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Data Centers And DC Power

Posted by Zonk on from the saving-some-green dept.

mstansberry writes "In the final article in a series on the price of power in the data center, IT pros weigh the pros and cons of direct current-powered servers. A limited number of companies make servers with the power supplies removed with DC power distributed to multiple machines from a single unit. It saves power by skipping an extra conversion from alternating current (AC). Telcos have been using this method for years, but some data center pros are leery of taking on the new systems. It's not something people are familiar with and if they break down, you have to hire a specialized engineer to come fix them. But if they're saving even half of what they're reported to save on the electric bill, companies could afford to hire the engineers." We've reported on previous articles in the series.

5 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. See, I told you so by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tesla, you're fired. --Thomas Edison

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  2. Me too by dada21 · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'd be leery if you wanted me to go homopolar in my center.

  3. They should have already hired such engineers. by CyricZ · · Score: 3, Funny

    Any truly serious data centre would already have at least several power engineers on their staff.

    If such a data centre is just now considering bringing such people in, then they have serious operational problems. They're not getting professionals in to do the jobs that professionals must do.

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  4. The answer is in the Racks, young Jedi by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Funny

    What we really need are pluggable racks. i.e. Move all the hardware necessary to support the blades (power supply, network switch, cooling, KVM interface, etc.) right into the rack case, then design a common interface to plug the blades into. Then an admin only needs to plug in the new server and run with it. No need to mess with tonnes of wires.

    Wait. Did I just reinvent a 64 way Sun server? Imagine that.

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  5. puzzling move for a datacenter by ruiner5000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey Johnson, we are running out of power in our datacenter!

    Ok, I'll order more HP Xeon servers. They use more power, cost more, perform worse, and have a limited upgrade path. But Intel sends me cool swag so I use them.

    Johnson, your fired! We are going Opteron, and raising our capacity 30%!

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