Over here in the UK, climate change and the environment are finally well and truly on the agenda. Green issues get a mention in almost every TV evening news bulletin and our political leaders, gearing up for the next general election, are giving green policies great importance. But this time it appears to be more than just waffle and token gestures. The environment has become an every-day issue. Ordinary people really are worried about the effects of climate change and the government is beginning to realise the impact it will have on the economy. It’s not just an emotional issue any more. It is beginning to hit wallets.
So I was interested to read in this week’s Computer Weekly that Hillingdon Council, in London, have made an 82% power saving by moving legacy systems that were running on 40 servers onto three modern servers running VMWare. By virtualising 40 legacy servers into 3 they have cut power consumption down from 18,720 kVAs to a total of 3,450 kVAs. Nice work.
And last week 100% of IT professionals who took part in a survey by Computer Weekly agreed that it was important for IT to be environmentally friendly. But again, these environmental issues are also hitting firms in the wallet. According to technology analyst firm BroadGroup, power now accounts for 30% of datacentre operating costs!
What are you doing to save power? There are free versions of VMWare and Virtual PC available. So there’s no excuse not to be making the most of them. And don’t forget you can use Macro Scheduler to automatically shut down your PC each night!
