Showing posts with label Energy Management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Energy Management. Show all posts

November 27, 2011

Running IT as an Ecosystem

The New York Times (27 November 2011) has an interesting article under "bright ideas" called Turn on the Server. It's Cold Outside.
The idea in the age of cloud and distributed computing, where physical location of infrastructure is besides the point, is to place (racks of) servers in people's homes to warm them from the cold.
The idea is really pretty cool and quite intuitive: Rather than use expensive HVAC systems to cool the environment where servers heat up and are housed, instead we can use the heat-generating servers to warm cold houses and save money and resources on buying and running furnaces to heat them.
While some may criticize this idea on security implications--since the servers need to be secured--I think you can easily counter that such a strategy under the right security conditions (some of which are identified in the article--encrypting the data, alarming the racks, and so on) could actually add a level of security by distributing your infrastructure thereby making it less prone to physical disruption by natural disaster or physical attack.
In fact, the whole movement towards consolidation of data centers, should be reevaluated based on such security implications. Would you rather have a primary and backup data center that can be taken out by a targeted missile or other attack for example, or more distributed data centers that can more easily recover. In fact, the move to cloud computing with data housed sort of everywhere and anywhere globally offers the possibility of just such protection and is in a sense the polar opposite of data center consolidation--two opposing tracks, currently being pursued simultaneously.
One major drawback to the idea of distributing servers and using them to heat homes--while offering cost-saings in term of HVAC, it would be very expensive in terms of maintaining those servers at all the homes they reside in.
In general, while it's not practical to house government data servers in people's homes, we can learn to run our data centers more environmentally friendly way. For example, the article mentions that Europe is using centralized "district heating" whereby more centralized data center heat is distributed by insulated pipes to neighboring homes and businesses, rather than actually locating the servers in the homes.
Of course, if you can't heat your homes with data servers, there is another option that gets you away from having to cool down all those hot servers, and that is to locate them in places with cooler year-round temperatures and using the areas natural air temperature for climate control. So if you can't bring the servers to heat the homes, you can at least house them in cold climates to be cooled naturally. Either way, there is the potential to increase our green footprint and cost-savings.
Running information technology operations with a greater view toward environmental impact and seeing IT in terms of the larger ecosystem that it operates in, necessitates a careful balancing of the mission needs for IT, security, manageability, and recovery as well as potential benefits for greater energy independence, environmental sustainability, and cost savings, and is the type of innovative bigger picture thinking that we can benefit from to break the cycle of inertia and inefficiency that too often confronts us.
(Source Photo: here)

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October 16, 2011

This is One Super-Charged Bikini

This bikini, by designer Andrew Schneider is solar-powered.

It can charge all your iDevices and why not your MacBook Air.

The material is flexible photovoltaic film strips sewn together ending in a volt regulator and USB connection for a steady flow to all your devices.

So whatever happened to a simple get-a-way day at the beach?

The male solar version of the swimsuit is the iDrink--so called because it can chill your beer or soft drinks.

Plan for swimsuits to be only the beginning of a long line of solar-clothing to charge up your life.

Maybe that's why everyone wants to sit near the window at the office. ;-)

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August 24, 2008

FDCC and Enterprise Architecture

Setting standards help us to reduce complexity, contain costs, build interoperability, and secure the enterprise.

The Air Force is leading the way in setting standard configurations for the Federal government for computers, servers, printers, and cell phones.

Government Computer News, 4 August 2008, reports that “The Air Force started taking delivery in July on the first of 150,000 new PCs…the first to come equipped with their Windows Vista operating systems, including Internet Explorer 7, preset to meet Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) 2.1 standards.”

The FDCC is an outgrowth of the Air Force’s IT Commodity Council (ITCC) “efforts with Microsoft in 2006 to test and develop a standard software configuration.” This was coordinated with NIST, NSA, and DISA, and other agencies. Further, OMB “required agencies to implement FDCC’s Windows XP and Vista standards by Feb, 1, 2008.”

Now ITCC is working with DISA, NSA, Army, Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard to build Server configurations. Microsoft is taking these base configurations and “will develop configurations for ‘roles placed on top,’ says Michael Harper, Microsoft Service Director.

“Those will include the file and print servers, the domain controller, Exchange, SQL server, SharePoint, Web, and Windows deployment services.”

FDCC is “forcing the software industry to pay greater attention to the default settings of its products”. This is helping to reduce security vulnerabilities, and reducing costs.

Some examples of reducing costs and achieving other benefits from FDCC include:

  • “Preinstalling software at the factory rather than retrofitting a machine.”
  • Reducing energy costs by “preconfiguring Vista’s energy management settings.”
  • Steamlining the number of…device categories.”
  • “Standardizing…software…makes it easier to manage network and document security.”

FDCC has been so successful that ITCC is now moving forward with doing the same standardization for mobile devices.

FDCC is a step forward in terms of inter-agency collaboration, working with the vendor community, and creating an enterprise architecture that hits the mark for improved IT planning and governance.


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