Something that factors into OpEx budgets are the ongoing costs of power. It is often forgotten about or not considered in a lifecycle of a device but can have a large impact on ongoing revenue and budgets. With the launch of ACI, Cisco has pushed the affordability of the Nexus 9000 series to new levels making it in reach of more customers than ever. The Lippis report commissioned by Cisco, delivered a test to look at the loading of the Nexus 9000 to maximum capacity and focused on the power usage of the platform.
It details the three year cost of a full populated Nexus 9508. An interesting take away is this particular passage.
The three-year cost to power the Cisco
Nexus® 9508 is estimated at $16,208
when fully populated with 1,152 10GbE
ports. The three-year energy cost is
some 3.52% of list price.
Having a deterministic spend pattern allows financial transparency and forecasting. This is something that traditionally has been hard for IT departments and have had some elasticity with money.
In modern data centres customers are trying to reduce footprints, increase reuse and improve return on investment. Strong savings in power expenditure allows for a reallocation of funds to other opportunities. All of this increases the value proposition of the Nexus 9000 series switches.
Read more about the Nexus 9000 and its power consumption with the Lippis Report.
I’ll admit that power hasn’t been my strong suit. I bet it is overlooked too many times. I’ve been on the lookout for great power resources that begin with the basics. More like a power requirements 101.