When does it make sense to upgrade to more efficient servers?

It is inevitable that today’s technology will become outdated tomorrow and will need to be replaced over time. You may find that your older servers lack the capacity and efficiency for today’s needs. But how do you know when it is time to upgrade or replace existing equipment?

Most data centers operate on a 3 to 5 year tech refresh cycle. Is this really the best way to decide when to refresh old equipment? Yes and no. By continuously monitoring the cost to run older equipment, you can determine when you have hit the break-even point with your existing servers. This is at the intersection of where the cost of powering the older, inefficient equipment exceeds the cost of investing in newer more efficient equipment.

By tracking the age, type, and energy efficiency of your equipment, you can replace the old equipment at the optimum time to reap the maximum benefits. These benefits include reducing the amount of power required to run your applications and bringing in newer equipment with higher performance and reliability. Bringing in new equipment allows you to scale up for the increasing IT demands.

Viridity recommends creating a list of the top power consuming IT assets - servers in particular - in your data center and evaluating their power efficiency. By starting with the largest and most inefficient power consumers, you maximize the ROI of your refresh project. This is difficult to establish by hand, so Viridity EnergyCenter provides an automated a list of the top power consumers in the data center and their corresponding utilization.