Computing at full capacity
Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 06:30
in Mathematics & Economics
Over 12 million servers in 3 million data centers in the U.S. burn about 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year. Billions of dollars are spent on data center energy every year, with billions more spent on power distribution and cooling infrastructures. Even with the magnitude of these numbers, energy and cooling represent only about 20 percent of the typical total cost of ownership of data centers, which is typically dominated by server hardware (about 40 percent) and software (about 25 percent) costs. Additional costs, including storage, networking, and information technology labor, further swell the price tag.