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AOL Cuts Costs by Unplugging Servers

AOL has been in competition to save energy and introduce more efficient IT solutions. Uptime Institute, the sponsor of the race, has announced that AOL the winner, followed by NBC Universal, in the co...
AOL Cuts Costs by Unplugging Servers
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  • AOL has been in competition to save energy and introduce more efficient IT solutions. Uptime Institute, the sponsor of the race, has announced that AOL the winner, followed by NBC Universal, in the contest. The point of the competition was to illustrate the high cost of using outdated equipment and employing old fashioned solutions.

    In their efforts to compete, AOL shut down 9,484 servers throughout last year. Many contestants moved information to cloud solutions, switched to more efficient servers, and sent outdated equipment to the scrap and recycling piles. Overall though, it was the decommission of over a quarter of their servers that won AOL the prize.

    They saved $1.65 million in energy costs, $2.2 million in operating system licensing, $62,000 in maintenance costs, and generated over a million in scrap and recycling returns. Overall, they saved about $5 million.

    Take a look at the Video AOL put together to celebrate their win:

    The Uptime Institute commented on the power and value of the contest:

    “Decommissioning a single 1U rack server can result in $500 per year in energy savings, an additional $500 in operating system licenses, and $1,500 in hardware maintenance costs. That’s not chump change.”

    The contest ended on February 1st this year, but it took time to review the evidence and announce the results.

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