According to a study in 2007 by Professor Jonathan Koomey of Stanford University found that due to the virtualization of servers power consumption should still increase. In his report in 2010 all data center power was consuming 1.7 to 2.2 percent of total electricity used in America as opposed to 1.1 to 1.5 worldwide. These numbers were far less than his original predictions in 2007. With these numbers I can believe we are going in the right direction but how do we keep this up?

Monitoring your electricity consumption through a Power Monitor Sensor is a great way to stay on top of your carbon foot print. With the Power Monitor Sensor connected through a Security Probe you can be alerted of any spikes in power via MMS, SMS, SNMP traps and email.

It is also great to trend your power consumption to see how you can cut your power bill. You can do this with a performance trending software that has the ability to graph SNMP at your fingertips.

So there you have it. If we stay vigilant with our power consumption than we can save the world some major power and save you some coin in your pocket.

Voltage monitoring should be a concern. Why? Because your battery backup will only last so long and you need to know when / if they are being used. Below is a rough outline of a conversation I had recently with our network engineer during an ice storm:

Mike: Hello Tom, does the office have power?
Tom: I don’t know, let me check.
<60 seconds>
Tom: I can ping the server at the office so we must have power.
Mike: Ya but, is it on battery backup or does the office have power?
Tom: Ah, good question.

Thankfully, we had the voltage detector configured in our server room. Think of this sensor as sort of like those handy voltage sensors you keep in the house to see if you are getting power from an outlet.

Monitoring power consumption is a smart idea. If your data center goes down, even if it is only a couple of servers, a router and a switch, it could cost you serious money.

A good environmental monitoring solution should include power monitoring when it comes to the data center.

- Mike