GreenTech
10 tips to green IT
Energy efficiency offers significant business and environmental benefits.
Despite the slowing
economy, twice as many companies are
accelerating their green IT initiatives
compared to firms that are scaling back
green projects, according to a recent survey
by Forrester Research. Of the 1,022
companies surveyed, nearly half say they
will accelerate or maintain their green IT
projects. The main reason: to save money.
Some 67 percent of companies say the driving
force behind their green agenda is to reduce
energy bills, while 33 percent say reducing
the environmental impact of IT is the goal.
Here are 10 tips to help
move toward a financially and
environmentally greener IT.
1. Replace old hardware.
Incorporate energy-efficient technologies
into every IT refresh. EPEAT- and ENERGY
STAR-certified systems deliver energy
efficiency as well as higher performance to
save energy costs, and can often reduce the
amount of equipment needed. Replace cathode
ray tube monitors with more-efficient
light-emitting diode monitors. Consider thin
clients and solid-state drives, which have
lower power requirements. Today's market
offers a wide variety of products that are
considerably more energy efficient than old
equipment.
2. Cut the clutter.
Replace older, energy-inefficient devices
that serve only one function with
multifunction devices. Converge multiple
networks into a single infrastructure to
reduce the number of devices needed.
3. Virtualize.
Virtualization increases server utilization,
which means running fewer servers, consuming
less power and requiring less cooling.
Virtualizing servers can prevent the need to
build a new data center. "The greenest data
center you can have is the one you don't
build," says Albert Esser, vice president of
data center infrastructure at Dell.
4. Power management. Set
power settings to activate the
hibernate/sleep/shutdown settings on idle
systems. Turn off equipment that is not in
use. Activate the power-management features
on servers to automatically reduce power use
during periods of reduced demand for
processor resources and increase
automatically during periods of higher
demand.
5. Decommission unused
equipment. Unplug equipment that is no
longer in use. Recover some asset value if
possible. Reuse or recycle all electronic
equipment at end of life.
6. Intelligent cooling.
IT managers can pinpoint hotspots and areas
of energy inefficiency by looking at every
rack, rather than at data centers or server
rooms as a whole. Airflow problems can be
addressed in the areas where they occur,
rather than blanketing the entire data
center with additional cooling.
7. Enable remote workers.
Teleworking offers energy savings to the
enterprise. As more people work from home,
the company can consolidate office space,
leading to fewer buildings to power, heat
and cool. An added benefit is that fewer
people commuting to work prevents billions
of pounds of carbon dioxide from being
released into the environment.
8. Use video. Interactive
video collaboration between employees,
customers, suppliers and partners, as well
as on-demand content distribution and
on-the-job training, allows companies to
trim their travel budgets while retaining
"face-to-face" contact.
9. Consider managed
services. Buying computing resources a la
carte can help enterprises control costs,
while attaining the performance and
reliability required. Consuming IT resources
(e.g., communications, server and storage)
on an as-needed basis can help control costs
and eliminate the need to equip, maintain,
operate and staff every IT project.
10. Measure energy use.
By exposing the energy hogs, administrators
can determine which green projects will
offer the biggest payoff.
While true green IT extends beyond energy
efficiency, reducing IT's energy consumption
offers immediate, tangible economic
benefits. "In the current economic
environment," Esser says, "you can't afford
not to be green."
Communications News' GreenTech column
focuses on a variety of issues concerning
the green IT movement. You can contact
Associate Editor Denise DiRamio at
ddiramio@comnews.com .