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Energy Star For Servers Falls Short

Posted by timothy on from the is-there-no-market-for-such-ratings? dept.

tsamsoniw writes "The newly released Energy Star requirements for servers may not prove all too useful for companies shopping for the most energy-efficient machines on the market, InfoWorld reports. For starters, the spec only considers how much power a server consumes when it's idling, rather than gauging energy consumption at various levels of utilization. That's like focusing on how much gas a vehicle consumes at stop lights instead of when it's moving. Also, the spec doesn't care whether a server's processors have one core or multiple cores — even though multi-core servers deliver more work at fewer watts. Though this first version of Energy Star for servers isn't entirely without merit, the EPA needs to refine the spec to make it more meaningful."

6 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Improved Version Coming Next Year by 1sockchuck · · Score: 5, Informative

    All fair criticisms, but it's a first step. The EPA plans to address many of the shortcomings of the current Energy Star for Servers program in an expanded Tier 2 spec that is scheduled to arrive in the fall of 2010. The update is intended to expand the program to include blade servers and servers with more than four processors.

  2. Atom by googlesmith123 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Intel is releasing an Atom cpu for servers. It's not very powerful, but I reckon it has the highest power per watt of anything out there.

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    1. Re:Atom by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There's also the FAWN project (also on /.)

      Cores-per-die is not a valid metric, not with emerging prototypes that could drastically change how web content is served.

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      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  3. No, it isn't by Idaho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's like focusing on how much gas a vehicle consumes at stop lights instead of when it's moving.

    No, it's not. As usual, car analogies are stupid.

    Cars do no spend the majority of their time idling at traffic lights. Computers (especially servers) however do often end up idling a very large percentage of the time.

    Data centers do charge for (actual) power usage, so of course the actual (typically 95th percentile) usage should be taken into account, but still it's a broken analogy.

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    Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
    1. Re:No, it isn't by value_added · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, it's less broken if you consider that in major metropolitan areas, cars do spend much of their time idling at traffic lights (typically with air conditioning running), as well as on congested city streets and freeways. Then, of course, there's the drive-thrus for those too fat to get out of their cars. ;-)

      As for car analogies generally being stupid, yeah, you're right. But so are most of the alternatives. The reason why "sound bites", for example, are preferrable to hour-long analyses or 5,000 word flabby blog posts isn't that people don't want a full understanding, it's just that doing so is too much work. It's like having to evaluate a car purchase based on specifications instead of ... oh, wait.

  4. Yet Another Bogus Car Analogy by Brama · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comparing a server idling to a car in front of a red light is seriously wrong. Servers in general tend to spend a _lot_ more time idling than cars wait for a red traffic light. There'll always be servers that _do_ fully utilize their resources, but most of them will idle a lot. So it makes perfect sense to take that as a generic guide-line.