Varied Responses to the Power Crunch

How do you handle the growing power loads and "hot spots" in your data center? Obtain more power? Consolidate equipment? Rework your raised-floor area? Enterprises are all over the map in their responses to rising costs and power consumption, according to a recent survey of 1,200 IT organizations by chip maker AMD.

"While 44 percent were able to supply more power to the data center, 27 percent chose to consolidate servers," the report notes, "25 percent reorganized their servers into hot-aisle/cool-aisle configurations, and 23 percent increased the size of their data centers."

InfoWorld's David Margulius adds his analysis: "What the study doesn't say is that despite the push for lower-power CPUs and more efficient configurations (blades and SANs and such), the biggest impact of rising energy costs is that it accelerates the virtualization tsunami. And the most meaningful impact of this acceleration may be more manageability and flexibility."