On Jun 19, 2009, at 1:56 PM, Luke Quattrochi wrote: > And as we all know, power is pretty much the biggest recurring cost > any of us have these days....
Really? I would have thought that people were the biggest recurring cost. Koomey [1] reported recently that a a mid-range server uses 424 watts, on average, in the US. He also suggested that power and loss due to electrical distribution is roughly equal to actual server consumption, so that the total electrical power to run this server is 2.0*424 = 848 Watts/server. The US DOE reports that electrical prices vary a lot, but if we look in the mid-atlantic region of the US, it's $0.1299 / kWh for commercial power. [2] The average salary for a Systems Administrator is $69205 for 2008 [3]. I don't have a good source, but I'd guess that cost of employment overhead is around 50% (including benefits, management, vacation, office workspace, etc.); under that assumption, each "average" system admin costs $103808 / year to employ. At $0.1299 / kWh and 365.25*24=8766 Hours in a year, you buy power for 91 servers continuously for $103808 / year. If you have <91 servers per employee, then your employees are costing more than the electricity (if all these assumptions / guesses are right). [1] Koomey, Jonathan G., "Estimating Regional Powe Consumption By Servers: A Technical Note", http://enterprise.amd.com/Downloads/Technology/Koomey_Estimating.pdf [2] US Department of Energy, "Electric Power Monthly - Average Retail Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector, by State", http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html [3] Computerworld, "2008 Salary Survey", http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9119020 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
