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Why IT Won't Power Down PCs

Posted by timothy on from the sheer-cussedness dept.

snydeq writes "Internal politics and poor leadership on sustainable IT strategies are among the top reasons preventing organizations from practicing proper PC power management — to the tune of $2.8 billion wasted per year powering unused PCs. According to a recent survey, 42 percent of IT shops do not manage PC energy consumption simply because no one in the organization has been made responsible for doing so — this despite greater awareness of IT power-saving myths, and PC power myths in particular. Worse, 22 percent of IT admins surveyed said that savings from PC power management 'flow to another department's budget.' In other words, resources spent by IT vs. the permanent energy crisis appear to result in little payback for IT."

5 of 576 comments (clear)

  1. IT is a customer service group by winkydink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doubly so for IT Ops. If the business tells IT it wants PC's powered off when not in use, then it will happen. So far, for the most part, that businesses haven't asked. It's disingenuous to lay this problem at the feet of the IT department.

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    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

    1. Re:IT is a customer service group by amoeba1911 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's not just the government. I work for a hundred billion dollar company and we routinely do shit like that just to waste money so that we don't get screwed over the next year. What a total fucking waste... waste of resources, waste of time, waste of everything. Business as usual.

  2. Desktop hibernation support sucks terribly. by legoboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure it has nothing to do with bad hardware or bad drivers that randomly refuse to wake up from hibernation and the hassles and expense of supporting related issues.

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    If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
  3. Remote Access ... by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As soon as I can apply a group policy to our Windows PCs to go to sleep yet still be available via RDP for end users without requiring them to jump through hoops or writing some script they have to run to trigger wake on lan, then I'll have our PCs use power saving.

    Until then, they run all the time so when a user happens to be out of office and needs to access their desktop they can still VPN in and use RDP to get to their PC.

    Feel free to point me at a graceful solution, but the best I've seen so far is a web page to send the wake on lan packet. Thats nice and all, but I'd rather just pay the power bill instead, its far easier than explaining it to everyone who isn't a geek.

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    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    1. Re:Remote Access ... by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do you have any idea how many apps can't be used on a terminal server due to licensing restrictions?

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      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager