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August 8, 2008
• Vol.30 Issue 32
Page(s) 12 in print issue
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Tips For Saving Energy
Experts Suggest Techniques For Conserving Power In The Enterprise
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 When you put together your fiscal 2008 IT budget, you may not have been anticipating gas prices jumping to nearly $5 a gallon and a spike in electricity costs (in large part due to transporting coal and other resources). Even if you did account for these increases, you probably are looking for ways to cut your energy bill even a little bit. Here are a few tips either to get you started or help you along in your quest to save energy and cut costs.
 Consolidate & Analyze Data
Nowadays data centers are increasingly flooded with heterogeneous data sources and data types, and too often IT departments fail to properly consolidate, analyze, and manage this data in a centralized, integrated fashion. As a result, it is often difficult to search for data, report on data, and ultimately make informed, high-impact business decisions from that data, says Erik Swan, CTO of IT search solutions provider Splunk (www.splunk.com).
Not only do you have to account for the electricity for network and cooling systems, you are dealing with all the information coming from your servers, increasingly sophisticated infrastructure systems that oftentimes fail to produce much in the way of information, and the fact that a bunch of different people all view this disparate data from different perspectives.
Swan recommends deploying an IT search tool that can assist you in understanding the relationships between application workloads throughout the day and their heat generation and power consumption. “These relationships mean IT departments can now understand how to more effectively partition processes on servers; deploy servers within the data center; and provide chargeback to customers, whether external or internal, for their specific power usage and heat generation, incentivizing them to reduce loads, smooth out peak usage, and reallocate resource utilization,” says Swan.
According to Swan, the net goal of using IT search is giving data center managers a holistic view of their entire operations, helping them more effectively use costly and scarce resources and reduce their impact on the environment.
Implement Power Management Features
Nick Cavalancia, IT management expert at Windows network management solutions provider ScriptLogic (www.scriptlogic.com), recommends checking to see whether the IT management solutions you use offer power management features.
“In addition to the conservation of energy, power management of desktop computers can save organizations tens of thousands of dollars per year,” Cavalancia says. “This often-overlooked cost savings can significantly reduce [your] total cost of desktop ownership throughout the desktop life cycle and leave more money in the budget for green technology.”
According to Cavalancia, the state of Delaware found that employee morale improved because state workers said they liked that their employer was doing something about energy issues. And higher morale tends to boost productivity, which potentially can lead to even bigger gains for your organization, albeit ones that are more qualitative than quantitative in nature.
Use Virtualization
“One of the core benefits of virtualization—server consolidation and containment—is that companies can squeeze multiple application and operating system workloads on the same server,” says Josh Leslie, director of alliances at VMware (www.vmware.com). "As you might expect, this dramatically reduces server count and has a transformational impact on IT energy consumption, often reducing server energy cost and consumption by 70 to 90%. We estimate that for every server virtualized, customers can save about 7,000 kilowatt hours, or four tons of CO2 emissions, every year.”
If you have already deployed some form of virtualization in your data center, you can increase energy efficiency even further by implementing distributed power management, says Leslie. If you presently consolidate 10 servers onto two physical machines to run your applications, for example, you might consider powering down to one physical server at night, when you have fewer applications to run.
Turn Off Unused Equipment
You can save up to 66% of your organization’s normal power consumption by shutting down office hardware, such as client PCs, monitors, and printers, during your off hours, says Dave Lobato, environmental program manager at HP Imaging and Printing Group (www.hp.com).
Jim Alves, executive vice president at IT automation solutions provider Kaseya (www.kaseya.com), says that you can calculate the amount you are contributing to your organization’s energy savings by using statistics from Ohio University’s “Green” Computing Guide (www.facilities.ohiou.edu/greenpc). Among its findings: A computer continuously running emits 2,161 pounds of carbon dioxide per year and costs about $45 per year to power. In contrast, a PC running eight hours a day saves you about $30 a year. If you’re running 200 client computers, that savings translates to about $6,000 a year.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle in implementing something so basic will be your employees, many of whom may not be cognizant of the potential energy savings in shutting off client systems. Sending around an email—or three—telling them to shut off inactive hardware should be sufficient for most people. Or you can use IT automation software (see the “Automation Is The Key” sidebar for more information).
Revise Your Print Setting
Lobato also recommends making duplex printing the standard setting on your printers. Not only does duplex printing save on paper, which uses fossil fuels to be made from trees, you use less energy by halving the number of times (when possible) you need to ramp up the printer. Over time, that energy savings will add up. 
by Robyn Weisman
Best Tip: Automation Is The Key
Jim Alves, executive vice president at IT automation solutions provider Kaseya (www.kaseya.com), recommends using IT automation software to power down PCs, servers, and other networked devices in an efficient fashion. According to Alves, IT automation software supplements data center initiatives by using technology, such as setting and managing power policies, on remote desktops and laptops.
“Combined with technologies . . . to get around the standby dilemma, IT professionals at [SMEs] are able to remotely power off computers and promote energy efficiency during nonproductive hours,” Alves says.
Moreover, automation software can also power on machines to conduct routine off-hour IT tasks, Alves says. “This helps organizations implement ‘best practices’ for green IT within their companies, yet allows them to service and support their equipment,” he says. |
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