Government to power down computers overnight

July 17th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7511056.stm

The government hopes to be the first in the world to make its computer system “carbon neutral”.

The Cabinet Office hopes measures like switching off computers at night and making sure servers do not stand idle will save 117,500 tonnes of carbon.

Computer systems generate up to 20% of all carbon produced by government.

The environmental audit committee has warned that the government is “lagging behind” its own emissions targets and IT systems are among factors to blame.

Looking at the way you are providing the IT service can aid in reducing your operational costs, simple things like switching off the computers overnight might not only reduce the energy used, reduce the carbon footprint of your desktop systems.

You don’t necessarily need a product to achieve this, Microsoft’s shut down tools shutdown /l might just as effectively work as a scheduled task, with a setting in the bios to power the pc back up at 6 or 7am.

Switching off the pc’s at night might also reduce your support costs; through reducing known desktop issues that get logged to the helpdesk, that my pc is rebooted every night should reduce the number of calls like “password expired”, “computer slow”, “memory error “etc. The typical first line issues that might be prevented through more regular rebooting of the infrastructure.

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