House urges IT managers to buy energy-saving servers

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- Power usage at fast-growing server farms became an issue for Congress last week. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring a federal study of ways to improve the energy efficiency of servers and data centers.

The legislation, backed by IT vendors and approved by a 414-4 House vote, now goes to the Senate. If enacted, it would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to recommend incentives and voluntary programs to cut power consumption at data centers in the federal government and the private sector.

Rep. Michael J. Rogers (R-Mich.), the bill's sponsor, said that he hopes the EPA study will build support for energy efficiency ratings for servers modeled on the Energy Star ratings for home appliances. It may also lead to incentives for users who buy energy-efficient servers and to rules governing servers bought by federal agencies, Rogers said.

Vendor Initiative

Major IT vendors are already working on a specification for measuring the energy efficiency of servers at different performance levels so buyers can comparison-shop. In May, Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit standards group in Warrenton, Va., set up a committee to prepare a standard for ratification sometime next year.

"There needs to be a standard way of measuring so customers can compare efficiency between servers," said Andrew Fanara, a team leader for the EPA's Energy Star program. "Right now, they can't do that in any standardized way."

But it remains to be seen whether energy ratings will alter the buying habits of IT managers, who may be constrained by business requirements for processing speed.

"When you are looking at this from a business perspective, you want this stuff to work as quickly and as efficiently as possible," said Troy Montfort, data center manager at Spectrum Health Hospitals in Grand Rapids, Mich. When it comes to choosing between a slower server that generates less heat and a faster server, IT managers will probably go for the faster system, he said.

An energy rating on a refrigerator is one thing, but for a server, "it's a whole different world, in my opinion," said Montfort. "In the health care industry, when I have a doctor wanting somebody's record or [a] look at their CT scan, he doesn't want to sit and wait for that thing to load; he wants it, and he wants it now."

The House bill urges IT managers to "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of computer servers."