In a recent article that I read in Information week, Microsoft has stated that Windows Server 2008 cuts power consumption by 10% over the previous Windows Server 2003 operating system.  Server administrators and financial officers the world over will be ecstatic to find that the newest enterprise-class server operating system from Microsoft running with 20 active clients could save around $30 in power costs over the course of a year.  Wow!

Now you may not think that $30 is all that exciting.  At first glance I didn't.  Then I did the math.  My current employer has about 120 Windows 2003 servers.  With that many servers saving $30 per year, an upgrade to the new OS could save us $3600.  Against our million dollar operating budget - that's huge.  Ok, while I may be exaggerating a bit, savings are savings.  In today's corporate cut-throat world, and with the soaring cost of electricity, every penny counts.  What's more, you will be doing your part to green up the earth and ease the stress on the electricity networks during peak load times.

The article also speaks to virtualization as a means to save money on power consumption.  Hold on there cowboy!

In theory, running multiple server instances on one box equates to power consumption for one server, and the rest are virtually free.  Hmmm wouldn't the hardware be required to do more work, thus increasing the power consumption requirements?  That is absolutely correct.  Tack onto that the increase overhead of virtualization which includes added complexity, additional support staff, increased downtime, exponential growth in risk factor, and decreased performance.  Virtual doesn't look so appealing after all.

All in all, I wouldn't rush out to buy Server 2008 for the power savings.  I would recommend it for all of the other great stuff it provides over the previous family of Windows Server products.  You can read about some of the great reasons to upgrade at Microsoft's Why Upgrade? site.