Draft of Greening IT Online Book launched today

Greening IT book launched to coincide with Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference

Download the PDF here http://greening.it/book/releases

The Project

Behind the project

Green IT has a great potential to help society optimise resource use, save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To increase awareness on this potential, we are writing a non-profit making internationally collaborative book, released under a Creative Commons license

Why Green IT?

Today Western economices are largely characterised by service-based economies, sustained by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Our economies evolves around ICT: Our public sector is based on it, the financial sector is based on it, the energy sector, the transport system, the education system, the health system - all are largely dependent on Information Technology.

Our societies developed this way, because IT was able to make daily routines easier, quicker and more efficient. IT has optimised a number of processes and has helped society progress.

Globally IT is responsible for around 2%. of the world's emission of greenhouse gases. The IT sector itself contributes, through its massive consumption of energy, to greenhouse gas emissions – and thereby continuously adds to the cause of the problem. At the same time, however, the IT industry can provide the ‘technological fixes’ we need to reduce emissions and form a solid base for the Low-Carbon society. We call this Green IT.

What about climate change?

The majority of scientists today, believe that climate change is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide or CO2, which is emitted as a result of consumption (incineration) of fossil fuels. All sectors of society and all IT components require energy to perform their function – thus contributing to climate change.

The effects of climate change is global warming that causes melting glaciers, rising sea-levels, floods and droughts, more extreme weather events etc. All in all the effects of climate change will make life on Earth more difficult, and it will hit the hardest in low-lying and poor areas.

Climate Change and Global Warming are the effects of unsustainable consumption patterns in an industrialised world. And most people are by now convinced that we need to solve the problem, to avoid severe consequences on the environment and on our livelihoods.

IT plays an important role in this development due to its potential to further optimise processes and routines. What we want is a Low-Carbon Society where industrial processes have been optimised, energy production have been turned green (based on renewable energy) and consumption in general has been transformed to a more sustainable path.

Scope of interest

To further explore the potential for Green IT to help the climate and safe the planet - we are collecting material for a book.

We are interested in IT solutions that have a positive effect on CO2-emissions. Yet, the solutions should not only contribute to solve the problem, but should also help 'fix' the cause of the problem of climate change. A good example here, is the solution that Copenhagen Consensus Center's economists came up with (Aug 2009: Copenhagen Consensus Center): That it is cheaper to solve global warming by sending out a fleet of special built ships spraying seawater droplets into marine clouds to make them reflect more sunlight. It may solve the immediate problem, but it does not tackle the general flaws in consumption patterns that will continue to cause problems, if not attended to. Therefore it does not support our purpose to progress on the way to a Low-Carbon Society.

I have also agreed to be a contributor for later revisions of this book and will be discussing my favourite topic of Thin Client computing and desktop virtualisation.

More info at http://greening.it

A list of contributors can be found here http://greening.it/contributors

Download a PDF draft copy of the book from 

http://greening.it/book/releases

Triple I Efficient IT Presentation

Today I delivered a presentation on Efficient "Green" IT in the recession at the Triple i covention. http://www.iiicon.co.uk

Xendesktop: The missing part of virtualisation puzzle

My presentation from Citrix Iforum 2009 in Edinburgh today





Will add some comments about Citrix Iforum after the event finishes

Citrix Podcast Case Study

Citrix Video Case Study

Hat trick of Awards at Green 500

Reed won a hat trick of Green awards at the Green 500 London ceremony last night.

The awards were presented by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who joked that the tube strike in London had inadvertently made everyone 'greener' as they chose to walk and cycle to work, cutting their emissions in the meantime.

The first award that we won was the Green 500 Trailblazer Award. This was given to us in recognition of the fact that we have set a standard for other organisations to follow and that we have led the way in commitment and communications on carbon reduction.This was largely due to the introduction of our 'Thin Client' Terminal computer network.

The second award that we won was the Engager Award. This aimed to recognise an organisation that has achieved highly in the green learning, skills and communications of its workforce. Green500 said of Reed, "The company has delivered a comprehensive range of successful engagement activities across its entire portfolio, including: induction training; a carbon champion programme; 'switch it off' Thin Client terminals competitions; and 'Green Mondays' (an environmentally friendly news and advice service every Monday).

All activities are in place to engage employees to be more environmentally conscious in their daily activities, in order to achieve overall savings' objectives."

Finally, we were presented with a Platinum Award by the Green500. This recognises that we have made significant progress against the action plan that we agreed with the Green500 and that we continue to score highly in our carbon management processes. Next year, we will be aiming to achieve the Diamond Award, which is reserved for those organisations clearly leading the way and consistently exceeding action plan targets.

http://www.green500.co.uk/cms/mayor-awards-london-s-top-carbon-busting-organisations-2/

On Friday 19th June I will presenting at the Green 500 Energy efficient IT masterclass which will be hosted at Guys and St Thomas, London

http://www.green500.co.uk/cms/masterclass-diary/

European Code of Conduct for Data Centres

Last week we signed up to European Commission Code of Conduct for Data Centres

We decided to transform our enterprise data centre in 2007 into an energy efficient data centre.

The first thing we did was to increase the room temperature from 18C to 24C. We did this gradually one degree Celsius per month to gauge the effect. Modern computer equipment does not need to run below 20C and it an old mainframe legacy concept that some data centres still run at such cold temperature.

Next we turned off the humidifiers; again modern computing equipment does not need humidity of exactly 50%. We found that often one air conditioning unit was boiling bottle using a 4KW element to humidify the room while the other unit was de-humidifying the room. Just plain CRAZY!

We enforced hot and cold isles and created most efficient air flow by using blanking plates, changing air tiles and diverting under floor air flow.

We virtualised every server that could be virtualised by using 64 bit HP blade servers. You now need to business case to have a physical server.

Our HP Blade server enclosures use 90% plus power supplies and power management making them very efficient.

We consolidated our Storage using Netapp reducing the amount of spinning disks by over 500 while increasing actual capacity.

The data centre is now a lights out data centre. A sensor senses when someone is inside the room and switches the lights on. They switch off automatically when the person leaves.

We monitored electricity meter power consumption and UPS IT equipment consumption to work out Green Grid PUE and DCIE metrics

However the main investment was to replace our Stulz computer room air conditioning units for a pair of Uniflair Free-cooling units

Our legacy air conditioning equipment was ‘direct expansion’ where a refrigerant gas is used to transfer heat from inside the building (via the AC unit) to outside air (via the condensing unit). In this type of machine the complete heat transfer process is carried out by condensing & evaporating the refrigerant gas.

The new Uniflair system still relies on the same principal, however instead of relying on ‘pumping’ the refrigerant around the system, its transfers the heat to a water system which absorbs the heat generated & carries it to the roof. The key feature of this system however, is that for much of the year it can transfer enough heat from the room to the water without having to run the compressor system at all – and this is where substantial cost and environmental savings can be achieved.

When outside air temperatures are low enough, the water can simply be passed through the roof top cooler and passed back to the AC unit where it is diverted straight across the evaporator to cool the room air.

The new system also uses ‘EC’ drive fans which are the latest low energy fan drives saving approximately 33% over standard motor drives.

Benefits

There are numerous benefits to changing to the Free Cooling water cooled option

• Free cooling available for much of the year (any time it is less than 16C)
• Lower energy consumption.
• Lower refrigerant system content.
• Improved low energy fans drives.
• Great capacity control – improves room conditions & lower energy use.


Electricity Meter Readings for data centre

28/11/2008 12/1/2009 91,420 KWh
13/1/2009 10/02/2009 42,940 KWh
11/02/2009 25/02/2009 22,520 KWh
26/02/2009 03/04/2009 59,710 KWh

UPS meter reading for IT equipment load

4,720 KWh 28/11/2008 31/11/2008
36,582 KWh 01/12/2008 31/12/2008
36,582 KWh 01/01/2009 31/01/2009
33,042 KWh 01/02/2009 28/02/2009
36,582 KWh 01/03/2009 31/03/2009
35,402 KWh 01/04/2009 30/04/2009

Green Grid PUE Metrics

Although the free-cooling was installed in November 2008, the free cooling element was not fully active until early December 2008.

Prior to November 2008 we estimate our Data Centre PUE to have been close to 2.0 although the average legacy data centre PUE is 2.5 according to the Uptime Institute

November to December 2008 PUE 1.68

January 2009 PUE 1.29

February 2009 PUE 1.36

March 2009 PUE 1.36

Microsoft have been one of the largest names to sign the code. They have a PUE of 1.6 and have targeted 1.2

Google led the charge with one of its data centres running an average PUE of 1.11 and the rest averaging 1.19 PUE

Another idea is to use a networked energy monitor like the Ringdale Energy monitor which connects to the network via a Ethernet cable contains a web server with data logger

We will be installing this in-expensive monitor in the next few weeks

Link to the Ringdale monitor can be found here

We would certainly encourage others to sign the EU code of conduct.

More information on the European Code of Conduct on Data Centres can be found here

BSI Green IT Conference 19th May

I attended BSI's first and maybe only Green IT conference last week on 19th May at the CBI conference centre at Centre Point, off Oxford Street London.

The speakers were excellent but the attendance was very poor, whether it was scheduled too close to Green IT 09 a few weeks ago, the world recession or just poor marketing of the event I just don't know.

The number of delegates excluding speakers and BSI employees numbered 15 including myself which was cosy.

If BSI wants to run this event again I would suggest making it a free event or a virtual Green IT event where presentations are streamed to people's desks.

That said there were some good presentations and good points made to the select small audience.

Mile Gilmore, Managing Director of E-Ready who chaired the BSI Green IT conference started his introduction by stating "The very term 'Green' has as many interpretations as the number of people asked" he went on to say "I would venture that 'Green IT' is actually "Energy Efficient IT"

Ian Osborne from Intellect was the next speaker to talk about Grid computing Now! and how it is aimed championing Green IT through Grid Computing.

http://www.gridcomputingnow.org.uk

During his presentation Ian claimed "Powering processors consumes 6-10% of the data centre budget" said "It is important to get good value for carbon!"

The next presentation was David Fatscher from BSI is talking about ISO14001, PAS2050 and BS16001 standards. He said BSI was looking for users to get involved in Green IT standards he said anyone could join a committee or comment on draft standards by visiting http://www.bsigroup.com/getinvolved

David from BSI also called for IT vendors to provide "proof of greenness" after 80% of users said they had been misled by "Green wash" in a recent survey.

David Fatscher,BSI, Liam Newcombe,BCS Data Centre Specialist Group and Bob Croks,Defra then discussed what role BSI can play in shaping Green IT agenda in a discussion panel.

Next up was Liam Newcombe from the BCS DCSG on the European Commission Code of Conduct for data centres.

He started by saying "European Data centres are forecasted to use 104 TWh of energy by 2020" and quoted Paolo Bertoldi DG of European Commission JRC saying "The aim is to inform and stimulate data centre operators to reduce energy consumption in a cost effective manner"

Liam said "there was no coherent set of expert Green IT strategy" and "most information is not vendor neutral" when talking about the Green data centre.

Liam Westley, Managing Director from Tiger Computer Services AKA @westleyl on twitter spoke about the role of virtualization in Green IT. His presentation can be found on his blog at http://bit.ly/DraNI

On a lighter moment Liam showed how to Fry an egg on your PC to demonstrate how much power you are wasting http://bit.ly/6OvlD via @westleyl

Next up was Mark Taylor from Microsoft who said Microsoft wants to "help customers embrace sustainability as a way to save money as well as reducing their environmental impact" Mark said that Microsoft have signed the European Commission’s code of conduct for data centres just last week.

Following Mark's presentation was a panel including Liam Newcombe BCS, Patrick Fogarty Norman Disney & Young and Ian Osborne, Intellect to discuss data centres for the future. Cloud computing was a common theme and the McKinsey report on Cloud Computing Costs http://bit.ly/zsiIy was referenced.

Mark Cavill from Royal Mail did a presentation on their carbon emissions.

Some of his statistics included that their "CO2 emissions would fill 99 billion party balloons" "their energy consumption would power 43,731 UK homes" and
"Their landfill waste is equivalent to 11,157 fully laden Ford Transits"

He claimed Royal Mail's CO2 emissions are 993,879 tonnes per year and they will look to reduce this by 80% by 2050

His finishing quote was "The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones and the oil age will not end because the world runs out of oil" Amory Lovins

Anja Frrench from Computer Aid International spoke about the re-use of PC's

She said 12 million PC's bought in UK in 2008 and 12.5 Million Pc's were sent to landfill over the past 5 years in the UK.

She claimed that each PC uses 240Kg of Fossil fuel, 22Kg of chemicals and 1500 litres of water to make and that 75% of the environmental cost of a PC is expended before the PC is switched on.

The day finished with Bob Croks from Defra saying what Defra were doing in regards to government Green IT strategy.

I tweeted the highlights on twitter from @geekygreen http://www.twitter.com/geekygreen You can still search on the hash tag of #BSIGreenIT

My last small complain to BSI is they printed all the presentations on recycled paper for each delegate> I would of preferred an electronic version after the event on paper.

Green IT 09 Conference

I was a speaker and delegate at the Green IT Conference & Exhibition 09 (http://www.greenituk.com) at the Islington Design Centre in London on the 6th and 7th May last week. Now in its second year it attracted some very good speakers and industry leading delegates. It was slightly smaller this year obviously a knock on effect from the global recession but the major theme was on how Green IT strategies can actually help companies reduce costs to help the bottom line dispelling the myth that Green IT is more expensive or you have to be a tree hugger.

Chris Mines from Forrester Research opened the conference with his keynote after Lord Hunt, Minister for Sustainable Development and Energy Innovation pulled out of the event for medical reasons. The Green IT 09 Keynote started with Chris Mines asking "How does Green IT continue to flourish in a recession?" he answers that we must "Align eco-logy with eco-nomics” to get past the myth that Green IT is more expensive. He says we must "Start at the top of the IT stack, not the bottom, rationalise the application portfolio which in turn creates hardware consolidation".

He stated that according to Forrester research "55% of enterprises have embraced green criteria for IT procurement". He finished his keynote by saying "40% of companies say it is still too early to know whether the recession will have an impact on Green IT initiatives"

Chris slides and research on Green IT can be found here. You need to register on the Forrester site to download the material. http://www.forrester.com/greenitevent09

Next up was Gerry Pennell, CIO of London Olympics 2012 who asked the question "How will the London Olympic games of 2012 ensure that the technology is sustainable and energy efficient as possible?" He went on to say that "Sustainability is a central agenda for London 2012 including technology and IT" and includes that "Charities and schools may benefit from the disposal of 12,000 PC's after the 2012 games"

Day two keynote was hosted by an entertaining Paul Coby CIO of British Airways who started by saying "Corporate responsibility is a critical issue for the aviation industry and we need to address this through actions rather than words". He says there are four main areas of Green IT which need addressing. These are Green IT procuring, installing, running and ultimately disposing. B.A. pledged to reduce their IT Carbon footprint 25% by 2011. Some of the statistics he presented were B.A recycle 80% of their old IT equipment and give a further 10% to charities and they have saved 7,000 tonnes of CO2 by switching off PC's at night in addition to data centre power consumption reducing by 7%.

His comment on "Too much vendor Bollocks" was reported in Eweek linked below http://bit.ly/BIpCK

I enjoyed the Green IT 09 event and found it very worthwhile. I thought that the whole Green IT message and awareness is maturing.

My own presentation on day two was entitled the "The Efficient business case" and a copy is displayed below.

I also micro blogged live on twitter from the event as @Geekygreen. The posts can still be found

at http://www.twitter.com/geekygreen

A copy of all the presentations from the event can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/DXaIU

A good overview of the Green IT event from Eweek can be found here http://bit.ly/mPXma

Green IT Jobs

If the world leaders of the G20 nations are to be believed, green technology and the green economy will help bring an end to the world recession. Whether or not this is true, it is clear that many new IT jobs will be created in an attempt to stimulate a greener economy.

Let’s start with the word “green”, which has been overplayed in the IT industry so many times for different agendas. It conjures up a stereotypical image of a hippie in sandals, protesting against the spread of capitalism and impending doom. I prefer the phrase “efficient computing” to the word “green” as any IT professional can be interested in environmental and cost-saving issues.

Many of the skills required to succeed in delivering efficiency are now mainstream technical skills; it could be argued they just need re-packaging for IT professionals to become efficiency experts.

Typically, people who are employed as efficiency experts, architects and analysts will understand technologies such as virtualised servers, virtual desktops, thin clients, power management and datacentre efficiency. Server virtualisation may include Citrix Xen server, VMware ESX and Microsoft Virtual Server or some other open-source variation.

The desktop virtualisation suppliers have traditionally been Citrix with Presentation Server (now renamed Xen App) and Microsoft Terminal Services. Now a new breed of desktop virtualisation includes Citrix Xen Desktop, VMware View and Ericom Powerterm.
Thin clients are often a good, power-efficient alternative to PCs and the market is dominated by Wyse, HP and VXL.

Nevertheless, there is one area of knowledge that serves as the foundation for efficiency which is not fundamentally an IT skill – an understanding of electricity consumption.

Do you know your amps from your watts? Understanding Kilowatt hours, Kilovolt-Amps and three- or single-phase electric power is useful, as is understanding a little about electric generation and power transmission ­ from the burning of fossil fuels through to the distribution of electricity via the national grid and substations.

IT professionals must arm themselves with an understanding of how to make the most efficient use of electricity when it enters the building. DC power distribution, efficient power supplies and three-phase power are some ways to reduce the losses experienced when stepping down from the substation to the DC power used by most PCs.

Cloud computing is one of today’s IT buzzwords and is worth following in the efficiency arena. In theory, a shared resource such as Google Apps can have higher use and therefore greater power efficiency. If the cloud datacentre is close to a green power source, such as a hydroelectric plant or a wind farm, you can minimise transmission line power losses and be even greener.
Building an efficient datacentre requires a different skill set to understand the basics of cooling and heat. You should know your hot aisles from your cold aisles and be able to speak in British thermal units. You should understand thermal surveys and some of your buzzwords should include free cooling and heat exchangers.

Naturally, technology can play an integral part in building an understanding of the issues. A Google search of the phrase “green IT” provides more than 4.5 million results; there are many green computing blogs, LinkedIn special interest groups, RSS feeds and YouTube video channels, not to mention the Twitterverse, which regularly commentates on the sustainable computing sector to keep you up to date with the latest trends.

Half the battle of implementing efficient computing is pitching the business case to the board. This is where the word “efficient” comes into its own. With the recent high costs of utility bills, it is often very simple to show tangible returns on investment. If you can present a quick return on investment based on just financial criteria with the environment element as a value-added benefit, everyone is a winner.

The great thing about the word efficiency compared to the word green is that it means different things to different groups of people.

To environmentalists it means low-carbon computing, to the IT professional it means low maintenance and most importantly, to the finance director, it means cost-efficient computing.

Sean Whetstone is head of IT services at Reed Specialist Recruitment, which won the Computing Awards for Excellence Green Project of the Year 2008.

Published in Computing 30th April 2009

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/features/2241274/eco-opportunities-come-knocking-4616974

Data Centres Europe 2009 Presentation

Today I gave a presentation as part of a panel on the Efficient Green Data Centre at the 5th Data Centres Europe 2009 Conference and Awards in the City of London. It was attended by over 300 executives.

Summary of what I said is below together with my slides.

When I started in IT over twenty years I worked with ICL mainframes where five gigabytes storage was the size of a juggernaut and modest processing power took up a size of an aircraft hanger and you needed a power station just to run it.

It’s perhaps ironic that I have spent most of the twenty two years in the IT industry working out how to get power into data centres and now have spent the last four years on ways to remove power.

Interestingly enough I attended a virtual webinar by Intel last week where they claimed that computer systems are more 2.8 million more efficient when compared to 1978 while the car industry had only managed 40% in the same time period.

Today is Earth day which started 39 years ago in 1970 and is now followed by over 1 billion people around the world to create more awareness.

I think the phrase 'Green data centre' is tainted by over hyping of Green IT or 'Green Wash' by some vendors and has cogitations of hippies in sandals proclaiming doom for the world.

In the current economic climate I prefer the word Efficient Data centre rather than Green
so I will talk about efficient data centres today.

The great thing about the word efficient is it means different things to different groups. To the CEO and CFO it means cost savings, to the environmentalists and Green IT supporters it means reduced carbon emissions and to the IT professional’s reliable and low maintenance computing.

Sometime we forget why we run data centres. The key aim of any data centre should be to cost-effectively support the technology needs of the business. The data centre should be the right level of facility and matched to the needs of the business

Data centre experts recommend building as much standardization and modularity into the hardware inventory as possible.

In our case our modular building blocks are Cisco networks, HP blade servers and Netapp Storage.

If you are going run an efficient data centre you need to use metrics such as Green Grid (PUE) Power Usage Effectiveness to measure the efficient use of cooling and plant equipment. The holy grail is a PUE of 1.0 where no energy is used for cooling or plant. The average would be 2.0 where the same amount of energy is used for facility as computing systems.

In our efficient data centre the use of 64 bit computing, server virtualization, blade servers, consolidation of storage, 90% plus power supplies and free cooling have helped us achieve a PUE of 1.3.

Research has shown that it already costs more to power and cool a server over its lifetime than the capital cost of the server so why isn’t efficiency of equipment at the top of the procurement requirements. It always amazes me that IT purchasers will fights over a a few hundred pounds for the capital cost of a server but may no attention to energy ratings and the total cost of ownership to power and cool that server in it's lifetime.

I also believe you can’t manage what you can't measure and you can't measure what you can't see.

CIO’s, IT Director’s and IT departments should be responsible for the electricity bills for the data centre and perhaps the whole company if IT consumes a significant part of the power bill.

Gartner has recently announced that Green IT is still forefront of organization’s plans, despite recessionary cutbacks.

Almost half (46 per cent) of European respondents said they expect to spend at least 15 per cent of their IT budgets on green projects in 2009

In some ways the current world recession is the catalyst that efficient green computing has been waiting for.

Hopefully we can all work towards running efficient data centres which reduce costs at the same time as reducing their impact on the environment.

Green IT in Australia

I have recently returned from a business trip in Australia. Before anyone asks my carbon footprint for the flights and hotels were offset through the Carbon Neutral company.

My trip was meeting suppliers to build new Green IT infrastructure to support our Asia Pacific operations expansion and build a new data centre.

Before I left for Sydney I was told that the Asia Pacific region lagged behind Europe and the United states in Green Technology so my expectations were not high of what I might find. While it is true that end users in Australian companies have not adopted low carbon computing at the same rates as the UK it became clear that many suppliers and organisations were very knowledgeable on the subject and had products and services readily available.

While in Sydney I met with Optus, an Australian telecommunications provider who impressed me with their Green building campus just outside Sydney for which they won a Green Globe in 2008

When in Melbourne I had a early morning breakfast meeting with Dr Turlough Guerin who is Group Manager Environment for Telstra, the primary Telecommunications provider in Australia. Turlough gave me a good insight to the improvements Australian companies are making in Green technology and their environment impact. Turlough's Green Files blog can be found linked below.

http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/blogs/green-files

Turlough also told me about Bianca Wirth, another Technololist working with Microsoft Australia who is passionate about Green Technology. While I didn't get the opportunity to meet up with Bianca we have exchanged a few emails during and since my visit. Bianca blogs under the name of Little Miss Enviro Geek at http://blogs.technet.com/lmeg/ and her other website is Green IT Strategy http://www.greenitstrategy.com/ which has some good Green IT resources and links.

While in Australia I was micro blogging on Twitter under the name of @GeekyGreen at http://www.twitter.com/geekygreen with a local theme of Australia Green IT (when in rome and all that..... ) There are plenty of websites, blogs and events in Australia on Green computing.

I toured over eight data centres in Sydney and Melbourne and Green is very much on the radar with all of them. The one that stood out for me was Interactive data centre at Port Melbourne. Their managing director and novelist Christopher Ride who I met really understands what it means to be green and they have become the first to offer 100% Green energy in their data centre (a world first they claim).

On a brief trip to the capital Canberra I was encouraged to hear the Australian federal government and DEWR are embracing Green IT. They are also in the process of pushing through Carbon Emission Trading bill.

I look forward to doing business with many of the forward thinking green IT suppliers in Australia in the coming months.

I also became aware of a forward thinking Australian organisation called "ComputersOff.org" they launched a hilarious video on Youtube called "Naked Tuesdays" which is below and is a fun way of getting the message across.




On Saturday evening on March 28th I sat in Sydney Harbour to experience Earth Hour which was a great experiece.

I learnt that Earth Hour was founded by WWF Australia in Sydney in 2007 as a Citywide event which is now a global campaign backed by the UN and claims to have reached 1 billion people in 2009.

Below is my experience of Earth Hour from the Opera Bar just behind Sydney Opera House

Xen desktop The missing part of the jigsaw for desktop virtualisation

If you have been reading my blog and case studies you will know that we have virtualized 95% of our desktops over the past three years. This now represents nearly 5,800 Wyse Thin Client terminals and over 100 Wyse Thin Client laptops across the whole enterprise which is 270 locations through the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific.

This strategy together with server virtualization and our Green data centre has been fundamental in reducing our carbon footprint by 2,500 tons per annum and picking up a hat trick of awards along the way during 2008.

However, we are not satisfied with 95%!

I want 100% desktop virtualization by the end of 2009 with PC's and laptops retired across the company so they become a distant memory.

This is not just a green thing but a security, flexibility and cost saving strategy.

The reason that 5% of my enterprise is still using PC's and laptops is common in many organizations.They tend to be the difficult and technically demanding end users to convert to Citrix Xenapp. Marketing departments where multimedia is used is one common group and of course the IT departments who want control over their own desktop space and registry settings are another obvious group.

Enter Xen Desktop as the missing piece of the jigsaw. I have been piloting this technology myself for the past six months and I must say I am very impressed. This allows me to deliver a full functioning unrestricted virtual Windows XP desktop through a Wyse thin client, my ASUS EEEPC, my Apple iphone or through any device with Microsoft Internet Explorer and a Citrix plug-in.

The multimedia capability is very good too; on a recent business trip I was able to stream UK BBC TV programmes via my Slingmedia Slingbox to my virtual desktop without losing speech sync and with a smooth video stream. You could never do that with Microsoft RDP.

I will be giving a presentation on this very topic about Xen Desktop at this year’s Citrix Iforum 2009 in Edinburgh Scotland on Tuesday afternoon 16th June 2009

Citrix Iforum is on from 15th to 17th June. Maybe see you there.

http://www.citrixevents.com/English/about/index.asp?eventID=8756

More on Xen desktop from Citrix



http://www.citrix.com/english/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057

Video Demo of Xen Desktop

Free Cooling in the Green Data Centre

We have recently installed a new Free Cooling air conditioning system for our primary Green Data Centre from Uniflair. This system uses chilled water which removes the need to run tradional compressers when the outside temperture is 8 degrees less than the data centre. We run our data centre at between 23-24 degrees celius so we get free cooling when the outside temperture is lower 15 degrees celius. This system went live in November 2008 and in the first three months the temperture hasn't risen above 15 degrees in the UK.

In total, free cooling reduces the energy consumption of a standardcooling system by 20 percent. Most of the savings comes from the chiller — with the chiller using 32 percent less energy than the chiller inthe case without free cooling. The dry coolers require 1.46 times as muchenergy in free cooling than in a standard cooling.

Video of the Freecooling system in operation in my data centre