Dell Launches 'Energy Smart' Versions Of PowerEdge Servers

The reengineered servers are the Energy Smart PowerEdge 1950 and the Energy Smart PowerEdge 2950. Both are designed to deliver as much as 24% to 26% greater performance per watt.

"We've optimized the power draw on the servers themselves," says Jay Parker, director of PowerEdge servers for Dell. "Say you're crunching a back-end database. With this Energy Smart product, you can perform that task at the same rate you can with a Dell standard server or a competitive server but you're doing that using 25% less power."

That means an Energy Smart PowerEdge server could save up to $200 a year in power costs, Parker says. For a data center that runs 12,000 servers, that could mean up to $2.4 million in energy savings every year.

"The server is the fundamental building block of the data center," says Paker. "If your servers are not as efficient as they can be, you're in a situation where there's a ripple effect. If you have a server drawing more power and generating more heat, then the cooling equipment needs to work harder to cool that equipment. As a result, the cooling system has to draw more power. The server is the starting point."

To make the standard servers more energy efficient, Dell limited their configurations to the 2.33-GHz Intel Dual-Core Xeon low-voltage processor. On the standard servers, customers can buy more powerful processors.

"If you don't care about power but you need the ultimate in performance, then you might need a different processor than what we're offering," says Parker. "We offer it on the rest of the portfolio but not on the Energy Smart offering because it's not the most energy efficient."

For the Energy Smart models, Dell also changed the motherboard, making the voltage regulators more efficient. Low-flow fan technology also has been implemented so the fans will slow down if they don't need to spin at full speed to cool the systems down. They also added in high-efficiency power supplies and factory integrated BIOS and component specifications designed to increase air flow and efficiency.

Both servers now are available. The listed price for the Energy Smart PowerEdge 1950 is $2,449, and it's $2,619 for the Energy Smart PowerEdge 2950.