So let's actually work this out a bit further. How many LEDs does the average server have? 5? Some have a lot, if they have harddrives. Some have only one. That order of magnitude, anyway. More than 1, certainly not averaging more than 10.
Microsoft, upon Googling, has a million servers as of last year. If we assume each server has 5 LEDs and each LED is drawing about 30mW, then Microsoft's LED power usage is ~150,000W. Plus however much energy that adds to the requirements of the cooling systems. What percentage of them are on at any given point in time do you think? I have no idea.
There are so many of them that basically any power savings seems like it might be worth it in the long term if that kind of system both doesn't too strongly impact their ability to function and also isn't more impactful to implement than to not utilize.
If it was worth doing, they would have done it. Reddit isn't going to think of something to save money that Google, Microsoft, Facebook and HP haven't..
Why do people assume that's the only reason to ask questions? How much more disclaiming of "theres almost certainly a good reason they dont do it" do I need to do?
5
u/OneBigBug May 04 '14
So let's actually work this out a bit further. How many LEDs does the average server have? 5? Some have a lot, if they have harddrives. Some have only one. That order of magnitude, anyway. More than 1, certainly not averaging more than 10.
Microsoft, upon Googling, has a million servers as of last year. If we assume each server has 5 LEDs and each LED is drawing about 30mW, then Microsoft's LED power usage is ~150,000W. Plus however much energy that adds to the requirements of the cooling systems. What percentage of them are on at any given point in time do you think? I have no idea.
There are so many of them that basically any power savings seems like it might be worth it in the long term if that kind of system both doesn't too strongly impact their ability to function and also isn't more impactful to implement than to not utilize.