Less power (consumption) to the people

Buyers want boxes that consume less power

Developments of the week in storage

The battle going on right now between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices for the hearts and minds of CPU lovers everywhere reflects a similar state of affairs in storage. I'm not referring to the fight for sockets on desktop motherboards, but rather to the processor wars we're seeing in the server segment.

Once upon a time when the living was easy, server vendors got in bed with one CPU vendor - in almost every case that one vendor was Intel - and pretty much stayed loyal. In some IT rooms, the fear was palpable - you slept with Intel, or you slept with the fishes.

Now, in more circumspect times, some server vendors are beginning to offer buyers a choice - live with Intel or, as an alternative, get chummy with Intel's much smaller rival, AMD. In fact, some vendors are even offering a choice of motherboards so that IT buyers can make their own decisions. This confirms a trend that shows that somehow, while nobody was looking, AMD has moved up to take a one-quarter share of server CPU sockets. When it comes to processors for servers, Intel often wins when performance is the main concern, while AMD prevails if power consumption is the big deal. Buyers choose which way they want to go.

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The battle going on right now between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices for the hearts and minds of CPU lovers everywhere reflects a similar state of affairs in storage. I'm not referring to the fight for sockets on desktop motherboards, but rather to the processor wars we're seeing in the server segment.

Once upon a time when the living was easy, server vendors got in bed with one CPU vendor - in almost every case that one vendor was Intel - and pretty much stayed loyal. In some IT rooms, the fear was palpable - you slept with Intel, or you slept with the fishes.

Now, in more circumspect times, some server vendors are beginning to offer buyers a choice - live with Intel or, as an alternative, get chummy with Intel's much smaller rival, AMD. In fact, some vendors are even offering a choice of motherboards so that IT buyers can make their own decisions. This confirms a trend that shows that somehow, while nobody was looking, AMD has moved up to take a one-quarter share of server CPU sockets. When it comes to processors for servers, Intel often wins when performance is the main concern, while AMD prevails if power consumption is the big deal. Buyers choose which way they want to go.

Most users select desktop CPUs based on a price-performance ratio. CPUs in laptops (the ones that really have a mobile lifestyle, at any rate) get purchased based on a mix of power consumption and horsepower. Considering the purchase drivers for desktop and laptop CPU buying, the reasoning behind the purchase of both laptop CPUs and server CPUs have much in common. The "power consumption-performance" ratio holds sway for both.

The closely linked issues of power and cooling are as important for storage servers as they are for application servers. Electricity prices being what they are, this should hardly be surprising.

Large IT rooms have large concerns when it comes to power consumption. In some cases (Carnegie Mellon University's IT observatory is a good example), this has prompted interesting research into IT room design, but most of the onus for efficiency in large shops still lies with the vendors.

As an analyst, I spend a great deal of time talking with clients from both the vendor and user communities. Both groups indicate that many IT sites are placing a moratorium on IT room build-out - not on IT purchasing, but on expansion of the physical infrastructure. In other words, even if you still are able to buy what you want, it had better be able to fit within the existing footprint of your current physical plant. It looks like many of us will have to live with our present power levels and cooling capability well into the future.

Because operating expenses always account for so much more over the life of a product than does the initial capital outlay, the demand for less power-hungry machines is likely to increase dramatically as electricity costs continue to rise. As a result, we may be fast arriving a point where, when we say we want more storage, we also mean we want less power consumption to be part of the deal.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.