March 2008 Archives

Today marks the 10-year Anniversary of my employment at Wharton Computing.

I started out supporting users in The Lauder Institute and Reprographics, moved on to become a Programmer under Bob Z, where we started out with Cold Fusion and Oracle (shudder), then ultimately tagged along when he took over Core Systems (what seems like) eons ago.

Thanks to everyone out there in WCIT-land for making this place a such a rewarding, dynamic, and energizing place to stick around for this long.

Where does the time go?

Here are some simple steps and things to keep in mind when configuring new hardware.  Hopefully this will help people make some more sustainable choices! 

Consolidate or Virtualize First. Nearly every server that I've managed over the past 10 years has suffered from being over spec'ed, using perhaps 5-10% of the available CPU, and 20-30% of the available RAM.  With such low utilization percentages across the board, it makes sense to consolidate many of these low-user services to our VMware environment.  Run physical servers and host 6 or 10 virtual servers!

Go Small. Or Go Blade. Only if virtualization isn't a good fit (and I can only think of one or two exceptions to this).  If it's smaller, it uses less physical material!  Kind of a "duh" statement, but smaller generally also means it took less energy to transport and to manufacture, and will likely consume less electricity upon deployments.  This is where blade-servers find their sweet spot.  Extremely dense/small footprint, no extraneous cables, no power supplies, no fans.  You factor out all the commonalities into an extremely efficient chassis, with an extremely efficient power supply and you've got a great leg up.  On the workstation side, this is the argument for using a laptop instead of a desktop.

Get an efficient CPU. I've talked about this before (finding a green CPU), but because the CPU is typically the most power-hungry component in the PC architecture, be very careful to specify the lowest-power processor you can.  You see this a lot in server hardware space (mostly because the HVAC and electrical power envelopes in DataCenter are being sliced extremely thin), but you can also do this for desktops and laptops.  Look for "low-voltage" or "high-efficiency" in the product names, and stay away from "extreme" or "high-end" processors.  Those are the SUVs of the CPU product lines.  You can find the current power specs on Intel's and AMD's websites.

Don't buy something new.  This is not to say buy a used server or workstation.  If the computer you have is still humming along, and you're experiencing low utilization percentages and the hardware is still reliable, instead of buying something new, just extend the warranty another year.  The most sustainable product is, after all, the product you never have to buy or throw away.

Reuse something you've got.  A corollary to that last one is to reuse equipment.  A perfect example is a "hand-me-down".  Your test environment is getting old and slow.  Rather than replacing it with brand new equipment, hand-me-down the old production environment from another department, or use virtualization to consolidate.

Don't forget the End of Life.  I make sure to ask all vendors about this process.  They manufactured the server you just bought.  Do they have a plan in place for responsibly recycling the equipment when it is beyond its usable life or broken?  Don't throw it into the landfill!

Tell vendors you want sustainable products and solutions. This seems to be a problem for everyone, so ask your vendors what products they have that are geared towards Green.  You may have to "dumb-down" by mentioning power and/or cooling problems in our DataCenter to steer the conversation in the right direction.

Every little bit counts, so use one or more of the methods or concepts above for a more sustainable experience.  Many of them can also be applied to many other products, services, we use and consume day to day, technology-related or otherwise!

Do you have any other tips and tricks for configuring or conceptualizing a more sustainable computer?  If you've got any questions, fire 'way in the comments or drop me a line.