Consumption of energy sources has a negative reaction on the environment. Datacenters, PCs, printers and other IT gadgets use a large amount of power and consequently cooling energy is needed to counteract the power usage, which will be an endless circle of energy waste and also increased expenses.
Green IT via Green computing
Green computing is the technology where organizations adopt environmentally responsible use of computers and other related resources like central processing units (CPUs), servers and peripherals. Further, to maximize energy efficiency and sustainable development, the firms implement use of non-toxic materials, or making investments in future green concepts such as alternative materials. Green practices include the implementation of energy-efficient consumption of resources and proper disposal of e-waste.
In 1992, the green-computing movement was started with the Energy Star program so that the IT industry can pick up various environmentally sustainable practices. With the reduction of IT costs in mind, various companies wants to change their older machines especially datacenters because they consume more energy. Hence, various companies can minimize energy waste and carbon footprinting, various Green Computing Solutions can be incorporated like:
Server Consolidation: Companies can consolidate their server usage, which reduces the amount of servers needed by optimizing the available capacity, thus saving energy resources.
Virtualization: Virtualization is the technology, which allows companies' business application to be managed by independent host's hardware. It allows companies of all sizes to cut costs, improve IT services and manage risk.
On-Demand Computing: By adopting this solution, companies can demand computing resources like CPU, applications bandwidth and storage on-demand basis that decrease the amount of wasted energy.
Utility computing: It is a type of service that works on pay-as-per-usage basis. It provides flexible plans for computing usage and improves productivity. Through these services, firms can check their energy expenditures and bring their costs down.
Grid computing: It is a cost effective way to acquire computer resources. The apps can combine geographically dispersed resources to process a large amount of data, without consuming large amounts of energy.
Service Oriented Architecture (SAO): It consolidates business processes, combining business management services. Various firms adopt SOA to lower their costs and increase efficiency via speed and security for web applications.
Bad Eco-Design
Recently, an effort to save energy bills with controlling carbon dioxide emissions to save the entire planet was introduced, called USB Eco Button, but fails on both accounts.
The device is a USB-powered plastic button that can be used on any Windows based machine, except those running Windows 7. It puts the machine into a low-power energy saving mode. The USB Eco Button has software that monitors users' PC power usage and also records how much CO2 the Eco Button has saved.
However, various analysts said that the Eco Button is largely unnecessary, since such low-power modes can be applied through software-only fixes. Therefore, the material and energy used to manufacture it, the Eco Button could be doing more harm than good. Further, the price tag of $14 for such device could be more painful for the buyer.
Recent Trends
Various companies like HP, Wipro, IBM, HCL etc are pioneer in using and adopting green initiatives. Recently, Microsoft and Samsung Electronics had joined hands to promote the green IT benefits by combining Samsung's memory chips with Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7. Samsung said that with 4GB RAM and Windows 7, userTopics : Geeen IT, Green Computing, SOA, Service Oriented Architecture. Source: goarticles.com
No comments:
Post a Comment