Green IT
The recently released draft report of the Garnaut Climate Change
Review paints a bleak future and an urgent problem - climate change
from CO2 emissions. And if you're one of Australia's top 1,000
polluters then you'll in time be subject to regulation under the
federal Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. For the rest of us, we
should feel an obligation to reduce - wherever possible - our
carbon emissions.
Business benefits
Technology is a large energy consumer yet it's easy to reduce
its carbon emissions, saving the environment and your bottom
line.
Carbon emission control is a complex and multifaceted issue
however there are several things businesses can do to reduce
emissions from their technology environments:
- Implement power saving policies on your PCs to save power when
not in use.
- Server virtualisation can reduce the number of servers you
need, and consequently the amount of power the run them and cool
them - check out our server virtualisation solutions. Also fewer
servers mean fewer emissions from the manufacturing, transportation
and disposal processes.
- Turn off your PCs at night unless maintenance operations
require they are left on.
- Reduce printing - do you really need to print that email or
PDF? If you do print, print double-sided or 2 pages to a page to
reduce paper and the corresponding carbon emissions from the
plantation, the mill, and during transportation.
- Implement remote access technologies if you don't already have
them - these can reduce the need to drive or train it to the office
to complete that report, reducing transportation emissions.
- Consider integrated services such as Voice Over IP (VOIP) to
reduce equipment power requirements and increase utilisation of
communications infrastructure.
- Purchase PC/Server/Printer equipment that have higher energy
efficiency ratings - for instance did you know that TFT/LCD screens
(flat screens) consume less than half the power of older,
glass-tube CRT monitors.
- Consider videoconferencing and collaboration systems to reduce
the need to travel on planes and in cars.
- Consider software development services to replace manual or
paper-intensive processes. Not only might you gain operational
efficiencies and a lower bottom line, you may be able to reduce
your impact on the environment.
How Kiandra delivers
Kiandra's Server virtualisation implementations allow for the
running of multiple independent virtual operating systems on the
one physical hardware platform. The key benefits this has over
traditional single-server single-platform model are reduced
hardware costs, greater utilisation of hardware resources and lower
power and cooling requirements, which makes it better for the
environment.
A typical server may operate at 30% utilisation, which means
that 70% of its available resources are unused. Server
virtualisation improves utilisation by allowing additional virtual
servers to be run on the one physical host, thereby using
previously untapped but available resources.
Since it's possible to run more than one server on each physical
host, we can reduce the number of servers deployed, which means
lower power consumption (reduced hardware power requirements as
well as cooling requirements), reduced emissions due to lower
manufacturing need, and reduced disposal problems at the end of the
lifecycle. And it means less money spent on hardware and hardware
warranties.
Experience and certifications
Server virtualisation products such as VMware ESX Server and the
Hyper-V technologies found in the certain Microsoft Server 2008
products mean you can do more with less and reduce your impact on
the environment.
Kiandra is a certified VMware Enterprise Partner and can help
design, implement and maintain a server virtualisation solution
specific to your needs. And we know it because we do it - Kiandra's
core and test infrastructures utilise VMware ESX Server running on
HP and Dell servers.
At Kiandra, four hardware hosts run an impressive 29 virtual
guest servers including Microsoft and Linux operating systems and
these provide the backend for all core and testing/development
platforms.