|
Cut power consumption through our new servers... Buy our desktops and
reduce power by 50%... Reduce data center power consumption with the help of
our green Ethernet solution...
Open any computing magazine, these days and it will be splashed with green
adverts of the above kind. The green vendors, especially the hardware ones, are
very ballistic when it comes to peddling their wares. Green IT is the toast of
the season and everybody seems to have some thing to offer on the same, or is it
so?
On a closer look at all the hype and hoopla, one would realize that much of
the noise being made on this front is by the hardware vendors. Thus, we have
power-efficient servers, desktops, data centers, WAN optimization boxes, thin
clients, etc. It almost seems that the path to Green, runs through the green
hardware alley.
While there is nothing wrong with hardware vendors extolling on their green
virtues (in fact to a great extent it is welcome, as it spreads awareness), the
silence on the software front is quite flummoxing. Green IT goals, so as to
say, can be aided and abetted by software solutions as well. There are lots of
software-based solutions that not only monitor and better utilize existing
resources, but also can also go beyond and nullify the need to add extra
hardware as the company expands, meeting the requirement with current
infrastructure. This not only saves a lot of moolah for the company but also
helps in cutting down the energy footprint of the company, in a significant
manner.
 |
 |
 |
| Green IT needs
such as reducing carbon emissions, heat emissions and coolant requirements
can be better achieved through intelligent software solutions
Souma Das,
VP, Citrix Systems |
To give you a
precise figure, according to the studies conducted by us, VMware
virtualization is the single biggest bang for buck in Green IT
Ganesh Mahabala,
regional director (India & SAARC), VMware. |
The biggest technology that has enabled software-centric Green IT approach is
virtualization. Organizations, both big and small are at least talking about
virtualization if not exactly using it to cut down the cost of their servers and
desktops. Nowadays, virtualization has become a buzzword, with scores of
conferences on the topic and tons of literature. And yet, virtualization is not
something that evolved in the past year or two, but has been around for quite
many decades.
| Better
Management, the Altair Way |
| Altair Engineering in association with
noted animation and VFX studio, Crest Communications, has devised a way in
which power consumption can be drastically reduced within a datacenter. The
application is a combination of eRender (scheduler) and PBS Gridworks, a
flagship product from the Altair stables. In the studio there are huge
server farms and lots of server are not fully utilized. This application
monitors and measures the level of server usage by each rack, and then uses
dynamic provision of work. By doing so, over 30% of power consumption is
reduced. The biggest power spike happens when a server is switched on. It
consumes quite a significant amount of energy to power on and load all the
applications. With the help of the application developed by us, we can
provision work to less-utilized and already switched on servers, instead of
powering on more. This way, we are able to significantly reduce the power
outage, says, Rajesh Chhabra, director,Enterprise Computing, Altair India. |
Virtualization Roots
It was way back in the early 60s when due to an emerging computing
environment, there emerged a new technology, ambiguously termed as
virtualization. In those times, it was the IBM mainframes that ruled the
roost. Computing, as such, was the domain of engineers and scientists. Virtual
machines or virtualization was merely a novel way to share scarce resources by
many users. But, as the computing power increased, in accordance to Moores Law,
the need to virtualize almost vanished.
| Software is
Where the Magic is |
| They worked on its development for over 12
years, got it patented and started the company called NCcomputing. This is
the software called V-space and when bundled with NCcomputing hardware, it
can save over 90% in power consumption costs. NCcomputing claims to be the
greenest of the green computing on Earth. Their basic premise for
operation is that a lot of power of a traditional PC is underutilized even
when the machine is fully operational. In layman terms, they use this unused
power to run other systems and can consequently run thirty systems on the
power consumption equivalent to that of one system.
NCcomputing connects various stations using a device they call access
terminals which consume only 1 watt of power per system. That is almost a
shocking figure when compared to around 150 watt that a PC consumes. And
whats more, these access devices are obsolesce proof. Thus, they dont
even have the e-waste burden attached to them. Page(s) 1 2 3
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Print
Comment
Email
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Twitter
