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Green buildings, Green Server Farms?
mstansberry writes "Has IT evolved to the point where it can consider energy efficiency without sacrificing uptime or performance? According to an interview with APC's Richard Sawyer, the answer is yes. The green buildings movement, spearheaded by the USGBC and other organizations has some people thinking about computing infrastructure's impact on the environment. Is it an IT issue or something from C-level executives?"
Last time I checked my computer was a box full of toxic chemicals
Considering my mac mini takes less power than just my AMD cpu, let alone not talking about the video card, etc... Im really wondering if the push for massive cpu power at the cost of extreme electrical usage is really worth it.
Green everything should be a good thing, but what if the cost of green than reclamation and regeneration?
Even without environmental questions. CPUs have been getting faster and faster per dollar you spend on them, but they haven not been getting faster the same way per _watt_ you put into them. And each watt put into them also costs power to cool them.
This applies even in the home. Here in California, land of the 14 cent kwh, a 100 watt PC running 24/7 costs $120 per year in power. In a 3 year life the power is more expensive than the CPU or any other major component except perhaps the monitor, sometimes more expensive than the whole PC.
This also plays big on ideas like getting an old computer and putting linux on it to act as a router or music player or other special functions. You are much better off buying a dedicated box like a WRT54G than making use of the "free" old hardware.
And yes, this does have environmental issues, but you can see the problem right away just by looking at costs.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Make enormous energy savings simply by consolidating services...
Stop buying new servers and extend the lifetime of older ones. (Account for the energy costs of manufacture as well as running costs.)
you had me at #!
Would be racks and racks of laptops! No need to by expensive low-power servers, just pump money into high-end laptops that already run low on power. And the best thing is, I don't have to pay for APC's, as they all come with batteries!
"Interview?" More like, "opportunity to mention APC's UPS efficiency and then yack about how important that is."
Somewhere, APC's PR firm is quite pleased.
Please help metamoderate.
We wrote about the environmental benefits of virtualization on our site a while back. I even started a little thread on Nanog about any numbers on relationship of server utilization and the energy cost, but it looked like few people cared. To see how underutilized your Linux server is, do:
# cat /proc/uptime
1122029.25 1101982.75
The first number is the system uptime in seconds, the second is the number of seconds it's been idle. The number above is from my laptop - 98% idle.
Virtualization is also going to be the way hardware vendors will keep the server price up - suddenly very powerful servers will start making sense. The questions is - who will win - Xen, UML or Linux VServer. We're banking on VServer. :-)
I thought I was filling out the cover pages on my TPS Reports properly, but I don't know what a "C-Level Executive" is. Do I have to meet with the Bobs to find out?
I want a low power/low heat computer because I want to be able to leave it on all the time. Every PC I've had has been both a computer and a space heater. It is hot enough. I want a computer without the space heater. It isn't that I care so much about global warming. I care about the warming in my own house and all the wasted electricity I have to pay for (both in the PC and my extra AC use). The problem is that it is hard to find a low heat PC. I would like to take the motherboard I have out of the case and drop in a low-heat one. But, all I can find are extremely overpriced complete systems with the obligatory Windows pre-install.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
The mini reminds me of a friend who used an old 68k macintosh as a webserver. her desktop was plugged into mains power but the little web server only used 17w of power to run all day every day, and was on a solar power setup with battery backup. last time I heard from her it had gone down from lack of power only twice in a year.
I bet if it wasnt a home built power system but a professional one with some better power management it could be used 24/7 too
It only really just mentions cost and green. I could say to someone "data centers have huge electrical bills and you can save a lot of money by using energy efficient equipment". That's basically what the article says.
What about specific solutions? Even just general principles? Where would someone look to get help in reducing energy costs? What about alternative energy supplies? Are they reliable enough? Enough power density?
I would have liked an article with a lot more information.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Umm... this is only with MS products. Most OSS software can be complied and ran on a 486. MS however adds a lot of overhead on top of what a server needs. A standard web server that is current would require at least 500MHz processor with 256Mb RAM and almost 2Gb of HDD space, (if memory recalls correctly.) Installing the newest debian, BSD, Gentoo or Slack without X, (since this is optional on these systems and a requirment for Windows,) could run on a 486, 32Mb RAM, (more is better,) and about 300Mb of HDD space.
Of course you can install an older version of Windows to save on hardware requirements but you end up sacrificing security updates. Why do that?
Last time I checked my computer was a box full of toxic chemicals
Ah! but what color are these chemicals?
air and light and time and space
That drives initiatives like consolidation. If you have 10,000 servers that are only 20% utilized, can't you get by with 2,000? The answer is probably no. But you might be able to get by with 4,000 and cut your cost in half on the equipment side. And then you start to look at not only the capital investment, but also the expense investment.
What kind of wacky PHB approves the purchase of 10,000 servers when he only needs 4000? And more importantly, is he hiring?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Save money, don't buy more machines, balance the performance more evenly. Condor, Sun Grid Engine etc.
Deleted
Okay, maybe me.
However, these new |337 modded overclocked mega-boxes with a zillion fans, accelerator cards, lighting, speaker systems, external super-spinning hard drives and 300-watt power supplies use a tad more fuel than that.
I'd guess that with a CRT monitor, you're looking at an annual cost of at least twice that for a standard-vanilla (non modded) desktop, and the mods go up from there.
I agree with the post about using laptop parts, and if I'm correct, that's what some manufacturers are starting to do. They're a bit more expensive, but far more energy efficient.
--- Dan
Server software technology keeps getting worse, as .NET, J2EE, Perl, PHP, Flash etc. are deployed for pages that could just as well be static.
How many barrels of oil per day go into "ad personalization"?
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
For many applications, the location of the server is not that important. Servers could be relocated to a cooler climate (avoiding the overhead of air-conditioning) or to an area of lower-cost electricity (e.g., Norway has aluminum smelters that take advantage of low-cost hydropower). At the very least, the server could be collocated at a nearby power plant to reduce transmission losses. One could also look into cogeneration -- using the heat of the server to warm water that is then used for another industrial process.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
1) Seasonic S12 series high-efficiency power supply. It makes a VERY noticible difference.
2) Athlon 64 CPU (preferably the new Venice or San Diego core) and Socket 939 motherboard. Enable PowerNOW! power management (current Linux distros like FC3 support it automagically, some BIOSes don't enable it by default). The CPU runs at 800MHz at 1.1V core while idle, jumping to full speed as needed (just like a notebook). Even at full speed power consumption is about half that of an Intel P4 blast furnace. Run 64-bit Linux and get even more work done per watt.
3) Avoid high-wattage video cards like the GeForce 6800 series in favor of 6600GT's. MASSIVE power consumption difference. Depending on how hard-core a gamer you are, the 6600GT's are good enough and a lot cheaper.
See Newegg, etc for the parts.
If you're not interested in running your own alternative-energy IT setup, you can always outsource it:
Solar Hosting uses renewables (i.e. solar, hence the name) to power all their web servers.
Looks like they offer a complete solution package, from web design to hosting.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Because they are already there. In fact I'd say 90% of all web sites out there are already running on less than the power of a 486 today. All 3 of my extremely low-volume web sites, for example, are not even running on real hardware. They are all virtually hosted along with hundreds of other sites on a single high power box. Web hosting companies operate on such a slim margin these days that they are the first to take advantage of any technology that saves energy.
STFU about slashdot bias.
C is for Chief, as in Chief Information Officer, Chief Executive Office, etc.
In America, it also refers to the grade-point average they barely managed to maintain while drinking their way through college and bonding with their frat brothers' dads so they could get hired onto corporate management tracks at age 23 so they could schmooze their way up to officer-level positions by age 46 and make outrageous salaries "providing leadership" for the rest of us and offering cushy internships to their sons' marginally-literate frat brothers. Not that I'm bitter.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
Its funny that this topic appeared on /. today - I've been considering changing my computers to make them more energy efficient.
My electric bill has been increasing, thanks to having an ever increasing number of servers and workstations chugging away whilst I do development work on them.
I've also moved from Windows to Linux devlopment, and have been shocked at just how good Linux is... good as in how little it needs in terms of hardware:
The joke is that the Linux machines are far more responsive than the Windows machine (and how little space the OS and applications occupy - how I hate bloat). Sure, compiling seems slower, but when running code, they just fly.
So, by moving to Linux I don't need high-powered machines, which means the costs are much lower (both capital and running. Being a bit of a geek, I'm probably going to throw the PSU out of the Linux machine and replace it with a DC-DC converter fed by a solar-panel... so my computer running costs will be effectively free... and the capital outlay for the solar panels and DC-DC is rather modest (thing 100s not 1000s of Euros).
.Now, if more people switched to Linux, they could use less hardware hungry machines, which need less power (and could easily run from solar).
Use a laptop then. The conversion is done on the power strip. Take out the battery and just run off your custom solar power supply then no lossy conversion and you don't have to alter a power supply.
During the good years (gone but not forgotten), I worked in several large office buildings.. Six, eight and ten stories, none of which could be considered new and I can tell you the people who designed them had no idea what the PC computer revolution would bring. With anywhere from fifty to two-hundred PC's to a floor the buildings air conditioning system in each case was totally incapable of handing the kind of heat thrown off by that many PC's. In one building (in the warmer months) they had to have someone in at 5am to crank the air conditioning as low as it would go (the air conditioning system was centrally programed to shut off at night, nothing we could do about it), then as the day went on it would go from 60 degrees with all machines off to just under a 100 by the end of the day.
On my last move from one building to another I was thinking how buildings now should have some kind of special exhaust conduits built into the floor with exhaust ducts on the PC's like a gas dryer. That way the buildings air conditioning system wouldn't have to deal with all that, and in the winter time you could use that heat to help warm the building.
30% efficient? Your numbers are hugely off. That might have been true waaaaaaay back in the day before switching power supplies, but it's not now. If that were true, a power supply delivering 300 watts to the computer would have to pull a kilowatt from the wall, and two computers would be enough to trip a 15-amp circuit that is so prevalent in newer construction, three computers would be much more than enough to trip a 20-amp circuit.
At normal load, most power supplies are around or above 70% efficient, primarily because the ATX 12V v2.0 specs explicitly call for a minimum efficiency of 70% at full load.
Now, note that even ultra-high-efficiency power supplies, which cost more than just double what a normal power supply costs, only specify 85% efficiency (an increase of 21%), and are reputed to save $17 per year per PC. For realistic usage of 3 hours per day, 10 cents per KW/h, 200 watt draw (which for AVERAGE usage is probably high), you would actually end up saving (365 days * 0.6 kw/h/day *
Maybe it's just me, but spending an extra $100-$150 on a power supply that will save just $4.60 per year seems a bit silly.
On the other hand, purchasing a more efficient platform to begin with will save VASTLY more electricity. Replacing that with one of the efficient designs from Via would end up with a total real-world consumption closer to 40-50 watts. Switch from a CRT to an LCD, and you've dropped that from ~100 watts to ~35 watts.
Of course, if we simply increased the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) by just five MPH, we would likely do far, FAR more good not just for the environment, but for world stability as well.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
storing heat for 5 months in a big tank of water would need tons of insulation.
It depends on the size of the tank / house. Anyway, 4+ feet underground should provide plenty of insulation check out the permafrost layer up north to see how well that much ground insulates over a few months. I don't know how large a tank you would need for storage capacity but I would go for 10 -20 heat conductive pilings in the ground or water pumped though a pipe the ground as you don't need to use water in a tank for storage capacity when the ground works just as well. As to the day / night cycle that greatly increases the efficiency of these systems but it's not that hard to go from 40deg over 1 day to 40 deg over 200 days as long as your spending less cash on capacity than you are on energy.
Actually, to take the planks out of my own eye first, I probably ought to shut down the PC at 5:00p myself. (I'm at work) :-) The Macs at home (should) automatically go to sleep, though they haven't lately...
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
You must be out of touch if you think the vast majority of people use that much power all the time.
PSU Needs Calculator
Using this calculator, a sample system I just made up only needed 319 watts of peak power. To get that, I needed to be running the 3gig barton chip, 2 sticks of ram, 2 hard drives, a Radeon X800, sound, NIC, with 3 fans fullblast and 2 cathode tubes, and a dvd player. Keep in mind that's PEAK power required, which means all of that has to be going top speed to get there, which means something along the lines of running 3D mark while copying a dvd from one drive to the other while playing sound while downloading a file over the internet while having all your fans and lights cranked up.
Hate to break it to you, bud, but just cause you have it doesn't mean you are using it.
Never confuse volume with power.
My pocketbook.
:) I especially like nanosolar's approach (taking an orderly molecular matrix and using it as a template for insertion of molecules at proper spacing for efficient solar power generation), although we'll have to see if they can pull it off in bulk.
Solar power systems aren't cheap. Hopefully at least one of the ongoing research projects into organic solar systems will fix this.
Freeze Ray. Tell your friends.
The reason why laptop *appears* to have battery capacity gauges that don't like being left on A/C power for a couple of months is not the gauge, it is the battery.
Lithium Ion batteries works poorly in constant full charge conditions and in hot temperatures. Their effectiveness degrades in heat and constant full charge. And guess what? A constant plugged in laptop has BOTH! Heat from the computer and full charge all the time. So a laptop left plugged in for months will kill the battery fast with the heat it generates and the constant charge of the battery.
Read here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
The mini reminds me of a friend who used an old 68k macintosh as a webserver. her desktop was plugged into mains power but the little web server only used 17w of power to run all day every day, and was on a solar power setup with battery backup. last time I heard from her it had gone down from lack of power only twice in a year.
There's a hosting company that runs on solar power, Solar Host.
FalconShould there be a Law?