US EPA Publishes Paper on Energy Savings from Energy Star-Qualified Enterprise Servers Running Windows Server 2008 R2

I’ve posted about power management and Windows Server before so you may recall that one of our goals for Windows Server 2008 R2 was to enhance power management.  You might also remember that R2 can help improve power efficiency by up to 18% over Windows Server 2003 running on the same hardware.  Now there’s another data point available on the potential of R2 to help save power.   

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a paper last week on Enterprise Servers which discusses the results of some recent power efficiency tests comparing an HP server from a few years ago running Windows Server 2003 with a modern Energy Star-Qualified HP server running Windows Server 2008 R2.  A few highlights from the website and paper:

• In some of these tests, the new ENERGY STAR server consumed 54% less power than the older model servers and OS.
• The power savings also come with a substantial increase in performance – at 50% utilization, for example, the newer, more energy-efficient server and OS handle over three times the work, thereby helping reduce the number of systems needed to support a given workload.
• The total savings over the useful lifetime of a server is estimated at between $480 and $1,440 per server.

Several major OEMs, including HP who contributed to the testing as discussed in the paper, have now released servers which have obtained the Enhanced Power Management Additional Qualifier during their Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2 logo certification (http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/).  These servers work with Windows Server to improve power efficiency “out of the box” without requiring manual configuration, provide additional power monitoring capabilities, and even enable power budgeting.

R2 offers the possibility to impact the environment – and costs – in a worthwhile way, whether your organization is large or small.  And now you can read more about the potential for power savings from the EPA.

Dan Reger
Senior Product Manager, Windows Server