We spent time a week or two ago at the AFCOM Data Center World and met up with a number of industry contacts and customers. As with most any show, it's always good to get in front of the people who may need your product to get a first hand account of their unique challenges.

Data Center World attracts facilities people, folks who build, cable, rack, power, and cool the data center. It's very interesting the various approaches to power, racking, cabling, and cooling of the data center that were presented. Many of the people I spoke to were concerned with meeting the increased demands on the data center, especially those who constructed new facilities to meet the ever increasing demand for space, power, and cooling.

What surprised me, though, was consistent focus on increasing supply, as opposed to consideration of how they could become more efficient in their use of the assets they already have in their possession. eWeek this month covered a Google discussion on data center efficiency which stated that it costs $10-22 per watt to build a data center, and CNET coverage reminded us that the cost of power will outweigh the cost of the underlying server.

Let's see, $10-22 per watt to build a data center, $3000 to power a low end server over the next 4 years, yet the industry still averages 15% utilization rates on servers.

In California, The California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed a rule in 2005 limiting "unnecessary idling" of heavy-duty trucks to 5 minutes. With 15% server utilization averages still prevalent, is data center legislation far behind?

Coincidently, 5 minutes is about the time it takes for Scalent to repurpose a server.

The complexity and manual intervention previously associated with server repurposing have been resolved through software in various ways. For example, hypervisor solutions enable multiple virtual hosts to occupy a given piece of hardware, while collaboratively adaptive infrastructure software is available to repurpose hardware into service where and when needed.

Simply put, servers that are on should be busy; servers that are idle should be shut down until needed.

For us here at Scalent, it's second nature to consider a machine as a flexible resource. Scalent software can repurpose a server to physical machines, virtual machines or in between, enabling our customers to balance their environment, focus resources, and react faster when needed.

And, of course, end unnecessary idling.

So take 5 minutes. It's not a long time. And come chat.

-- Brian Korn, Director Marketing, April 2007