A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has revealed the existence of millions of “zombie” servers in the U.S.
About 30% of servers in the country drain energy without doing anything. Many others operate at only 12% to 18% capacity.
“It’s like an airline flying 30% of its planes empty…,” said Pierre Delforge, a co-author of the report.
The majority of these inefficient facilities are at smaller companies, where “zombies” might be responsible for 30% to 50% of the entire electricity bill.
The good news is that there are tools available to improve energy efficiency by about 80%.
According to the report, even if these inefficient facilities were to cut electricity consumption by just 40%, the electricity savings (in 2014 figures) would reportedly “amount to $3.8 billion and 39 billion kilowatt-hours.”
So do you have a “zombie” in your company? It could be time to look.
Useless servers stay powered mainly because no one is aware of them. And IT engineers are more concerned with keeping servers functioning than finding and shutting down dead ones.
So go ahead and start your “zombie” hunt, and follow these recommendations from the report:
- develop metrics for measuring server use
- disclose data center energy use
- provide incentives for decision-makers