Sustainable IT | Ted Samson » TAG: Linux

January 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Linux a greener alternative to a forced Vista move?

TAGS: Linux, Save Windows XP, Thin clients, VMware, Vista, XP

If you read my blog yesterday, you noticed my entry about Microsoft's move to retire XP and effectively force Windows shops into a wasteful migration to Vista.

I spelled out a couple of scenarios:
1. Stick with XP and hope you can gather the licenses you need to run your business as it grows, all the while waiting for a better version of Windows to emerge down the road.

2. Cave in and adopt Vista, either taking a headache-inducing piecemeal approach or an all-out expensive (and again, wasteful) mass migration.

Lo, there's another alternative, one that has been pointed out by a some respondents to my previous post: Move to Linux.

For example, this comes from Gostak:

"I am suggesting VMware on Linux with your current crop of XP licenses. Mission-critical stuff that must run on XP is available, meanwhile you can be working on migrating everything to a native Linux environment that will not toss you on your keister in a few years. Further, the one big thing coming down the pike, 64-bit computing, is fully supported with Linux, so you don't have to worry about being able to fully utilize the next generation."

It's an excellent point. Companies concerned both with sustainability and Microsoft's current ploy may indeed find Linux an appealing alternative. Some IT leaders out there have already observed that, among other things, Linux seems to have a "green" advantage over Windows in terms of energy efficiency.

While we're at it, how about adding thin clients to the list of alternatives to moving to Vista-desktop world?

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Keep the ideas coming.

Related links:
InfoWorld's Save Windows XP campaign
Retiring XP means wasteful upgrades to Vista-capable PCs
Thinking green? Think thin
Linux, Windows duke it out over energy efficiency

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 15, 2008 12:23 PM

August 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Linux, Windows duke it out over energy efficiency

TAGS: HP, IBM, Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Platforms

The battles for energy efficiency aren't just being fought by chipmakers, server and PC vendors, and other hardware companies out there. There's a similar battle heating up on the OS layer between Microsoft and Linux.

Linux appears to have an advantage at the moment: Companies are becoming increasingly open to adopting the platform both in the server room and on the desktop. Big-name vendors like IBM, HP, and Novell are giving the penguin a push in the datacenter, framing it as a flexible and energy-efficient platform. The fact that Linux offers greater virtualization opportunities than Windows (a sentiment recently expressed by the VMWare CTO Mendel Rosenblum) only strengthens the platform's green standing.

Microsoft isn't resting on its laurels, though. It plans to make power-management tools a central part of Windows Server 2008. Further, it's advancing its own virtualization strategy.

The Linux Foundation has spelled out plans to bring improved power management to the OS in an effort called the Green Linux Initiative. The workgroup's efforts could bring longer battery life to battery-powered mobile devices and lower operating costs in the server room.

Some of the projects the Linux Foundation envisions includes:

• Developing a tickless kernel, which enables the processor to sleep between tasks
  
• Creating power-aware applications and policies
  
• Boosting power management for USB peripherals
  
• Improving suspend and hibernate reliability
  
• Fixing bugs in userspace applications that cause unnecessary processor usage

"At the Linux Foundation, we've realized that while there have been many recent advances in Linux power management, there are still new, untapped ways to make Linux more green," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, in a written statement. "Our Green Linux initiative will leverage the power of our members ... to enhance these improvements. We expect Linux to be a leader in this area and for Linux customers, and the environment, to realize the gains brought about by our members' efforts."

One company heavily involved in the big green push is Big Blue. In conjunction with the Linux Foundation, IBM announced its own Big Green Linux initiative to help customers further integrate Linux into the enterprise so as to "to reduce costs and energy consumption by building cooler data centers," according to the company.

IBM is making noise about the energy-saving consolidation potential of Linux in conjunction with its own hardware, particularly its System z mainframes. Eating a healthy helping of its dogfood, IBM is consolidating approximately 3,900 of its own servers onto about 30 System z mainframes running Linux.

Joining IBM and the Linux Foundation in the green push is Novell, which is touting the greenery of its flavor of Linux. "With every release of our SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, Novell finds new ways to help customers reduce power consumption through improvements in policy-driven power management and system monitors for servers, along with better suspend functionality for laptops," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell, in a written statement.

It doesn't end there: HP is also singing the praises of Linux, noting that it has a key role in next-generation datacenter strategy. At LinuxWorld earlier this month, Ann Livermore, executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group within HP, talked up the penguin, according to an IDG News Service report. "The energy efficiency of all servers has become the issue 'every customer wants to talk about,' she said and applauded the new functionality added to the Linux kernel that improves energy efficiency by putting Linux systems into low-power states when there's a pause in computing."

Microsoft isn't blind to the high demand for more energy-efficient systems. The company went to great lengths to talk up the power management features of Vista and has green aspirations for the next version of Windows server. In a recent interview on SearchDataCenter.com, Stephen Berard, program manager of the Windows Platform Architecture team, detailed some of the future OS's power-management features.

Among them, he says that, "in Windows Server 2008, you can lock a processor in a state right off the bat. We also have finer-grade controls for thresholds that can address cases where the default settings don't fit what you want to do. The defaults that come out of the box are going to be good for the vast majority of people."

Posted by Ted Samson on August 28, 2007 03:00 AM