[dba-Tech] Server with low power consumption

Hi all

Has anyone worked seriously with minimizing power consumption of small
servers?

Here, charges for electricity has reached a new high at about
$0.35/€0.25 per kWh. This means that power costs for a machine using
200W running continuously will reach $610/€430 per year. No kidding.

Thus, for ourselves and a couple of clients, we are trying to work out
any model for reducing these costs while, of course, not losing features
or services.

One method is easy: Replace existing servers with new models using less
power.

However, that is not enough. Other ideas are:

1. Move services to "the cloud". 
This cuts power costs as well as machine inventory costs to zero but
introduces new costs for rental of CPU time and probably higher speed
bandwidth of internet connections.

2. Introduce standby methods for servers.
Quite often servers are idle at night or most of the night. But is the
OS (typical Windows) able to set the machine at some standby level while
keeping it responsive?

3. Introduce shut-down of servers.
If OS permits, shut down the server after some time of inactivity.
Power must be turned on by a remote call of Wake-up-LAN which most
machines are capable of.

4. Move server OS to laptops. 
Laptops are per definition built to consume as little power as possible
and do have all sorts of hardware that can control or be controlled to
use only the power needed. As an additional bonus, laptops have built in
emergency power supply (the battery).

If any of you have had similar considerations and/or practical
experiences implementing these, I would be pleased to learn.

/gustav