Banking giant Goldman Sachs is planning to joint Google and Facebook in using custom web servers with on-board batteries to improve energy efficiency, according to blogsite Data Center Knowledge

 

Goldman vice president David Schirmacher told a conference last week that “servers with batteries” was an emerging trend.

 

“That’s one of the areas we’ve been focusing on. Everyone knows what Google has done with their custom servers… We have some teams working on this,” he said.

 

Google uses a custom web server using a 12 volt battery which shifts the UPS and battery backup functions “from the data center into the server cabinet,” eliminating much of the loss from the power conversion.

 

Google cites this as a key factor in it’s the energy-efficient performance of its data centers, with Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of between 1.1 and 1.2.

 

Facebook is also planning to introduce on-board batteries, which it believes will cut the energy loss during power distribution from the 35% currently to about 15%.

 

Schirmacher said traditional designs were an inefficient use of capital “because they build the reliability into the data center, which is an expensive long-term asset.”

 

A better approach would be to distribute the reliability across servers, which were cheaper assets that were regularly refreshed.