Green economics?
- Article 71 of 77
- Information Age, June 2005
Environmentally conscious IT policies can be good for both the planet and the bottom line.
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Shifting PC processing power to the server obviously requires either more servers or more powerful servers. As many data centre managers will attest, reducing power consumption is more than just a way to save money: it’s a way to make data centres viable.
“Power consumption in data centres is an important issue,” says Damian Reeves, co-founder and CTO of Zeus Technology. “The expense of running extra air-conditioning to keep computers within operating temperature, the extra backup generators needed to keep power, draining computers alive during electricity outages and the sheer space taken up by large hungry computers places a heavy burden on the financial model of operating a data centre.”
Importantly, the recent advent of blade servers and high-density racks has made it possible to vastly exceed the power supply built into existing data centres – with most racks usually served with 15kW of power rather than the 20-30kW now typically needed. These racks generate large quantity of heats that are difficult if not impossible to dissipate even with additional air conditioning equipment.
Again, reducing the amount of hardware required is the greenest route. Many servers often run at only 10-20% of capacity, compared to mainframes which often run at near to 100% of capacity. So using utility computing and virtualisation approaches (in which a single server can run more than one operating system and associated storage and applications) to consolidate several servers’ applications onto a single server can quickly reduce both the number of servers and the amount of power required. Indeed, an IBM zSeries mainframe can support 10,000 separate Linux images, so replacing 10,000 servers with a single mainframe is a potential solution – albeit one with few takers.
Cooling technologies, such as Fujitsu Primecenter LC water cooling system and IBM’s calibrated vectored cooling (CVC), that improve the efficiency of cooling can reduce the overall power consumption of the combined systems. According to Tim Dougherty, IBM eServer BladeCenter worldwide manager, CVC-equipped racks require “57% less electricity than 1U servers and up to 40% less electricity than HP’s two-way blade”. Garry Owen, head of enterprise at Fujitsu Siemens Computers, says that “the savings made in terms of extending equipment life anduptime, reduced system power consumption due to their running cooler, and higher equipment density due to cooler running, outweigh the additional power used to run the [Primecenter LC water-cooled] rack”.
One last emerging trend that both reduces power consumption and the number of components used in the system are data centres powered using DC current. All computers, whether PCs or servers, use DC current internally, but all require relatively inefficient, unreliable, heat-generating converters to take AC mains electricity and convert it to DC. With a supply of DC current, power converters are no longer necessary, saving power, reducing heat output and increasing power supply reliability by as much as 70 times. Currently re-emerging in the US after an aborted attempt by Compaq to kick-start the market several years ago, data centres that are wired for DC current can save 20% over the same system with an AC power supply while systems are in use; when they’re idle, the savings increase to as much as 50%.
Printing is one of the most wasteful operations environmentally an organisation can perform. As with PCs, switching printers off at night can save money – a printer in standby mode can use 11W of power. Ensuring that duplexing options are switched on where available can halve the amount of paper used. Using laser printers rather than inkjet printers can greatly reduce the number of (expensive) consumables required: over a five-year period, a printer will typically consume four or five times its original cost in consumables.
Xerox’s solid ink technology and Kyocera Mita’s separate drum technology offer more environmentally friendly – and cheaper - alternatives to standard laser toner cartridges. Paul Birkett, Xerox UK business solutions manager, says: “Due to the simplicity of the consumables, you don’t have to pull drum units out: you just drop in an ink block, which has the consistency of a wax crayon. It produces zero ozone and zero waste. Xerox is already beginning to exploit the technology and it will go right through the range over time.” Xerox claims that printers that use solid ink can print 30,000 pages before they need attention, compared with 1,212 pages with laser printers and that for every 100,000 pages printed, solid ink printers will generate 4.4 pounds of landfill waste, compared to 198.4 pounds for a typical colour laser printer.
Kyocera Mita’s separate drum system takes the drum usually contained in standard laser toner cartridges and makes it an integral part of the printer. “When the toner runs out on a conventional printer, you normally dispose of the drum as well,” says Tracey Rawling Church, head of marketing, Kyocera Mita. “With our devices, the only thing replaced is toner.” This means the cost per page in consumables is 0.3p with Kyocera Mita printers, says Rawling Church, compared to other laser printers which normally print at 1p per page or more. With no included drum, the amount of wastage is reduced as well.
Green IT savings last all the way through to the end of hardware’s lifecycle. The un-green option of disposing of a PC – throwing it in a landfill – can cost between £50 and £80, according to Gartner Research, with British landfills typically charging by weight of disposed material. However, a pilot programme by Maxitech.biz run over the past two years found that a typical organisation can recover 5% of the initial cost of redundant IT equipment, and one in three can generate a positive return from its recycling programme.
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