

Datacenter Power Efficiency - dsdirect
http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/11/12/DatacenterPowerEfficiency.aspx

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tav
The linked slides are a lot more informative than the summary on that page:
[http://mvdirona.com/jrh/TalksAndPapers/KushagraVaidMicrosoft...](http://mvdirona.com/jrh/TalksAndPapers/KushagraVaidMicrosoftDataCenters.pdf)

It's interesting that in contrast to the likes of Google and HP who have been
stating that the cost of power will soon be greater than the cost of servers —
e.g. [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/kill-an-energy-
hog-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/kill-an-energy-hog-save-
your-job/ —) Microsoft seem to be having a very different experience with
servers making up 61% of the TCO and power consumption and
distribution/cooling only taking up 16% and 14% respectively.

It's also interesting that they haven't (seemingly) adopted the Google
strategy of shifting workloads from data centers based on the external weather
conditions, e.g.
[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/15/googl...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/15/googles-
chiller-less-data-center/) — This sounded like an ingenious idea when I first
heard about it and am surprised that everyone didn't copy it straight away.

~~~
bbgm
That split of where the money goes comes directly from calculations and a
spreadsheet that James Hamilton has developed. You should check out his
Velocity talk for more (about 5 minutes in)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHW-ayt_Urk>

The numbers on the slides modify the assumptions on the spreadsheet at
[http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/09/18/OverallDataCente...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/09/18/OverallDataCenterCosts.aspx)

