Green Computing

Virtualisation

Servers contribute greatly to a businesses energy consumption, as well as the power they consume, they also produce a by product of heat, which consequently requires more energy in the form of air-conditioning to dissipate.

In most business with multiple servers there is a certain amount of spare computing power that is underutilised on each server. Many applications are installed on separate servers to isolate the application from each other, rather than the processing requirements of the application. Therefore by consolidating multiple virtual servers on to one large physical server, we can still provide the application isolation that we require but we can also make more efficient use of the hardware resources on the physical server.

By building systems in this more efficient manner we can reduce the number of physical servers required to perform the tasks in hand and subsequently reduce the energy consumption of the server infrastructure within the business. The saving is twofold, lower energy consumption by having less physical servers, this reduced number of servers will produce less heat and therefore require less energy in the form of air-conditioning to maintain a good environment for the servers to work in.

Things we can do today to cut our energy bills

There are many simple things that we can all do immediately to reduce the energy usage of our IT systems, without spending any money at all. Changing a few simple procedures can drastically reduce our overall energy costs and we can start today.

Turn off printers overnight

Printers use a massive amount of energy when in standby, by turning off the printers when you leave the office you could reduce the amount of energy consumed by each one by over 50%.

Turn on power saving features

Enable power saving options on your PC, by setting up your power saving options in control panel on a windows PC, you can set you PC to go into standby when it has been in use for long periods, power down the hard disk when it isn’t being used, or set the monitor into standby when you are away from your desk, all of these options will reduce the amount of energy your pc uses during the course of a day.

Disable screen savers of LCD monitors

Screen savers were originally designed to prevent screen burn on CRT monitors. LCD monitors do not suffer from this problem, but by having a screen saver setup on your PC it can prevent your machine from using it power management features that are designed to save power when your system is idle. Turn off the screen saver and allow you system to manage its power saving features more efficiently.

Turn off your desktop computers at night

We sit at our desks for around eight hours per day, but for the other sixteen hours a day our seat remains empty. By not turning off your PC at night it could consume around 60% more power each day than necessary. Turn it off before you go home save money and do your bit for the environment.