Are Vampire Servers Silently Sucking Up Your Data Center Power Supply?

Halloween is nigh, which means data center administrators need to be on guard against the multitude of threats lurking in the server room, which are capable of inflicting harm on business operations.

For example, your data center infrastructure may be eerily like Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from multiple vendors, each with different power draws. Or, you may be using ancient equipment whose vendor support has long since expired.

But if there’s one spook you need to beware of above all else, it’s “vampire” servers (queue the organ music).

What are vampire servers? They’re unused servers that remain powered on, silently sucking up your data center’s power supply without contributing in any positive way. In fact, most of the time they sit idle in your server room completely unnoticed.

Just try to name how many idle servers are currently running in your department. If you’re like most network administrators, you’ll find it difficult to answer this question because you don’t have the necessary data.  

So, how can you defeat vampire servers in your data center? No clove of garlic will help. The only way to avoid this problem is to invest in a real-time data center power monitoring solution, which can track and report the power draw of each individual rack to a centralized hub. Using this data, you can identify which servers are wasting your power and can be turned off.

Watch the video: 6 Reasons Why Every Data Center Manager Should Be Using Sentry Power Manager 6.0

Have a happy Halloween!