If you can't figure out where my history is on Firefox, you really have no need to have a looksie into my/var/log directory. If you are that flippin' stupid, why are you doing forensics on another person's hard disk???
Note to self... move thunderbird and firefox store directory to USB drive and place the chrome and rest of the profile on/mnt/cd. Now unless they know how to read the prefs.js they won't even know what to look for...
First, look at what has historically been spent, not just on equipment, but also on consulting, repairs, and an estimate of the costs of unscheduled downtime. Next, look at your client's future plans. Did they just sink a major contract and need to expand, either the number of workstations/servers or the capability? Are they planning a move?
Armed with that information, take a good hard look at your client's existing hardware and software. Is it up to the task? Probably not, or else we wouldn't be talking. Find the holes and come up with a plan to fill them. Use existing equipment to backfill these holes, as you will find the worst equipment is on the desks of the least senior people. Make sure this remains so after the upgrade, moving the senior folks' machines to the desks of the underequipped juniors, then giving the seniors the new and shiny equipment. If you do it the easy way, replacing the old with the new, you will have some bruised egos and these are the people your client listens to. Keep 'em happy.
The result of all this is your upgrade / migration plan. Repeat the process for workstations, servers, network infrastructure, software/security, and service. Put it in writing.
Items to note: In small business IT, Everthing in the walls and closets are the most neglected. Set these up for a bit of overkill and a clear upgrade path. Once they hit the closet again, they will be forgotten, unless something goes wrong. If your client will permit, add in monitoring to your equipment and service budget. You will know if something dies before your client will, and you look like a miracle worker.
End result: A happy client with equipment that suits his needs. A happy techie (you) that has a continual revenue stream.
The rest of the energy is simply less. If you dissipate 1/2 your energy as heat, half of 40W is less than half of 250W.
If you don't run at the bleedin' edge, less time is spent switching states from off to on as opposed to quiescent states (on or off). Time spent switching is where much of your your heat comes in.
The VIA C3 also has a real low core voltage which helps loads.
All these factors help in keeping my system 2 degrees above ambent. (yes, TWO) To give you an idea, some C3 machines are passively cooled!
Another nice thing: My whole setup cost me under $500.-
I run an ASUS C3 Terminator with a fluid bearing 250GB hard disk and 512MB of RAM. To this I added a DC power supply and an Lcd monitor that I power using a short cable in the back of the PC that runs off the 12vdc bus.
With an adjustment in the BIOS to only turn on the (rather large) case fan when needed, the PC is silent enough that I have to look at the lights to see if it's on or not. Best of all, it consumes about 7A from the 12VDC power brick including the Lcd monitor and a WRT54G connected to the 12V bus as well.
Advantages:
My entire desktop consumes about 84W of power. Of that, how much turns to heat? Very little.
Disadvantages:
The system runs a VIA C3 processor at 800MHz and it has some items optimized in hardware, others not. It'll run DVDs, MPGs, and most other items beautifully, but WMF's and some other formats tend to bog it down. Anything but light gaming is straight out of the question. As a workstation where work, email, web, and crypto is used, the system works as fast as my 2.2GHz Celeron, and in the case of crypto, runs about 80% faster.
This solution is not for everyone, but for the limited things I use a computer for (it is a tool after all) it fits the bill nicely.
Now, imagine these in a call center or light server rack and start multiplying the cost savings both direct and indirect. 200 PCs consuming 250W less energy per desktop comes to 50,000W direct energy savings. These are also producing 116W less heat energy. This comes to 23,200W less cooling and figuring 80% efficiency (too high really, but giving the benefit of the doubt) comes to 29,000W less power for cooling (indirect savings). Total savings is about 52,200W. Over the 14 hour day of a call center, this comes to about 731 kWh savings per day
Yes, we all do it. Some even procrastinate a bit to find out what comes next.
My issue is this: Combine the amount quoted as stolen by crackers, the amount quoted to fix security issues, the amount reported lost by thieves pirating files of any kind, and all the rest of the numbers in the 9+ digit range quoted by the reactionary media. Now that you have this bigass number, subtract it from the GNP of all the countries of the world combined (use the CIA world factbook or some such), and you still have got some left.
I am tires of lies, damn lies, and statistics used to point the finger anywhere but the old news of embezzlement and golden parachutes when someone mismananges a business.
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If you can't figure out where my history is on Firefox, you really have no need to have a looksie into my /var/log directory. If you are that flippin' stupid, why are you doing forensics on another person's hard disk???
/mnt/cd. Now unless they know how to read the prefs.js they won't even know what to look for...
Note to self... move thunderbird and firefox store directory to USB drive and place the chrome and rest of the profile on
To all you special investigators out there: RTFM!
First, look at what has historically been spent, not just on equipment, but also on consulting, repairs, and an estimate of the costs of unscheduled downtime. Next, look at your client's future plans. Did they just sink a major contract and need to expand, either the number of workstations/servers or the capability? Are they planning a move?
Armed with that information, take a good hard look at your client's existing hardware and software. Is it up to the task? Probably not, or else we wouldn't be talking. Find the holes and come up with a plan to fill them. Use existing equipment to backfill these holes, as you will find the worst equipment is on the desks of the least senior people. Make sure this remains so after the upgrade, moving the senior folks' machines to the desks of the underequipped juniors, then giving the seniors the new and shiny equipment. If you do it the easy way, replacing the old with the new, you will have some bruised egos and these are the people your client listens to. Keep 'em happy.
The result of all this is your upgrade / migration plan. Repeat the process for workstations, servers, network infrastructure, software/security, and service. Put it in writing.
Items to note: In small business IT, Everthing in the walls and closets are the most neglected. Set these up for a bit of overkill and a clear upgrade path. Once they hit the closet again, they will be forgotten, unless something goes wrong. If your client will permit, add in monitoring to your equipment and service budget. You will know if something dies before your client will, and you look like a miracle worker.
End result: A happy client with equipment that suits his needs. A happy techie (you) that has a continual revenue stream.
The rest of the energy is simply less. If you dissipate 1/2 your energy as heat, half of 40W is less than half of 250W.
If you don't run at the bleedin' edge, less time is spent switching states from off to on as opposed to quiescent states (on or off). Time spent switching is where much of your your heat comes in.
The VIA C3 also has a real low core voltage which helps loads.
All these factors help in keeping my system 2 degrees above ambent. (yes, TWO) To give you an idea, some C3 machines are passively cooled!
Another nice thing: My whole setup cost me under $500.-
I run an ASUS C3 Terminator with a fluid bearing 250GB hard disk and 512MB of RAM. To this I added a DC power supply and an Lcd monitor that I power using a short cable in the back of the PC that runs off the 12vdc bus.
With an adjustment in the BIOS to only turn on the (rather large) case fan when needed, the PC is silent enough that I have to look at the lights to see if it's on or not. Best of all, it consumes about 7A from the 12VDC power brick including the Lcd monitor and a WRT54G connected to the 12V bus as well.
My entire desktop consumes about 84W of power. Of that, how much turns to heat? Very little.
The system runs a VIA C3 processor at 800MHz and it has some items optimized in hardware, others not. It'll run DVDs, MPGs, and most other items beautifully, but WMF's and some other formats tend to bog it down. Anything but light gaming is straight out of the question. As a workstation where work, email, web, and crypto is used, the system works as fast as my 2.2GHz Celeron, and in the case of crypto, runs about 80% faster.
This solution is not for everyone, but for the limited things I use a computer for (it is a tool after all) it fits the bill nicely.
Now, imagine these in a call center or light server rack and start multiplying the cost savings both direct and indirect.
200 PCs consuming 250W less energy per desktop comes to 50,000W direct energy savings. These are also producing 116W less heat energy. This comes to 23,200W less cooling and figuring 80% efficiency (too high really, but giving the benefit of the doubt) comes to 29,000W less power for cooling (indirect savings).
Total savings is about 52,200W. Over the 14 hour day of a call center, this comes to about 731 kWh savings per day
Yes, we all do it. Some even procrastinate a bit to find out what comes next.
My issue is this: Combine the amount quoted as stolen by crackers, the amount quoted to fix security issues, the amount reported lost by thieves pirating files of any kind, and all the rest of the numbers in the 9+ digit range quoted by the reactionary media. Now that you have this bigass number, subtract it from the GNP of all the countries of the world combined (use the CIA world factbook or some such), and you still have got some left.
I am tires of lies, damn lies, and statistics used to point the finger anywhere but the old news of embezzlement and golden parachutes when someone mismananges a business.