Sustainable IT | Ted Samson » Microsoft talks power savings for the datacenter

June 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft talks power savings for the datacenter

TAGS: Microsoft

Redmond talks up 20% power-use reduction in Windows Server 2008, secret green datacenter plans

Mary Jo Foley conducted an interesting interview over on Redmond Developer News with Bill Laing, the general manager of Redmond's Windows Server Division. With power savings high on IT admin's priority lists, companies contemplating migrating to Windows Server 2008 (the platform formerly known as Longhorn) might be interested in this quote:

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.

In her blog, Foley also points out an entry by Lewis Curtis, Microsoft infrastructure architecture advisor, in which he writes that he is "working towards a Microsoft comprehensive Green Datacenter Strategy. ... We're scheduled to give an internal presention to inernal employees at ... the end of July. 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."

He goes on to say that "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.

Microsoft has been make some green noise of late. One of the founding members of The Green Grid consortium, the company recently announced that it would work the The Clinton Foundation to develop free Web-based software for cities to monitor their carbon emissions.

Posted by Ted Samson on June 6, 2007 04:37 PM

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