Greener IT  

While I did a brief post recently about saving energy by making server rooms more efficient, WorldChanging has now put together a more detailed description of what is going on in this area.

If you've ever worked in a data center or server room, you know that those places get hot. Many current microprocessors consume enormous amounts of power, and put out correspondingly enormous amounts of heat; as a result, most computer rooms require constant air conditioning. Furthermore, the back-up power supplies required to keep the servers from crashing during a brown-out or black-out are often power hogs themselves, sometimes consuming a third again as much power as they supplied to the computers. System administrators, focused appropriately on making certain that the computers functioned as needed, often only paid attention to power and heat issues when the infrastructure failed.

One of the results of the green building trend has been a re-examination of the heat output and power demands of information technology offices. For desktop systems, this means simple recommendations to turn computers off at night or shutting off monitors, as well as increased reliance on "green computers." But server functions generally don't allow for the machines to be unavailable, and servers are often operated "headless" (without a monitor) anyway. Solutions need to be a bit more sophisticated than that -- but such solutions are, increasingly, available.