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Internet search and media company Ask.com has begun working with computer maker Dell Inc. to develop  custom energy efficient servers destined for use in large data centers, where thousands of computers work collectively to meet the huge demands placed on the company's search engine. The two companies have succeeded in cutting server energy usage by up to 30 percent, and with each watt expended becoming more important than ever in the huge data centers being used by search engines and other large Web sites, the achievement may represent one area in which a company such as Ask.com can have as much success as industry leader Google. Working With Dell Oakland, California-based Ask.com is one of the clients participating in a program Dell launched earlier this year which is aimed at large companies buying more than 1,000 servers each quarter. Dell and Ask.com have worked together to create custom servers designed for the specific needs of the search company's software applications, with energy efficiency or "sustainable IT" chief among the concerns from the start. Hardware Specific to Applications The partnership between Ask.com and Dell has resulted in custom servers containing individual components matched to the needs of the search company's application, affecting the servers' layouts including:  | Power supply size and redundancy | | | Hard drive capacities | | | Memory capacities | | | Processor type and speed | By tuning the components that comprise a server destined for a cluster computing environment, sometimes known as "cloud computing," extras which will never be used are eliminated and the core hardware is optimized for low power consumption. Ask.com, which also operates the Excite, Evite and Bloglines services, sees advantages in cutting server power requirements. "The box comes in at a much lower price because it only has the components that are required to support each application," according to Ask.com's senior vice president of operations Mark Stockford in a recent ComputerWorld article. Following in Google's Footsteps Some among those in the industry see Dell's new program for large volume clients as a cost-effective way to  follow the path of Google and to make energy efficient servers a part of financially successful data centers. "Google has been very successful at it, and I think Dell is making a bet that this statistically driven deployment model can be commercialized successfully," said analyst Charles King of Hayward, California company Pund-IT Inc., who also told ComputerWorld that the Dell program represents a new "Googlization of the data center." Google is known to built its own custom servers for the many data centers it operates throughout the world, however detailed information from either the search leader or Ask.com is not available, as an air of secrecy surrounds the custom applications running on the servers. It has been estimated that only labor exceeds the cost of operating a data center, to cutting power usage and subsequent energy costs can help a company financially. Ask.com Cuts Server Power Usage By 30 Percent Fine tuning a servers performance for specific distributed applications may save both energy and money, and at the recent Interop IT conference in New York, Chris Loeffler, a product manager at Eaton Electrical, spoke about how easy it might be to take advantage of significant savings in both areas. "There's some low hanging fruit to be had," Loeffler said according to a recent InformationWeek article, going on to outline seven steps companies can take to more their data centers more energy efficient, including: | | Turning off unused systems | | | Utilizing virtual machines | | | Taking advantage of blade servers | | | Making sure existing hardware power management features are activated | | | Switching to more efficient power supplies | | | Keeping servers cool | | | Tracking and auditing data center facilities | As data centers become larger and Web-based applications more robust and processor-intensive, paying attention to the benefits of fine tuning each server component for maximum energy efficiency may become more important. Related Links:
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11:20 am on Nov. 2, 2007 (utc 0)