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So each year, the company is sending 1000 PCs and 200 servers to be repurposed or
recycled. Those machines will be replaced by 500 PCs, 500 thin clients, and 144 blade
servers—all Energy Star rated.
The old fat clients cost US$61,800 to power over 3 years. By switching over to new
machines, the company will spend US$1650 to power the thin clients and US$13,900 to
power servers, for a total of US$15,550, or a total savings of 75 percent.
The servers will be a different story. Efficiencies will vary by server, but let’s consider a
conservative estimate of a 25-percent power savings per blade. Aperture Science, Inc. stands
to save a lot of money with the new blade servers. In the past, each server consumed 280 W.
The new blade servers will consume 218 W. That doesn’t sound like a massive difference,
but remember, the company is reducing about 25 percent of the total servers, from 1,000 to
720. Over the span of 3 years, Aperture Science, Inc. will save US$120,825 in power costs.
Not only is the company saving money on power consumed, it’s also saving money in
cooling (about US$60,300). What’s more, the amount of datacenter space it needs for its
servers will drop from 1200 square feet to 540 square feet.
Additionally, the company will see cost savings in software licensing fees, and
management costs are going to be greatly reduced. Savings will come in many guises. Some
will be easy to compute, others will be more fuzzy. Table 8-5 enumerates the cost savings as
well as shows some savings that will differ across organizations depending on their needs
and utilization. PART III

Savings
Description Estimate Comments
Moving from rack-mounted 25 percent Generally speaking, a company can reduce about
servers to blades 25 percent of its server farm by switching to
blades.
Floor space for blade servers 45 percent Blade servers will take up a little more than half
vs. rack-mounted servers the space of existing rack servers.
Powering blade servers 25 percent Rack-mounted servers consume about 280 W,
vs. rack-mounted servers whereas blades consume 218 W.
Thin-client power consumption 85 percent Thin clients (with a monitor) consume as little
vs. fat-client consumption as 24 W, whereas fat clients (with a monitor)
consume 170 W.
Energy Star–rated monitors 92 percent Energy Star monitors save power because of
vs. conventional monitors hardware considerations and also software
settings.
Energy Star–rated computers 55 percent Energy Star computers save power because
vs. conventional computers of hardware considerations and also software
settings.
Organizational savings Varies Organizations will save money in such areas
as software license fees, management, repair,
cooling, and so forth.

TABLE 8-5 Electricity and Money Can Be Saved in Several Ways