Switching hardware and saving energy

Regular readers will know that I've spent the last year or so trying to reduce and migrate my server requirements and computing needs down to a select few machines, partially to reduce the amount of kit I have lying around to support my work, and partially to reduce the ever increasing electricity costs.

Over the last year, I've been able to simplify my equipment largely because of the move by companies to x86 hardware. Through Parallels on Mac OS X I can run pretty much every operating system I need to use.

I've decommissioned a number of servers, big and small, and now rely on just one machine - a 17" iMac - which handles my file storage (through a couple of big external drives), my email, web serving and other needs, all through OS X server. It may not be a huge super power house, but it is silent and perfect capable for the level I need internally.

Ignoring the quieter environment, how much energy have I saved?

In the first week, my energy usage was down 20%. After two weeks, It's approaching 25%, and I expect to reduce that even further since I've still got some rewiring and decommissioning of those pesky power adaptors to do yet. With a little more work I'm hoping to bring that down further.

Was it worth it? For a daily electricity reduction of 25%? Definitely.

As for typical companies, by adopting similar techniques - using newer low power CPUs and hardware, and employing virtualization techniques - you could probably lower your electricity bills by at least 5% and probably a lot more. Keep in mind too that with reduced power requirements and a lower quantity of servers, you'll probably need lower cooling requirements too, and that will lower your electricity requirements too.