Solutions & the costs of Green IT



In this section we briefly look at many of the common energy saving Green IT solutions that Greenwise-IT has helped organisations implement.

What will Green IT cost you?

The very short and truthful answer is – NOTHING!

Yes – you will have to spend some money implementing solution(s), but this will be more than offset by the resultant savings. This is the key point – implementing Green IT solutions is all about saving money. If there are no savings to be made then the investment in a solution(s) is not in any way justified and should not be made.

To see some examples of the solutions we have helped organisations implement and the savings achieved please see the ‘Case Studies’ section of this Web Site.

Common solutions

There are a number of potential energy saving solutions that can be implemented. The one(s) that are most appropriate for your organisation, and that will provide the greatest return on your investment are identified as part of the Baseline exercise (see the ‘Where to Start’ section of this Web Site’).

Warning – some of the possible solutions listed below might appear to be in conflict (e.g. implement Desktop Thin Client and extend Lifecycle of Existing ICT equipment). The key is to evaluate the appropriateness of each solution based upon the needs and requirements of your organisation

Desktop Power Management

It is calculated that one third of UK employees do not switch their PCs off overnight – costing a total £123m p.a. in electricity.
Significant savings can be achieved simply by using the standard Windows power saving options, and further savings can be made by implementing a commercial Power Management solutions to ensure PCs fully power down automatically when not in use (especially weekends and overnight).

Desktop Virtualisation (Thin Client)

Because the thin client’s performance is driven by a server rather than local processor replacing the traditional PC (‘Fat’ Client) with a Thin Client can lead to very significant power savings.
Additionally with no hard drive and limited local processing and local memory requirements with a Thin Client there is less ecologically damaging waste, less heat being produced meaning less energy being required for office cooling systems and hardware replacement cycles can be extended to 10 years.

Extend Lifecycle of existing ICT equipment

Abandon policy of automatic refresh and replace and instead extend the lifespan of existing ICT equipment to natural demise.

Desktop Device Consolidation

Remove duplication and reduce overall ratio of PCs and laptops to 1:1 with user community.

ICT Device Consolidation & Power management

Replace individual printers, scanners etc with multi functional devices, and aim for a minimum 10:1 ratio (10 users to 1 device). Also implement power saving features and apply timer switches to multi functional devices technology.

Server Consolidation & Virtualisation

A recent McKinsey study showed that a third of servers had utlisation rates below 3%, and almost two-thirds had utlisation rates below 10%.

Server consolidation and virtualisation reduces the amount of physical servers required in the organisation – and consequently reduces the on-going support and maintenance costs, the energy consumed directly by servers and the indirect energy required for cooling the servers.

Data Centre energy Optimisation

Virtualisation alone is not the ‘silver bullet’ for IT Data Centre energy efficiency. Although virtualisation will reduce the energy requirements from your server estate If you fail to address the physical infrastructure of the Data Centre (power and cooling) the efficiency of the system will actually be reduced and energy wastage will increase proportionally.

There are 2 industry acknowledged metrics that might help assess the efficiency of energy usage in your Data Centre(s). These are:
• Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
• Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE)

Optimised Data Storage

In a typical data centre 38% of the ICT equipment energy is consumed by storage. Global data storage capacity increasing by 60% p.a. (already estimated 281bn Gb data stored globally).

The energy consumption from storage depends on the speed of the disks – i.e. High performance disks require faster drives which consume more energy. So in order to reduce energy requirements arising from storage:
• Reduce data volumes by eliminating storage of duplicate data (regular data audits)
• Switch to fewer high-capacity disks
• Increase disk utilisation
• Move rarely accessed date to tape

Green ICT Procurement

Ensure power efficient criteria are part of procurement decision making.

Specify low power consumption CPUs and high efficiency Power Supply Units (80% conversion or better).

Flat screen TFT/LCD monitors are preferable to CRT as they generally consume far less power when in use and standby.

Look to purchase only e.g. Energy Star products.

Consider embedded carbon arising from manufacture as part of procurement evaluation.

Optimise IT operations model (implement energy efficient IT working practices)

For example:
• Implement appropriate tools to increase remote management of sites
• Implement standard environment (to enable efficient support operations)
• Optimise spares holding to minimised duplication
• Where possible use local (non IT) staff to undertake routine activities (initiate backups, faulty hardware replacement etc)

Proper use of Best Practice frameworks such as ITIL can also lead to increased efficiencies.

Address the user issues

Educate the user community in energy efficient ICT working practices (and monitor if they are following advice!), e.g.
• Switch Off – encourage all employees to switch off computers, monitors and unplug laptops, phone chargers etc – when they are not in use and especially overnight / weekends
• Screensavers – discourage use of screensavers (often use same or more energy than when PC is active) - instead encourage uses to turn monitors off
• E-Mail - Globally 210b e-mails are sent daily (more than 2 m e-mails per second!)– reduce data storage needs by encouraging, regular mailbox housekeeping, removing attachments, emptying deleted items folder
• etc

The above are just some of the solutions available. If you would like to know more about any of these solutions and how you might benefit from them please contact us at enquiries@Greenwise-it.com