Going Green?

Nick · 05-20-2008, 01:18 PM

Just curious how many of you out there are seeing any increased interest on going Green, from an IT perspective, within your organization.

Personally, I am seeing a tremendous increase in interest from clients. When I talk to others though it doesn't seem to be as big a subject.

Using tools like Altiris to help reduce C02 footprints and electricity usage. I mean... 6 figure (or higher) annual reduction in energy bills is a no brainer to me.

Anyway, just curious on what others think and/or see.

jdean · 05-20-2008, 02:29 PM

Same here. Green seems to be the new Y2k.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick

Just curious how many of you out there are seeing any increased interest on going Green, from an IT perspective, within your organization.

Personally, I am seeing a tremendous increase in interest from clients. When I talk to others though it doesn't seem to be as big a subject.

Using tools like Altiris to help reduce C02 footprints and electricity usage. I mean... 6 figure (or higher) annual reduction in energy bills is a no brainer to me.

Anyway, just curious on what others think and/or see.

aarond · 05-20-2008, 03:00 PM

This is something that my management has shown growing interest in.

Nick · 05-20-2008, 04:41 PM

Any of you thought about using a wattage meter to see how much electricity your systems are using?

I just ordered a Kill A Watt meter so I can get empirical data about the systems in my lab and how much electricity they really use.

Rich · 05-28-2008, 04:22 PM

Anyone doing anything specific to help go green? I use the Energy Saver Toolkit to help reduce monitor usage, and I have created some scripts that shutdown the computers if they are inactive for "x" amount of time.

Nick · 05-28-2008, 04:35 PM

I'm using the Task Server PowerScheme and Power Control options on the NS to schedule collections to shut down.

I have the Energy Saver Toolkit installed but don't bother with using it really.

I have purchased a Kill A Watt wattage meter to help me see how much energy my systems are using and it has really given me some eye opening results.

My Precision 470 uses about USD$145/yr in electricity. Using Altiris to shut it down from from 6pm to 6am Mon - Friday and all day Sat and Sun saves me around USD$85/yr. I haven't figured in what the monitor energy consumption/savings are yet.

The other thing I'm working on is figuring out how much electricity is used to cool a room that has the computers running in it versus when they are off. I know my lab is "significantly" warmer when the Precision 470 is on.

One thing I have been asked about quite a few times is if I could schedule turning off/on networkable projectors. I did some research into it and found that some brands let you install software on Windows based systems to control said projectors but there were no command line tools to help. I didn't follow it much further than that but would like to see if it could be done.... maybe with a registry key change to update the info on the system controlling the projectors.....

skedens · 05-28-2008, 05:16 PM

We have been using the Energy Saver Toolkit as well. FYI: You can use it to enable Standy and Hibernation as well, not just monitor power savings.

Nick · 05-28-2008, 05:27 PM

Yeah the /standby and /hibernate switches for the Energy Saver Toolkit are great options.

Rich · 05-28-2008, 06:04 PM

I wish we could have used those, coulda saved me some agrivation. In our enviorment we can't shutdown the computers if someone is using there computer because our users apparently like to leave open files they have been working on all day without saving them. We also have some users who never even log off of there machines let alone reboot them. There are some other issues to but this was our compromise, you leave your computer alone for like 3 hours it is gonna shutdown.

Nick · 05-28-2008, 06:15 PM

I hear you Rich.

I like your approach given the constraints you are dealing with.

jtoller · 06-12-2008, 09:31 PM

We've started looking at the eiPower Saver Solution, Enterprise Infrastructure Partners, which is a NS solution. We are also looking at the Verdiem Surveyor.

jmd · 06-29-2008, 04:31 PM

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thanks
Joe

itsmillertime4u · 07-03-2008, 03:44 PM

I just got back from this years BriForum 2008 (I would recommend any highly technical person to attend this event), and this topic inadvertently came up in one of the sessions. The session was Virtualizing a Citrix server, and they were discussing the pros and cons of virtualizing a terminal server (go figure), and afterwards they asked the crowd of about 200-250, how many were currently already doing so. About have the people in the room raised their arms, and when asked why there were a couple different answers. Some said it was faster and easier to provision the servers, but many of them mentioned the big push towards being green from their executives. Many of the people from the Midwest were mentioning that there were big increases (around 20% increase) in the power bill over the last year has forced many of them to start virtualizing many if not all of there servers in order to conserve on power. There was also someone in the crowd from a power company (he reluctantly did not say which one except that they are in fifteen states from Michigan to Texas). He mentioned that they now have systems and software in place in all their facilities where they can start fluctuating your power bill rate every half hour based upon however much it costs them to produce it, but that they were currently working with the local states in order to get authorization in order to change the rate that often. This surprised much of the room, and it led to a follow up question how many people actually paid a power bill which was separate from their building lease. About half of the people raised their hands; and just about all of agreed that for those that have it all rolled up in one bill, that they could expect this to change to lease renewal.

Nick · 07-03-2008, 04:05 PM

Yeah, I read a report that said that nationally it is expected for energy providers to increase the amount they charge by 5% - 29%.

I was actually up in Fredericksburg, VA this past weekend and saw where the energy provider for that area (not sure if it's all of NoVA though) had been given approval to raise their rates 18%.

Increases like that are definitely (in my opinion) going to start getting the attention of organizations.

itsmillertime4u · 07-03-2008, 05:48 PM

Yeah I saw that too, I live in NoVA. I currently have a flat rate from Dominion Power on my house power bill as one of their bill options. I wonder how their going to raise my rate and I'm curious when I will see the increase.