Green IT will get zero traction until IT pays the electric bill
Summary: There's a lot of talk lately about Green Computing in IT circles Larry Dignan even points out that there may be some fatigue setting in because "Green" has become a lucrative marketing term. I spend a lot of time talking about energy efficient computing but there are times I feel like talking about green computing is falling upon deaf ears because there just doesn't seem to be that much interest in it.
There's a lot of talk lately about Green Computing in IT circles Larry Dignan even points out that there may be some fatigue setting in because "Green" has become a lucrative marketing term. I spend a lot of time talking about energy efficient computing but there are times I feel like talking about green computing is falling upon deaf ears because there just doesn't seem to be that much interest in it.
Having come from an IT background, I have a pretty good idea why this is the case with a lot of IT departments. The main reason I can see for this lack of interest is that many IT departments don't pay the electric bill. At most they might pay some money for the data center rack space they lease but smaller IT departments simply convert an existing room in to a make shift server room with a mixture of rack-mount and floor standing servers. Facilities picks up the cost of electricity for those rooms as well as the rest of the building which powers and cools all the office equipment.
As a result of this typical arrangement, energy efficient computing simply doesn't register with many IT departments because it simply doesn't show up on their budget and it isn't their problem. They're concerned with procurement costs and that often means less efficient components and if it drives up the electric bill which includes all the extra cooling costs from the extra heat generated, that's someone else's problem.
Until IT gets billed for all the power it uses including the power used by the desktops and the extra power required to cool the building or IT takes over the power budget, energy efficiency will not be taken seriously. Desktop computers will not be forced to go in to S3 sleep state and only woken at night when updates need to be applied. It won't be worth the trouble until they see it show up on their budget.
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Talkback
It really depends on the application
As you said, IT doesn't pay the power bill, so they don't care. If the solution involved multi-core technology that scaled and didn't cost as much when dealing with software licensing, then you have a sale.
If that isn't the case, sometimes pressure needs to come from upper management down to IS/IT. Though we have a vast amount of power as IT, we don't have the finally say so with the company. We can be fired.
That's why I'm suggesting IT pays the power bill
One of the problems with that is that ...
I still think that some portions of technology should offer an additional benefit other than being green. The reason that LCDs were adopted in my company were because of the smaller foot print. Surely PCs can also reach that point. Flash based hard drives do offer a speed benefit while consuming less electricity.
This is what I consider to be green technology that sells. Portable laptops with longer battery life also sell better.
You can try and push the power bill over to IT, but the fact of the matter is, you don't have to. You can attract more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. If the manufacturers can't figure that out, then perhaps there is room for new companies to take their place.
Don't need to resort to flash, 2.5" HDDs only use 2W or less
You make some great points though.
Other items that would be nice would be..
SLI and Crossfire video cards should consider this feature as well. Built this into the new line of cards and tie some other features which build up the card so that users want to buy them.
Microsoft is trying to do their part in Vista by setting the defaults to sleep states and other items of energy conservation. The only way to keep people pushed to that route would be to reset the sleep states on Windows Update. You can't tell me they don't do that with other programs. On one particular system, I have to reset the default mail program from Outlook back to Lotus Notes every month or so because of some Windows Update. I finally stripped Outlook off of the machine and solved the problem. I must applaud Microsoft for doing some of their part, but I feel they could do better.
Honestly, I do think that IT should be responsible enough to handle this on their own. However, I know the amount of users that don't shut their computers down just because they don't want to have to deal with turning their computer on in the morning. I have my own reasons, but I am just as guilty as the rest of those who leave their computer on over night.
I use suspend as my shutdown
Our business
The problem I see with green computing is that the performance just isn't there. I would love to see our servers run on building air and not have to have 3 air conditioners but I'm sure we won't get anywhere with that. Once PC makes/server makes/hardware makers can come up with good solutions for actually saving energy and actually up the ante on performance that is the day people will actually go green.
I would love to see an article about what technologies/hardware would provide significant performance and power savings.
Great feedback, I can answer your question
Excellent question! I can do that for you.
Indeed. I'd also want to see the article, too.
Besides performance, wouldn't Barcelona provide a lower power consumption than AMD Sempron64 3400+, as mine is a single-core processor and Barcelona is a quad-core processor. A couple of cores in a single chip can clock down or power off to save energy, but when two to four cores are needed, the processor can power up the cores so that multi-threaded applications can do some processing and adjust clock speed as needed.
While you are at it....
Personally, I have advocated energy savings because I am a cheap conservative (and proud of it). But S3 and S4 have not performed as advertised, consistantly enough to deploy. I am trying to get the bean counters to see beyond the initial cost for a central management suite with an agent to wake the comptuers for updates and maintance. That is the only real solution I have seen yet.
There are many differant ways to cut energy consumption. Focusing just on computers while ignoring all the other abuses is shortsighted and unfair. But, you got a response.
With thin clients...
A SunRay uses less than 4W during work-hours!
Yes that's true, but people don't want to use it
VDI
Other than the fact that your'e working through RDP or Citrix
Please explain...
Do you thing users will miss gimmicks like high-res backgrounds, 3d desktop effects, watching hi-res videos?
Please give me some more information why you think a user needs _personal_ computer...
Oh every manager I've met agrees with you, just don't make them use one
Usual problem...
I would bet, if you don't tell a manager he's working on a thin client, he would not
even notice.
Not likely
True, George, but not necessarily relevant. :)
Sarcasm aside for the moment, I could see dormitories, apartment complexes, and possibly even families switching from the one workstation PC per person model to servers & terminals, for a variety of reasons.
Thin Clients do lag
If you had a device with Windows XP Embedded where you could load some applications on it and then be able to do most of your tasks without having to use Citrix or RDP.