"Before, you just bought it; now, you look at the big picture," said the data center manager for the city of Virginia Beach, Va.. That means matching a chip's performance and energy requirement with its workload rather than just buying the fastest-performing chip in every instance, he said.

Raymond Sullivan, CIO for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Northwest Network in Portland, Ore., is also concerned about server heating and cooling.

Sullivan recently contacted Sun Microsystems Inc. about its new UltraSparc T1 chip, which has eight cores and uses 70 watts. Because of its relatively low energy use and performance, "we have a lot of interest in it," he said.

Considering consolidation

The federal agency's regional operation is considering consolidating 22 data centers into one primary center and a backup, Sullivan said.