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eBay Seeks Energy 'Sweet Spot'
eBay's infrastructure manager describes some of the challenges of energy management in a 16,000 server environment.
Rich Miller
November 14, 2006
1 Min Read
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With more than 16,000 servers, managing infrastructure is a major challenge for othe online auction giant eBay. Heather Peck, senior manager of infrastructure at eBay, described some of the challenges in an interview with SearchDataCenter.com. Peck says eBay is dealing with data center energy usage on a daily basis, and seeking a "sweet spot" that balances the need for both horsepower and efficiency. "It's very fluid," said Peck. "The data centers we're building today - we're building them with the information we have now. In four years the data center design needs are going to be refreshed, which fortunately also matches the refresh cycle of hardware." Not surprisingly, Peck expects the energy managment challenges to continue:
It's going to get worse. And then as systems get more power efficient - as they are starting to do - there will be new bottlenecks to deal with. Getting more power efficient means denser environments, which require more networks ports, better cooling, stronger racks, more cabling - which all present a challenge. It's going to take constant retrofitting to deal with each issue as we come across it.
For the rest of the interview, see Matt Stansberry's article at SearchDataCenter.
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