The System z10 Enterprise Class—equivalent to approximately 1500 Intel x86 servers
IT people like to hang out at Starbucks discussing things that really matter, such as what Russia is doing in Georgia, or what the utilization numbers look like for the company’s servers. The sad reality is 
that most servers are provisioned with way more hardware than they need for the job. They may see occasional usage spikes, but the CPU is usually just havin’ a bud. This is mostly due to the secret desire of every nerd to own the baddest, most awe-inspiring box on the planet. (This is second only to their fascination with robots.)
Now, there are really only a few ways you can justify all that muscle (without actually disclosing the real purpose):
- Slap a database on it. It’s a well-known fact that the average database needs at least 8 cores and 32 GB of RAM.
- Use it to run Ruby on Rails. Or Twitter.
- Sell the extra capacity, kind of like what Amazon does.
- Find more users. Unfortunately, this would require more work and less time playing WoW.
But should you even care that your systems are underutilized? Jeffrey Birnbaum, CTO at Merrill Lynch, has spoken out about better datacenter utilization. However, he warns against using more than about 80% of your resources, saying that this would leave your system unprepared for “unexpected circumstances”. This is good advice.
So, if striving for 100% efficiency is a bad thing for servers, what makes business managers think that it is somehow a good thing for people? Any real business has customers. And customers are the very definition of unexpected circumstances. Not to mention what your competitors might pull out of the hat. Organizations need to chill out a bit, just like their servers. There is no other way to remain agile and flexible.
When was the last time you heard some business leader say they wanted their organizations to be slower and less innovative? That they would rather not respond effectively to changing markets, thank you very much. Oh yes, and could my competition please come kick the crap out of me, please?
Forget about it. Stop stressing about keeping everyone working 100% of the time, and you may just find that people actually have more time to think about better ways of doing things. They won’t burn out. They might actually get some sleep once in a while instead of guzzling Red Bull all day.
And, ironically, they may just get more done.
P.S. - For further reading on the subject, I highly recommend The Goal and Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
