The need to consider a router's power efficiency metrics

Insightful analysis by consultants Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler, plus links to the latest WAN news headlines

At the recent Interop conference, Jim moderated a highly interactive panel that was entitled "Is Routing Undergoing a Mid-Life Crisis?" This is the third in a series of newsletters that is based on that panel and which continues the discussion of routing and the identification of what if anything is driving the need for IT organizations to rethink their approach to routing.

One requirement that is beginning to get more attention from IT organizations is the need to optimize the power and cooling of routers. This requirement is driven in large part by the fact that the typical IT organization has an ever-increasing demand for additional data center capacity and in many cases the expansion of the data center is limited by the capacity of the data center's power and cooling systems. One of the primary ways that IT organizations can minimize the consumption of power and cooling within the data center is by ensuring that any device, such as a router, that gets deployed in the data center is energy-efficient.

Even if data center capacity is not an issue, the cost of power typically is. In particular, because of the escalating cost of electricity, the power and cooling that is associated with data centers can account for a major portion of the IT budget. In order to help IT organizations minimize how much they spend on electricity, power efficiency metrics for routers in the form of Gbps of throughput per watt are being developed. While we are not suggesting an IT organization should choose a router just because it has the best power efficiency metric, we are suggesting that IT organizations consider this metric when choosing a new router.

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At the recent Interop conference, Jim moderated a highly interactive panel that was entitled "Is Routing Undergoing a Mid-Life Crisis?" This is the third in a series of newsletters that is based on that panel and which continues the discussion of routing and the identification of what if anything is driving the need for IT organizations to rethink their approach to routing.

One requirement that is beginning to get more attention from IT organizations is the need to optimize the power and cooling of routers. This requirement is driven in large part by the fact that the typical IT organization has an ever-increasing demand for additional data center capacity and in many cases the expansion of the data center is limited by the capacity of the data center's power and cooling systems. One of the primary ways that IT organizations can minimize the consumption of power and cooling within the data center is by ensuring that any device, such as a router, that gets deployed in the data center is energy-efficient.

Even if data center capacity is not an issue, the cost of power typically is. In particular, because of the escalating cost of electricity, the power and cooling that is associated with data centers can account for a major portion of the IT budget. In order to help IT organizations minimize how much they spend on electricity, power efficiency metrics for routers in the form of Gbps of throughput per watt are being developed. While we are not suggesting an IT organization should choose a router just because it has the best power efficiency metric, we are suggesting that IT organizations consider this metric when choosing a new router.

We talked to the vice president of architecture for a large financial services firm about the need to optimize power and cooling. He pointed out that one of the factors that drive the ever-increasing demand for additional data center capacity is that most organizations are not able to decommission any applications. He added that another factor is that most servers support interfaces for a wide range of functions; such as storage, networking, management, etc. The fact that there are so many interfaces drives the need for additional networking links and additional ports on switches and routers. From a power and cooling perspective, "this becomes a pyramid that collapses on top of itself."

Our next newsletter will continue our discussion of some of the factors that are driving IT organizations to rethink their approach to routing. In the mean time, you can read more about the topic here. You can also provide feedback at our blog.

Jim is spending the next several weeks on the road. He will participate at two end-user events, one in Kansas City, Mo., and one in Clearwater, Fla. He will also moderate two panels at Network World's IT Roadmap conference in Atlanta on June 24. You can follow Jim on Twitter. 

Read more about lans & wans in Network World's LANs & WANs section.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.