Teradata joins 'green IT' push

Stephen Withers
Monday, 20 August 2007 07:39

Business IT - Technology

Teradata claims its new server uses 75 percent less power than older generations.

"The efficiency of the Teradata 5500 Server will provide Teradata customers with up to a 75 percent reduction in electricity usage for the same capability data warehouse as compared to Teradata servers of three to five years ago," said Noel Pettitt, Teradata's general manager for Australia and New Zealand.

"That's enough kilowatt-hours saved by one typical system to power 60 Australian homes for one year. In addition, the 5500 Server reduces the floor space requirement by approximately 66 percent."

Apart from the raw energy savings compared with older models, an improved cabinet design is said to increase cooling efficiency.

Designed specifically for data warehousing, the high-availability Teradata 5500 server scales from hundreds of gigabytes to four petabytes. According to the company, it significantly improves customers' capability to handle vastly expanded data volumes, heavier decision-support demands and complex mixed workloads including deep analytics.

"The dual-core Intel Xeon [5100] chip set is much more efficient at data warehouse workloads, as compared to the scientific workload oriented Intel Itanium chip touted by some nascent data warehouse vendors," Pettitt asserted.