Energy efficient network equipment for data centers

The dynamic development of IT performance combined with a growing demand of ICT services in public and private sectors is resulting in an increasing energy consumption of centralized IT equipment in data centers. Nevertheless, energy efficiency measurements for data centers today are still focusing mainly on cooling and power supply infrastructure. Therefore, the main goal of the Intelligent Energy Europe project PrimeEnergyIT is to enhance the market demand for energy efficient IT in data center, including server, storage and network equipment as well as new cooling and power management technologies. Compared to server and storage equipment the energy consumption allocated to networking equipment has a rather low impact with approximately 8 to 12 percent of the total data centers. With respect to the ongoing tremendous shift towards a centralized production of applications through the implementation of new concepts, such as e “cloud computing” or virtualization, this will result in increased traffic volumes and performance requirements. This paper will present horizontal approaches as well as equipment related aspects to reduce the power consumption of data center networks.