Bladewatch.com

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7403

Which has a larger carbon footprint: your neighbor’s gas guzzling SUV or the server in your machine room? The answer might surprise you. In a recent report from the Global Action Plan, the average server has a larger annual carbon footprint than an SUV getting 15 MPG. Information technology accounts for about the same percentage of worldwide carbon emissions (3%) as the airline industry, which gets beat up regularly for it’s role in global warming.

This won’t come as a surprise to data center managers. As I reported a few years ago data center power requirements have increased seven fold (20W/sq. foot to 140W/sq. foot) over the last seven years.

I wonder if we’re going to see more talk about the effect of IT on the environment, on the carbon footprint of the pc, the server and the data center? Do we not need to approach the issue from a business, end user and service perspective? It’s easy for the government to legislate but often loop holes can be used, saying we should switch everything off isn’t the answer.

Using a combined approach in which we examine what it is we need from IT, how we can provide this to a high level of service whilst minimizing the carbon footprint has to be the way forward.

For example in the enterprise, can we not have the pcs switch off overnight?

Or when they’re not being used on our desktop grid? Let’s not forget that on the grid as long as there is the server, or the box that accepts jobs, could this not trigger the wake on lan, the command right we have a job switch on the capacity needed? Maybe not right now, but in the future?

Or is the approach one in which we need to start thinking about the way we deploy and right our code? Could we be more efficient in the way we make calls/requests to the system?

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