Global datacentres are a focus of the IT press these days - for example the recent $500M investment in a 27MegaWatt datacenter in Dublin by Microsoft. It's now accepted that energy costs are a big issue for the IT industry, and that IT is a significant factor in planning forward energy demand.

When you are putting 30,000 servers into an air conditioned hangar, it makes sense to use all  means of reducing energy costs - like Hydro power generation, using reflective paint, and even siting the datacentre in countries with mild climates and ample supplies of water for chilling.

Such exotic means are beyond all but the largest organisations like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo - So does this have any relevance to the average business?

For the canny Chief Exec, there could be some opportunity to impact the bottom line by reducing the energy bill. So thinks Charles Scott, MD of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Quorum network Resources Ltd.

As the driving force behind a highly successful and growing business, Charles knows the importance of watching the pennies. That's one of the factors which has helped him achieve a base of very loyal customers, retain highly skilled and motivated staff, and build profitable enterprise without taking on external investors or debt. His canny approach also means that he is never known to miss an event involving free food and drink.

So when Quorum's expansion recently took them to swish new head offices in central Edinburgh, Charles was horrified by the huge utilities bills. Quorum are in many ways a typical small/medium business, with around 14 employees. However, their software development and customer's server hosting activities mean that around 11 servers are humming away 24/7.

So lets assume that the energy consumed by a server, all its attached paraphernalia, and the cooling required to ensure that the server room doesn't turn into a Turkish sauna, is about 200 Watts. With 11servers, and electricity at around 12p per kWh, then Charles could be shelling out about £2500 per year on the leccy bill just to run the servers!

This may not be the biggest bill in running a successful enterprise, but it is clearly efficacious to contain it and perhaps take steps to reduce these operating costs.

So it was that Charles and I cooked up a project to examine how software technology could help the typical small/medium business to reduce energy costs and impact the bottom line.

I have donated an Efergy device, which Quorum will be using to baseline the energy costs of running their server infrastructure. Then over the coming months, Charles will investigate the following:

  • looking closely at each server to understand what it is doing and when it is fully utilised - using Microsoft System Center tools
  • taking advantage of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology to "virtualise" servers where possible to reduce the number of servers
  • utilising management software tools like Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager to bring virtual servers online only when needed

Charles will be reporting back through the pages of Technology Trumpet....watch this space.