Archive for environment
May 13, 2008 at 10:47 pm · Filed under Other things, environment
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=
/www/story/04-22-2008/0004797293&EDATE=
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 22 /PRNewswire/ — Nearly two-thirds of IT and facilities personnel consider their data center energy efficiency “average” or worse — and their development and test environments might be the biggest cause of that, according to a survey conducted by Cassatt(R) Corporation, a leader in providing software to make data centers more efficient.
More than a quarter of survey respondents said that greater than 60 percent of their development and test servers are idle during off-peak hours. There is some good news, though: 62 percent are working on a data center energy-efficiency project now or expect to within the next year, according to the “Cassatt 2008 Data Center Energy Efficiency Survey.” And, contrary to conventional wisdom, 59 percent would consider turning off computers that are idle.
This article is a little old, but I was just doing some research on server utilization and came across it and thought it was relevant nonetheless. Thinking about your server utilization, about what systems (desktop/server/printer) need to be on for business to continue, and which ones can be shut down, can not only reduce your operational support costs, but reduce your energy costs. We can’t make big changes overnight, but examining what we can do within our operational/business constraints can still deliver/savings and (or) empowerment to the end user. That the desktops are rebooted should mean less calls, “my mouse is broken, my account’s locked out, Internet Explorer/Office freezes”, without necessarily causing that much disruption.
May 13, 2008 at 10:01 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference, environment
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com and http://www.intel.com
The Intel presentation was quite interesting in the respect that it highlighted the developments in energy efficient IT and how progress is being made in this area.
There was a mention of the power usage of a typical user, I’ve summarized this:
- 1015w - standard configuration pc with CRT screen
- 938w - if we swap the CRT for a TFT
- 655w - if we switch to a newer more energy efficiency processors
- 229w - if we use the newer more processors and enable power management
It illustrates how much of a difference can be made with small changes to system configuration, for example enabling power management, or even switching the pc off.
There was a great example showing two configurations:
2004
2007
As a result we have:
- Reduced floor space by 83%
- Reduced the energy cost by $53,000
- Uses 87% less power
There was also a presentation from Easystreet which talked about PUE, a very interesting concept which I hadn’t heard about. It’s a way of establishing how efficient your data center is. In summary, it’s:
- Total facility power/IT Equipment power=PUE
- The objective should e 1.0, the typical data center is 2.0
May 13, 2008 at 6:07 pm · Filed under Other things, environment
http://www.whatpc.co.uk/business-green/analysis/
2216332/transforming-footprints
Floods, droughts, food shortages and mass migration are just some of the consequences of climate change. The floods in the UK and the forest fires and hurricanes in the US provided a preview of the effects climate change could have on our planet. But financial services firms must start to think about how these physical threats will affect their ability to do business in the future. This article, the third in this series on environmental risk, looks at what the banks need to consider regarding their physical soundness and environmental policies.
Flooding and resulting power failure is perhaps the most immediate threat to financial services firms, particularly those in London. The recent threat of a tidal surge up the Thames and fears that the Thames Barrier could be overwhelmed, coupled with the extensive flooding in Gloucestershire and Yorkshire last year, have brought the importance of business continuity management into sharp relief for banks.
An interesting read, there are several drivers to reducing the energy consumption of the data center, and in improving IT infrastructure resilience.
From an energy efficiency standpoint, becoming more efficient is ever more important as the costs of energy continue to rise, as the availability of data center space falls and as the business requirements continue to change and become ever more time critical.
From a resilience as the IT becomes ever more integrated into the way we do business, not only do regulations and compliance require our systems be resilient, available in the event of a data center type failure, it’s becoming ever less acceptable. I (we) just expect it to work, as people become more computer literate, ‘the system is down’ response can be the difference between you using that service or switching to a competitor. If you can’t provide my mobile phone service and allow me to call to make changes to my account, I will find a provider that can.
May 13, 2008 at 4:19 am · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.bjhcim.co.uk/news/2008/n804036.htm
A poll of senior decision makers in European datacentre companies has found that environmental issues will grow in importance over the next two years, but that there needs to be clear industry standards to maintain the momentum.
Digital Realty Trust, an owner and manager of corporate and Internet gateway datacentres, has published a report entitled, “How Green is Green?” focused on determining the depth of the Green movement in the European datacentre market.
The release of the survey report follows the publication of a parallel study of the North American datacentre market. This European study is based on a recent poll of senior decision makers who are leaders in datacentres or influence significant decisions related to datacentre operations at large European companies. The surveyed companies come from a wide range of industries, a quarter of which are from financial related services.
Check out this article which is talking about the significance of environmental issues within the data center space. As the availability of data center space, and power/cooling continues to be an issue, the costs of purchase and operations rise, deploying more efficient technologies, or changing to a more efficient way of doing business becomes not only a corporate social responsbility thing, but a return on investment, an enabler to your business and a vehicle to reduce your operational costs, technical or non-technical.
May 13, 2008 at 4:13 am · Filed under environment
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2216354/bloggers-secure-victory-dell
The power of the blogosphere to instigate changes in firms’ environmental policies was again underlined last week after IT giant Dell responded to criticism of the packaging it uses to ship some products with a pledge to use smaller packages where possible.
On Earth Day last month, the company faced criticism from a number of influential blogs – including The Consumerist, Treehugger and Gizmodo – over its use of large packages to send relatively small items.
The blogs carried articles criticising the company’s wastefulness and photos of a 2GB USB stick that had been shipped to a customer in a box that is “about 100 times too big”.
The criticism prompted a response from Dell, which last week insisted that it had contacted the vendor responsible for shipping the USB stick and instructed it to cut the amount of packaging it uses. Dell also launched a new initiative to optimise packaging across its portfolio.
Well done to Dell on responding to comments regarding packaging.
I applaud the idea, of raising the issue with vendors, we can reduce packaging for products where necessary without necessarily incurring cost or complexities. It’s an industry wide issue particularly when you look at food, the ability and ease of recycling needs to be improved as well.
May 12, 2008 at 6:22 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=38449&hilite=
Europe’s second largest webhost, STRATO, today announced its membership in The Green Grid at the Sustain IT Conference in London. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems. In co-operation with leading IT companies such as AMD, Sun Microsystems and Cisco, STRATO strives to measure and improve energy usage in data centres. As one of the first European webhost companies to employ The Green Grid’s metrics in its data centre operations, STRATO has taken on a leading role in the industry.
”The Green Grid is pleased to welcome STRATO as a Contributor Member of the organization,” said Tom Brey, a director of The Green Grid. “STRATO’s knowledge and expertise in webhosting will be a great addition to the technical expertise within the organization and will further the mission of The Green Grid.”
STRATO has raised the energy efficiency per customer by 30% in only 18 months. Since January, its high-performance data centres have been powered by energy from renewable sources. “We have joined The Green Grid because we want to create a standardized label for energy efficiency in data centres,” said Damian Schmidt, CEO of STRATO. “We enable the customer to consciously choose an IT service provider. Green action counts, not green washing.”
Very cool, the more joining The Green Grid, the more we can continue the focus on communicating the energy efficient message and improve best practices and standards.
April 23, 2008 at 11:28 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/reviews_third.cfm?NewsID=55903
IT managers are in a pickle these days: according to a recent report by the Uptime Institute, nearly half of data center managers expect to hit their maximum energy capacity in the next two years, even while IT demand keeps growing. At the same time, energy costs are making high-level computing an ever more costly core need for companies.
The result is a booming interest in energy-efficient data center solutions that won’t break the bank. Ken Brill, the executive director of the Uptime Institute, spoke with GreenBiz Radio recently about some of the surprisingly easy ways to boost performance and drop IT costs at the same time, and what the Institute will unveil at its 2008 Symposium later this month.
Do check out this great interview which is talking about energy efficiency in the data center, it’s always good to see/hear what people are talking about in the energy efficient space, what issues/resolutions and best practices they are talking about.
April 23, 2008 at 11:26 pm · Filed under Other things, environment
http://www.thegreengrid.org/news/news_releases/
Portland, Ore. — April 21, 2008 — The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, today announced Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The Green Grid’s agreement with the EPA will first promote energy efficiency in EPA computer facilities and then broadly share results in order to impact change within both other governmental agencies and the private sector. The alliance with SNIA, formally announced by SNIA earlier this month, is designed to further networked storage best practices for energy efficiency.
The Green Grid’s Memorandums of Understanding with the EPA and SNIA highlight the organization’s continuing efforts and progress in working with government agencies and key industry players to define and promote the adoption of standards, processes, measurements and technologies for energy efficiency in the data center.
Very cool, anything we can to to improve energy efficiency in the data center and in the business world has to be a good thing, whether we’re talking about best practice, new technical standards or technology. It will be interesting to see what developments/announcements come from this announcement - very cool.
April 21, 2008 at 10:02 pm · Filed under environment
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080417006342&newsLang=en
WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), TechTurn and the National Recycling Coalition will host an Earth Day computer recycling event for consumers in the Washington metropolitan area.
The free event, to be held at Freedom Plaza downtown, is part of Dell’s ongoing commitment to educating consumers about responsible computer recycling options and keeping IT equipment out of landfills.
- Consumers can drive to the event and volunteers will unload equipment for recycling. Cars should enter from 13th Street, turning on to E Street.
- Washington, D.C. area residents can recycle any brand computer, monitor, printer and other computer equipment as well as cell phones and PDAs by dropping the items off at the event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Consumers are advised to remove all data from computer hard drives and any removable media such as disks, PC cards, flash drives, CD-ROMs. Televisions, stereo equipment and other electronic appliances cannot be accepted.
- Dell completed a rollout of its global recycling program in December 2006 and offers consumers free and convenient recycling of Dell products, worldwide irrespective of product purchase. The company recovered more than 78 million pounds of equipment from customers for recycling in 2006.
This really is very cool, I’m a strong believer in recycling, the easier, the less ’stressful’ (real or perceived) that we can make it, the more it becomes ’standard’, anything we can therefore do to make it so has to be a good thing. That Dell had a recycling event is great news and furthers the recycling message which has to be a good thing.
Is the way forward in recycling computers/printers etc not to make it free at the point of use? That as a consumer I can call and have my computers/printers/scanners and devices collected and recycled? Individual vendors providing the service is great, but an industry wide standard provided by government/non-governmental or corporates, the option to ‘post’ or drop in technology for recycling might further the effort, make it more mainstream and reduce environmental impact through incorrect disposal?
April 21, 2008 at 9:30 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/04/17/230329/data-centre-energy-consumption-not-an-it-priority.htm
A survey of firms by the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum shows that despite showing concern for making data centre operations more environmentally sound, few firms have any specific plans in place.
The survey shows that most IT managers give their operations failing grades in reducing energy consumption.
An interesting article and it highlights some interesting concepts. I wonder if this is a mixture of things, environmentally sound could suggest a number of things to different user communities, and specific plans for an environmentally sound data center could also mean different things to different people. At one end of the scale it could be the data center that’s wind and solar powered, with no kvm’s, operating using lights out functionality running virtualization technologies to provide the infrastructure. Is it not that data center energy consumption is a priority because it’s a limited resource? Am I adopting environmental processes/technologies to be more environmentally friendly or to stretch the life span of the data center, to keep deploying servers/instances or service for as long as possible before I have to move data centers or upgrade my existing one? We’ll have to see, do check it out.
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