When building our hyper energy-efficient data center, CIX we used many strategies to lower our carbon footprint. One such strategy was to source energy efficient infrastructure, such as the GE Super ECO UPS’.
However, obviously one place we chose poorly was in our switches. We went for Cisco switches. Why was that a poor choice?
I just recently came across the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator. This document does a direct comparison of the power ratings, energy efficiency, and carbon footprint of Nortel vs. the equivalent Cisco kit. The independently verified results are astounding.
As Nortel’s Enterprise Director - Tony Rybczynski put it:
on Green networking (50% less energy consumption), on performance (20x better), on reliability (7x the resilience) and on TCO (50% reduction) of our networking solutions,
Increasingly people make sourcing decisions, not only on reliability but on operating costs. With the increasing costs of energy, the amount of power consumed over the lifetime of a device will be a crucial factor in which equipment is chosen.
Good for the bottom line, good for the planet.
Via James
2 Comments
Sorry you didn’t find out about the energy efficiency savings until it was too late. We’re trying to get the message out to the masses, but Cisco’s already in full damage control on this topic…as can be seen with this recent exchange: http://blogs.nortel.com/buzzboard/2008/05/06/nortels-energy-efficiency-claims-come-under-attack/
Tom:
The thing to bear in mind is that these numbers reflect switches plugged in, but not connected to anything (i.e. not forwarding packets). For more info on how switches perform under load and on an award Cisco recently received for energy efficiency of its switches, check out my blog post: http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/2008/05/power_pickups_and_polar_bears_1.html
Omar Sultan
SMM - Data Center Switching
Cisco
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