We have audited energy consumption of all servers in our data center. And the result? You will be pleasantly surprised
We decided to carry out an in-depth audit of all consumption of more than 2000 internal and client servers in our data center. Such analysis can be very helpful in establishing a benchmark for technology consumption in current, very dynamic period when inflation and electricity prices are at their highest levels.
Our measurement method
Our analysis followed the same procedure as we use for determining consumption for our server colocation and serverfarm colocation services. We connect an intelligent socket that measures and monitors its electricity input to each server in our data center. The measured values for the whole month, including peaks, are immediately sent to our ControlPanel administration, which is available for the server owners, as well. We then average the values to get the actual monthly consumption of the server. Thanks to these variables, we are able to determine the average consumption of all servers transparently and with high accuracy from 50W. In our case, more than 2000 servers.
Intelligent Socket System + Control Panel = Real consumption calculation
The audit results
From more than 2000 servers in our data center, less than a tenth actually consume more than 150W. For the other 10% of internal and client technologies, we found average real power consumption between 100 and 150W. More than a third of servers were represented in the 50 to 100W category, specifically 37.33%. The most represented category was the group of servers with an average power consumption up to 50W, 43.32% in the data center.
What to take away from the results?
Each data center has a slightly different focus, operation and size, thus the audit values in our data center may differ from those in other data centers. However, the results of this audit can generally be applied to any industry.
The results of the analysis show that many clients may be very pleasantly surprised by how much electricity their server actually consumes. However, it very depends on the load of the server, on the operating conditions and on the measurement of the consumption itself. Therefore, the more detailed the provider measures the power consumption of the technology, the more detailed values are available for a possible manoeuvre space to optimise costs and possible savings.
For this reason, you need to find out how consumption of your server will be measured and billed before you place your server. The difference in approach to metering and billing for server colocation services can be dozens euros per month within two datacentres. So why pay unnecessarily more for electricity than necessary?
Coolhousing team
