On Fri, 19 Jun 2009, Mark R. Lindsey wrote: > 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).
so this is a little over $1k/year per server. your mid-range server probably cost at least $3k, and with a 3 year replacement cycle the cost of the server itself works out to a similar recurring price. David Lang > [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/
