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Datacenters Not as Power-Hungry as Expected

Datacenters aren't turning out to be quite the power hogs they were supposed to be.

A 2007 forecast by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicted that power consumed by datacenters would double between 2005 and 2010.

Instead, a new study prepared by a Stanford engineering professor at the request of The New York Times found that the increase was actually closer to 56 percent over that period.

"Mostly because of the recession, but also because of a few changes in the way these facilities are designed and operated, data center electricity consumption is clearly much lower than what was expected, and that's really the big story," the professor, Jonathan G. Koomey, told the Times.

Koomey wasn't able to separate how much of the difference between his finding and the EPA numbers was due to the recession versus increased hardware efficiency and more use of virtualization.

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 01, 2011


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