It's easy to dismiss the current trend toward all things "green" as a fad. After all, smaller cars and solar panels sprouted up everywhere during the energy crisis of the 1970s only to disappear all but completely within 20 years.

This time might be different. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts rising energy prices for the next 25 years, which for many IT professionals means the rest of their careers. Energy supplies are down and demand is up, and there's little on the horizon to expect that's going to change.

Unless you were prescient enough to see just how bad the current energy crunch was going to be, you're probably surprised by what you're paying for power and that, in turn, is impacting your business. Not only are you spending more money to power your servers, but you're spending money to combat the heat those servers generate. Energy costs are likely cutting into your ability to expand your IT operations because expansion means adding to the problem.

IDC examined the impact that rising energy costs have on data center servers and found that over the next two years you're going to spend $0.70 in power and cooling for every $1 spent on hardware. Over the next five years it's likely your energy costs could end up exceeding your hardware costs.

The goal for data centers that are struggling under the weight of energy costs should be to trim those costs, or at least improve the performance they get for their current energy consumption, while at the same time freeing up energy, funding, and physical space to allow future expansion.

Economic analysts at IBM estimate the typical 25,000 square foot data center spending $2.6 million on energy each year can save 50 percent using green technologies and employing server consolidation. High-performance, energy-efficient System x servers from IBM with Intel Xeon processors are designed to help keep a lid on energy costs and promote consolidation.

When the Flintshire County Council in the U.K. wanted to take a proactive stance on climate change in addition to meeting its statutory obligations to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, it removed a total of 80 physical servers from its infrastructure by virtualizing them to VMware partitions on six IBM System x3950 servers.

Flintshire implemented four IBM System x3950 servers, currently running a total of 40 VMware servers. A further two x3950 M2s are now being implemented in preparation for new workload – a major, 500-user social care system and a new payroll solution for 7,500 direct employees.

“Our aim has always been to create a highly available, flexible and scalable architecture to support a growing range of services and ever increasing user expectations," said John Thomas, Operational Services Manager. "We achieve this goal largely through virtualization, which cuts power consumption and carbon emissions, and significantly reduces the amount of hardware we need to buy, run, and ultimately dispose of.”

When Intel Xeon processors are added to System x servers several microarchitecture innovations also help improve efficiency. The new 45nm process technology delivers higher levels of performance and density with fewer cooling challenges. An L2 cache of up to 128MB stores large data sets close to the processor for immediate computing availability and reduced cache misses. Intel Xeon processors can also turn cache devices on when necessary, and advanced logic reduces processor energy consumption to only 16 watts when the server is idle.

IBM offers a number of other energy-efficient features for customers who choose their System x server wisely. You can choose low-power 1Gb technology DDR II DIMMs on select systems instead of the more power-hungry Fully Buffered DIMMs. The difference could be substantial because memory consumes 35 to 40 percent of data center power. Or take your hard drive down an inch from a 3.5-in. drive to a 2.5-in. drive (available on many System x servers) and conserve 40 percent on energy.

With IBM Calibrated Vectored Cooling, only those fans in a critical "cooling zone" switch to full speed when temperatures in that zone rise. By cooling hotspots without requiring every fan to run at full speed, less energy is consumed. The IBM Rear Door Heat eXchanger uses a sealed-coil chilled-water line to absorb heat before it exits the rack and removes it from the data center. It can eliminate up to 55 percent of the heat from a fully populated rack.

Software can also help battle rising energy costs. IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager is provisioning software that allows you to monitor power usage hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, and use the data to cap power and thermal limits at the system or rack level.