A Common Sense Approach to Green Computing
By Rowan O’Donoghue (Director of Innovation & Development)
There’s not a day goes by where we don’t see an advert with some sort of a “Green” message in it,
but is this not just a case of the major vendors hopping on the “Green” bandwagon with some
creative marketing ploy to make us all feel somewhat guilty in the hope of forcing us buy the latest
technology? Some of it could even be classed as scare‐mongering! Even I myself am probably viewed
by my family as some sort of deranged lunatic chasing about the house seeking out phone chargers
and TV’s on standby and bursting into spontaneous lectures on the importance of saving electricity!
Not so long ago, being “Green” meant being socially responsible by disposing of products in a
environmentally friendly manner, so what’s this new Green Computing concept that we are hearing
so much of lately? Put simply, it’s just a term used to denote efficient utilisation of resources in
computing. Green computing may be a new concept for many in today’s climate, but one of the first
industry bodies to be set up to address these issues was the Energy Star program back in 1992
created by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Energy Star served as a voluntary eco‐labelling
award given to manufacturers who succeeded in minimising energy consumption but maximising
efficiency.
While we would all love to say that we are engaged in the “Green”
reform as part of a save‐the‐planet‐for‐the‐kids movement – the reality
is, it’s not a top priority. According to a recent Green IT survey
conducted by IDC, the primary driver was due to economics and the
company’s desire to reduce operational costs. According to this same
survey, over 50% of customers are now actively considering vendor’s
“greenness” when it comes to them selecting a supplier. Even from
recent meetings with customers myself, one thing is becoming more
and more clear. CIO’s are now realising that environmental concern and
business success can go hand in hand – and that a green data centre is
one of the best ways to accommodate growth and make a positive
impact on their company’s bottom line.
In reality, power costs have doubled over the last four years, and are due to triple over the next five.
The cost of oil now exceeds $140 a barrel and is as volatile as ever, so in line with this, the cost of
providing services is also bound to increase. The shift of the cost of energy from facilities to the IT
department is hampering the goals of many businesses to drive new projects etc due to the rising
costs in running the infrastructure itself, but in reality it is these two departments must collaborate
and develop synergy in finding ways to meet the environmental and energy challenges posed.
Energy consumption today accounts for over 45% of a data centres cost of ownership, and cooling in
most cases is the top consumer of this energy accounting for up to 35%. The problem is, while
computer technology has become more efficient over the years, it’s typically the same legacy air
conditioning and UPS systems servicing the environment. Some of the latest UPS systems can now
reduce energy loss by as much as 72% compared to older models, while current air conditioning
systems can improve efficiency by up to 50%.
If we take a look at new technologies that can supplement air‐conditioning systems, a good example
of using old technology to address some of today’s data centres problems are some of the latest
water cooling solutions from the likes of IBM and HP. Products such as IBM’s heat door exchanger
can reduce the heat output from a server rack by up to 50%. A typical rack full of servers consumed
about 5kW 5 years ago, compared to a whopping 30kW today. Water can also absorb more heat

than air, and the pumps required to circulate the water in a cooling system consume less power than
air‐conditioning systems. Water is already in data centres and is probably just right above the server
racks – it’s just a case of tapping into this at the rack level. On the downside, convincing people to
pipe water through racks full of expensive servers hosting valuable data is not going to be easy task,
but those more open to the concept will be those IT managers from a Mainframe vintage.
The thought of adopting and formulating a green data centre can be a monumental and complex
undertaking, but there are many solutions and techniques available to support the transition. While
there is no right or wrong way, the first step should be to perform an assessment to obtain a
baseline for further planning. Local assistance from organisations such as Sustainable Energy Ireland
can help with this if required. From this a framework can be developed identifying areas where
energy efficiency can be maximised. Even without engaging with an outside body, some practical
steps can be taken which will result in immediate savings can be made with little or no investment.
Such steps include:
 Proper use of blanking panels in computer racks, rather than trying to cram as many servers
into one rack as possible. This will avoid creating hot‐spots within the environment and
reduce the likelihood of heat related failures with equipment.
 Clear out any under floor blockages in the data centre that will impede air flow. I’ve seen the
good and the bad, from those that have glass panel tiles to show off their lovely neat
cabling, to those that look like spaghetti junctions. Air not being allowed to flow properly
under the tiles will create hot‐spots and put the existing air conditioning units under
increased pressure.
 Replace standard lighting with energy efficient bulbs. Most of our customers have now gone
one step further and have put in movement sensors that only turn on the lights when
someone walks into the data centre.
 Arrange server racks in hot and cold aisle configurations. Ensure that ventilation tiles are
used in the correct locations where they will be most efficient.
 Turn off any servers that are not used within the environment.
While the above focus is primarily on data centres, think about where similar practical steps can be
taken in office environments. How many times have we all printed documents on one side only?
Even today we are still doing it!! By printing on both sides of a page you reduce your paper
consumption by 50%! Some banks today in Europe print over 300,000 pages per day, so you can
imagine the amount of savings per year that could be achieved.
Consolidation and taking advantage of the latest in Virtualisation technology is also one of the major
ways in which to maximise computing efficiency while reducing the energy consumption within your
company. After all, if you have a server which is performing at 14% utilisation, why pay the same
amount on energy consumption as the server running at 95% utilisation? Server virtualisation
products such as ESX Server from VMware and the POWER6 / PowerVM offerings from IBM are
some of the more popular solutions, but don’t overlook options to take advantage of virtualisation in
your SAN storage or even throughout your desktop base. Since the advent of SAN’s, few companies
have continued age old traditions of sporadic data pruning when file systems got to 99% utilisation.
Now, on average, 65% of data sitting on SAN storage is historical data which has not been accessed
for over 3 months – yet we are still happy to fork cash for additional storage units when space
becomes an issue. Solutions in the ILM and Data Archiving areas can help with removing this data
from expensive fibre disk, not to mention technologies such as data‐deduplication. Remember one
thing though – if you are hosting this on your SAN, it will impact on your application response times
and if you are unfortunate enough to have to perform a DR, will be sitting around while that same
70% of inactive data is being recovered!

If you need to keep historical data online for extended periods of time, you could look at vendors
such as Copan Systems and what they are doing with their disk technology. Within a Copan Systems
disk array, only those disks which are serving requests for read/write activity are powered on, the
others are all in standby. Overall, only 10% of the disks in the storage unit are active at any one time
resulting in huge power savings. If you are looking to perform a technology refresh on your desktop
PC base, look at VMware’s Virtual Desktop Initiative. Replacing a typical desktop PC with a thin client
device that consumes just 3% of the power of a traditional desktop PC will not only result in less
power consumption, but less stress on the environmental systems to cool the office. For example,
say you had 150 desktop PC’s in your office. If it cost €150 per year in electricity to run these based
on average workloads that could mean savings of up to €23,000 per year in direct energy cost by
adopting such a solution. Not to mention the savings of that a standard consolidated desktop image
will bring to the environment.
A company getting buy‐in from the staff can also stand to make substantial savings outside of IT. I
recently gave a presentation on energy efficiency and how virtualisation can play a key part at one of
our own events recently, and covered some interesting local case studies. Two in particular where
Wyeth and Tesco. As part of SEI’s Power‐of‐One campaign, Wyeth in Newbridge managed to achieve
savings of over €150,000 per year just by employees ensuring that non‐essential equipment was
powered off at the end of each business day – a good example of where results can be achieved
without any investment at all. Tesco Ireland on the other hand was able to achieve savings of
€1.7million in 2006 by investing €1million – but even more impressive is the fact that they will
continue to save the €1.7million on a year‐by‐year basis going forward.
Something commonly overlooked as part of a Green project, is E‐Waste. While the benefits of
adopting a Green approach are clear, what happens with all that equipment that is being
decommissioned and thrown out? A damning report back in the latter half of 2005 uncovered that
electrical waste such as computers used in the United States was being shipped to China and India
where they were polluting the environment and exposing workers to toxic chemicals where the
equipment was being dismantled. Thankfully the EU and the US stepped up to the plate in the form
of producer take‐back bills to ratify schemes which ensured that manufacturers were obliged to take
back electronicl equipment and to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way.
Even relatively small companies can reduce their carbon footprint while at the same time taking
advantage of business benefits – take our own Rapid‐Support offering for example. Rapid‐Support is
an innovative solution which was developed to tackle a number of issues. Efficient resource
utilisation, better effectiveness and utilisation of support resources, and a drive to offer customers
new ways of supporting their environments very cost effectively. It now means that we no longer
need to send our technical consultants to the four corners of the globe to perform services work,
instead can all be done remotely and securely, while at the same time meeting PCI and SOX
compliance regulations while at the same time giving the customer more cost effective support.
So, in conclusion, there are some important messages to be aware of today. It’s now clear that going
green is a necessity that every company is going to have to embrace – not as an aspiration to save
the planet, but in order to remain competitive and to survive economically. Yes, you will need to
outlay some cash to achieve Green Status, but as mentioned there are also some practical steps that
can be taken within existing environments to achieve substantial savings.
To discuss how we can help you take a common sense approach to
“Green Computing” contact us: 01 2942300