Datacenters bleed watts and cash – all because they're afraid to flip a switch

Datacenters are facing significant challenges with power consumption, leading to increased operational costs. According to the Uptime Institute, enabling built-in performance and power management features in modern systems could reduce energy usage by 25 to 50 percent. Specifically, activating OS-level governors and processor C-states can significantly lower idle power consumption. However, these features are often disabled by default due to concerns about performance instability and latency. Uptime's analyst Daniel Bizo argues that for most workloads, particularly those not sensitive to latency, enabling these features can yield substantial energy savings without significantly impacting performance. The report suggests that modern servers often operate at levels of performance that exceed what is necessary for acceptable service quality, leading to unnecessary energy waste. While there are trade-offs between power savings and performance, a combination of software and hardware controls can optimize energy efficiency. The findings indicate that focusing on power consumption rather than maximum performance could lead to more sustainable datacenter operations.

- Datacenters can reduce energy consumption by 25-50% by enabling power management features.

- Processor C-states can lower idle power consumption by nearly 20%.

- Many power-saving features are disabled by default due to performance concerns.

- Most workloads can benefit from power management without significant performance loss.

- A balanced approach using both software and hardware controls can optimize energy efficiency.