people run on their servers are supposed to be worth the energy and 
> other costs, whether they physically fully utilize their power or
> not.
> 

Yet there are a lot of clusters which are designed for peak load, which 
will waste energy during non-peak hours. Developing an in-house system 
for shutting down power to excess servers in a cluster might increase 
the healthy profit margin.

-Jack