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 of Green IT
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 we deliver Green IT
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.
Green IT 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.