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The Current State of Green Computing |
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Written by Scott Herold
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Friday, 02 May 2008 |
The idea of green computing has generated a lot of interest in quite a few organizations. The marketing money that VMware has been throwing at it is actually quite impressive. A quick trip to VMware's website, and one can easily see that green computing is a primary focus for them. Anyone who has been out to their Palo Alto location knows that they spent a lot of money building an entirely energy efficient 5-building campus...and it is a beautiful campus at that. I've done quite a bit of research in this area, and one of the disturbing trends that I have seen is that "Green Computing" or "Lower Power Consumption" is extremely low on everyone's virtualization priority list.
Applying achem's razor to this trend, I can only assume this isn't a primary driver for virtualization simply because it costs money. To truly enter green computing and take it to the extreme that VMware has will put a dent in any organizations pocket book. Let's face it, most organizations are in the business of making money, not going out of their way to spend an excess of it. If a company can shave a few dollars off their budget and kill a few trees or pump out some more pollution in the process, most won't bat an eye twice. Hell, my wife's cousin went to school for environmental science and what was her first job out of college? Finding out how much pollution an energy company can pump out before they break the law (The energy company put a much better spin on it, but it's the sad truth). Even with energy companies in California and the UK offering discounts and rebates to their environmental friendly customers, people are just doing the bare minimum to get their money and make sure they come out as much ahead as possible.
I am hoping that more states start to introduce these incentives, as I think it will truly open more people up to the idea of green computing. Organizations also need to start thinking outside the datacenter and look at ways they can inexpensively introduce more energy efficient ways to operate. Below, I've taken the time to introduce a few products and resources that I either use or have an interest in using that can push the idea of green computing a little further without breaking the bank. I would love to see what other products are available or other resources people use. Go ahead and post your comments.
Website - http://www.greenercomputing.com/ - As much information on green computing as one can find on the web. They also have a lot of partner sites that focus on other areas of being more environmentally friendly.
VMware DPM - http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/drs.html - Distributed Power Management (DPM) was introduced in ESX 3.5 with experimental support and works with a limited amount of hardware right now. With VMware's green push, don't expect this to remain experimental for long. Look for third party vendors to further enhance this technology as well.
APC Switched Rack PDU - http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=70 - The intention of this device is to give remote hard power off capability to a server administrator. I use it for that purpose, but it is to shut down my lab environment when I'm not using it. Instead of walking the 30 ft. into the basement to power them off manually, I simply click a mouse button and can shut down any server I am not using. The next time I need a server, I simply power it back up.
Choose Renewables Energy Saving Power Strips - https://www.chooserenewables.com/xcart/home.php?cat=268 - This is easily the coolest, cheapest, easiest way to save money in my list. I bought one of these as a work experiment just to see how well it worked on my home desktop and ended up buying several more. There is a master control outlet, and when a significant power drop occurs to that control outlet (such as powering off your desktop), anything else plugged in also has it's power completely cut. This includes my two monitors and speakers. It also has "always hot" outlets so my desk phone still works and my cell phone still charges. This prevents increased energy usage through "phantom/vampire power". Even in energy savings mode, devices still draw electricity. Imagine placing these at employee desks instead of a traditional surge protector and using a product such as say....ScriptLogic Desktop Authority to manage enterprise nightly shutdown policies.
ScriptLogic Desktop Authority - http://scriptlogic.com/Power_Management.asp - Giving a shout out to some fellow members of the Quest Software family. Their Desktop Authority product can provide organizations unique ways to increase their ROI through energy efficiency. We all know no one ever shuts down their desktop computers before they leave the office for the day, and Desktop Authority can help implement a standard policy through Group Policy. |
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