Server managers suspect that as many as one in every six of the boxes under their control might not be doing anything that is useful for the business, according to a survey which has suggested they should be shut down to save energy.
“Contrary to popular belief, one of the largest causes of energy and IT operational waste in data centres are servers that are simply not being used,” Sumir Karayi, CEO of 1E, the company behind the assessment confirmed. “The savings from decommissioning non-productive servers cannot be ignored.”
The study, conducted by Kelton Research, commissioned in association with the Alliance to Save Energy, also revealed that the over 80% of managers in the world’s largest IT departments do not have an adequate grasp of server utilisation.
Three-quarters of the 100 server managers polled admitted that they rely on CPU utilisation as their measure of server efficiency, despite the fact that a CPU is busy whether the server is providing a service to the business, or doing routine maintenance tasks which provide no business value.
One conclusion to be drawn from the survey is that organisations need better information on server efficiency and more effective ongoing server energy management.
