Definition

 

 

By definition IT and the environment are diametrically opposed ideas. The manufacture of almost any product today has an impact on the environment in terms of CO2 emissions, and with electronic equipment, the use of  heavy metals such as nickel cadmium, mercury and lead make the manufacture and disposal of the products a danger to the planet. Moores law states that computing power will double every 2 years.

This statement has driven the idea that hardware is just a commodity that can be thrown out and replaced by newer more powerful designs. A study by Green IT, indicated that over 250 million computers would reach the end of their useful life by the end of 2007. A small percentage of which may be recycled, whilst the rest would be left to rot in land fill sites around the world, leaking their poison into the earth.

 

Virtualisation is seen as a shotgun in a growing arsenal of technologies that are designed to reduce a companies ongoing IT costs.

Firstly virtualisation reduces the floor space needed to house the physical machines in the data center. This in turn has an effect on the amount of cooling needed to keep closely stacked hardware from overheating. The impact is a drastic reduction in power consumption, cost, and a lower CO2 footprint.

 

Secondly, virtual infrastrucutre requires the adherence to strict policies and chargeback models to prevent virtual server sprawl, a problem risen from the ease with which servers can be created, left idle, and leads again to a proliferation of large servers wastefully consuming energy.

 

Lastly it is not a panecea. Virtualisation is a tool, a commodity that will enable all platforms eventually to effectively manage the physical resources and deliver the necessary computing power demanded by todays complex software. There are many other areas that co-exist within a data centre that are often overlooked, such as the positioning of racks so that servers help cool eachother, or refrigerated closed boxes with tightly packed servers, power and thermal monitoring.
The pressure to join this global club is mounting, and expertise to help companies exploit these energy saving techologies are few and far between. 

 

 

DotGreen was started to help companies develop environmentally friendly IT strategies that profit not only the busines, but the planet as well.