Microsoft steps up its green datacenter campaign

Green computing is a hot topic these days. And "Big Green" (a k a Microsoft) wants to make sure its next-gen Windows Server products are among the greenest of them all.

As a result of power-management tweaks it has made to its software, Microsoft is expecting Windows Server 2008 systems to use about 20 percent less power than existing Windows Server systems. Windows Server General Manager Bill Laing mentioned Windows Server 2008's power-saving capabilities in a recent interview I did with him for Redmond Developer News:

"We've done power management by default in Longhorn Server. And we think average machines will see maybe 20 percent reduction in power use. You kind of slow the clock down when it's not busy. And it's dynamic enough that you can literally slow the clock down across a disk I/O. If you've got nothing to do while you're doing a disk I/O, it actually drops the power use for that short period of time. It's not like sleeping [for] the laptop; this is really short, what they call P-state for processor state."

And during the next couple of months, it sounds like a few Softies will be focused on carving out an official "Green Datacenter Strategy" for Microsoft. Microsoft blogger Lewis Curtis mentioned that he is part of a team scheduled to provide an internal presentation on Microsoft's datacenter-energy-consumption plans in July. Curtis blogged at the end of May:

"This presentation will focused on having a energy consumption strategy in the datacenter, what the industry is doing, what customers expect from us and ideas for Microsoft for the future."

Any thoughts to share with Microsoft regarding green datacenter strategies and products?