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IT Troubleshooter | Harper Mann » Green IT Machine

February 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Green IT Machine

There is a lot of green going on. I've just started looking into Green Data Centers. What are you doing that's green in your Data Center?

Here are some links:

The Green Grid


Cut Server Room Power


Intel Goes Greener


IBM Becomes More Energy Efficient

It seems to me one of the first things you want to do is figure out what your actual energy consumption is so you can tell if something you do to make green accomplishes anything. Large system vendors are starting to offer tools to figure out data center power consumption and cooling requirements. EMC has a power calculator which has EMC and other product manufacturer's power specs and can calc accurate power consumption. HP professional services does a good job planning cooling, power and temperature for data centers. While these are great starts, and highly necessary for planning, but what about real-time monitoring? How do you know if a particular component is consuming more power than it's specification calls for? Monitoring power consumption at least to the rack level seems like a good idea. You might get a warning of something wrong before it showed up in other monitoring.

So what green measures have you found to be effective?

What makes sense cost wise and how did you approach implementing it?

This is an important new topic developing in the IT community. There is a certain amount of hype around it, but a clear interest is emerging to substantially reduce resource consumption contributing to global warming.

Posted by Harper Mann on February 19, 2008 08:17 PM


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Well, we mostly run Linux boxes in our labs. The chief power draw, other than to our 24/7/365 multicore boxes, are the displays.

We just replaced the monitors with LED screens and power them down when not in use.

Cut power usage dramatically by doing that one simple step.

Posted by: Will in Seattle at February 20, 2008 11:21 AM

Hi Will, Did you try using the power save features on the Linux boxen? Last time I tried, the OS woke, but not all the applications were happy. I'm curious what effect the native power safe would have. - Harper

Posted by: Harper Mann at February 20, 2008 01:47 PM

I have a far simpler idea for calculating power usage. The use of a clamp-on ammeter such ass the Fluke 902 model, will provide accurate readings on voltage and amperage (allowing a person to multiply the two numbers to achieve a true wattage reading) for the desired equipment. For those who want a device by device or long-term reading I suggest the Kill-A-Watt series of recording devices. They cost as little as $20 and can provide detailed cumulative ratings on the attached equipment. The downside is they are limited to 15A, 120VAC max, taking them out of reach of big-iron equipment but making them ideal for SMBs.

Posted by: Daniel Lott at March 7, 2008 11:29 AM

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