Teradata has joined the long list of vendors all trying to “out-green” each other by increasing energy efficiency in the data centre with a product release promising a 75 per cent reduction in electricity use.
Announcing the availability of the Teradata 5500 server, the company’s A/NZ general manager, Noel Pettitt, said in addition to 75 per cent energy savings the product can also co-exist with multiple generations of Teradata servers, protecting previous investments.
Coexistence is the ability to allow multiple generations of servers, each with a different level of processing power, to be connected into the same Teradata system with each generation processing a balanced, proportionate level of system workload.
Pettitt said the 5500 uses 75 percent less electricity than the same Teradata servers released three to five years ago.
“That’s enough kilowatt-hours saved by one typical system to power 60 Australian homes for one year. In addition, the 5500 Server reduces the floor space requirement by approximately 66 per cent,” he said.
“By dramatically reducing energy usage for the same system performance, Teradata has also reduced associated data centre cooling and power delivery infrastructure costs by a similar ratio.
“Our patented cabinet door design provides a 30 per cent improvement in cabinet cooling efficiency over conventional cabinet door designs. “Cooling expenses are a major portion of data centre costs because cooling computer equipment can consume the same amount of energy as powering the equipment.”
Gartner group analyst Donald Feinberg said when IT executives are upgrading to new data warehouse servers, they shouldn’t have to swap out all of their older servers to introduce new technology.
The ability of older servers to successfully integrate with new servers would be at the top of my list to consider before selecting a data warehousing vendor,” he added. The 5500 server can grow from a small powerhouse of hundreds of gigabytes up to 4 petabyte-sized warehouse.