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September 2009 - Posts

  • National Carbon Footprint Day

    If you find yourself at a loose end this weekend, you could do a lot worse than to check out your carbon footprint in preparation for National Carbon Footprint day which is coming up on October 2nd.

    It's all part of an ongoing effort to educate people in reducing their energy usage. By registering with the site, you can not only get lots of tips on how to save energy but you can monitor your efforts on an ongoing basis. The site will remind you via email each year on Carbon Footprint Day  so you can see how you did over the previous 12 months.

    National Carbon Footprint Day Patron Jenny Jones GLAM says “With the Arctic summer ice now melting over six times faster than predicted only 4 years ago and with the permafrost predicted to melt three times faster than expected barely a year ago, climate change is now truly a climate crisis. It is essential that we all take action urgently”.

    The point of all this is to get people to make carbon usage reduction part of their everyday lives. If you do something enough times it becomes habit right? So turning off that gaming PC when you've finished destroying your enemies, or making sure that you always do your laundry wash on a full load will become as natural as breathing. Here in the high consuming developed world we really have been a bit lazy - including my good self - in these matters. I thought that I was quite good until recently when I was given an electricity monitor and hooked it up to the meter. I was amazed at just how much I could shave of my electricity usage, although I do admit to becoming more than a little obsessed with that little nagging reminder sat on my kitchen window sill! Every time I switch off an appliance it tells me not only the number of watts that I just saved, it translates that into actual money saved. Clever.

    So instead of collapsing on the couch to watch the TV this weekend, logon to the National Carbon Footprint day website and start making changes. Get the family involved, and don't forget, you will not only be saving energy and carbon, but you may end up with a bit more money in your pocket too..

    Posted Sep 25 2009, 03:45 AM by 1E Blogs
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  • WMIC Alias/WMI Class Mapping

    Finding information in WMI can be quite challenging, especially if you do not know where to look.  There are several tools out there for finding this information and some are built right into the latest Windows operating systems.  This article will be talking about WMIC.  WMIC is a command line driven tool for obtaining information from WMI.  It is quite powerful, yet not many administrators use it and very few know about it.There are built in aliases for looking up information in WMI.  Custom aliases can also be created, but that is beyond the scope of this article.  In order to discover the available aliases simply open up a command prompt and type WMIC.  This will bring up the WMIC command line and look something like this:

    wmic:root\cli>

    Simply entering /? will display the overall help options and also list out the built in aliases.  Some of these aliases are intuitive with regards to the WMI class that they represent (i.e. ComputerSystem maps to Win32_ComputerSystem), whereas others are not (i.e. RDToggle maps to Win32_TerminalServiceSetting).  If you are like me, then you probably have a hard time remembering things and it would be nice if there was a published document somewhere that you could reference from time to time.  Listed below is a table for each mapping.  The nice thing is that you can easily get this information from the WMIC command line by entering ALIAS LIST BRIEF.

    Alias Name           

    WMI Class Description
    ALIAS                    Select * from Msft_CliAlias Access to the aliases available on the local system
    BASEBOARD                Select * from Win32_BaseBoard Base board (also known as a motherboard or system board) management.
    BIOS                     Select * from Win32_BIOS Basic input/output services (BIOS) management.
    BOOTCONFIG               Select * from Win32_BootConfiguration Boot configuration management.
    CDROM                    Select * from Win32_CDROMDrive CD-ROM management.
    COMPUTERSYSTEM           Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem Computer system management.
    CPU                      Select * from WIN32_PROCESSOR CPU management.
    CSPRODUCT                Select * from Win32_ComputerSystemProduct Computer system product information from SMBIOS.
    DATAFILE                 Select * from CIM_DataFile DataFile Management.
    DCOMAPP                  Select * from WIN32_DCOMApplication DCOM Application management.
    DESKTOP                  Select * from WIN32_DESKTOP User's Desktop management.
    DESKTOPMONITOR           Select * from WIN32_DESKTOPMONITOR Desktop Monitor management.
    DEVICEMEMORYADDRESS      Select * from Win32_DeviceMemoryAddress Device memory addresses management.
    DISKDRIVE                Select * from Win32_DiskDrive Physical disk drive management.
    DISKQUOTA                Select * from Win32_DiskQuota Disk space usage for NTFS volumes.
    DMACHANNEL               Select * from Win32_DMAChannel Direct memory access (DMA) channel management.
    ENVIRONMENT              Select * from Win32_Environment System environment settings management.
    FSDIR                     Select * from Win32_Directory Filesystem directory entry management.
    GROUP                    Select * from Win32_Group Group account management.
    IDECONTROLLER            Select * from Win32_IDEController IDE Controller management.
    IRQ                      Select * from Win32_IRQResource Interrupt request line (IRQ) management.
    JOB                      Select * from Win32_ScheduledJob Provides  access to the jobs scheduled using the schedule service.
    LOADORDER                Select * from Win32_LoadOrderGroup Management of system services that define execution dependencies.
    LOGICALDISK              Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk Local storage device management.
    LOGON                    Select * from Win32_LogonSession LOGON Sessions.
    MEMCACHE                 Select * from WIN32_CACHEMEMORY Cache memory management.
    MEMORYCHIP               Select * from Win32_PhysicalMemory Memory chip information.
    MEMPHYSICAL              Select * from Win32_PhysicalMemoryArray Computer system's physical memory management.
    NETCLIENT                Select * from WIN32_NetworkClient Network Client management.
    NETLOGIN                  Select * from Win32_NetworkLoginProfile Network login information (of a particular user) management.
    NETPROTOCOL              Select * from Win32_NetworkProtocol Protocols (and their network characteristics) management.
    NETUSE                    Select * from Win32_NetworkConnection Active network connection management.
    NIC                      Select * from Win32_NetworkAdapter Network Interface Controller (NIC) management.
    NICCONFIG                Select * from Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration Network adapter management.
    NTDOMAIN                 Select * from Win32_NTDomain NT Domain management.
    NTEVENT                  Select * from Win32_NTLogEvent Entries in the NT Event Log.
    NTEVENTLOG               Select * from Win32_NTEventlogFile NT eventlog file management.
    ONBOARDDEVICE            Select * from Win32_OnBoardDevice Management of common adapter devices built into the motherboard (system board).
    OS                        Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Installed Operating System/s management.
    PAGEFILE                 Select * from Win32_PageFileUsage Virtual memory file swapping management.
    PAGEFILESET              Select * from Win32_PageFileSetting Page file settings management.
    PARTITION                Select * from Win32_DiskPartition Management of partitioned areas of a physical disk.
    PORT                     Select * from Win32_PortResource I/O port management.
    PORTCONNECTOR            Select * from Win32_PortConnector Physical connection ports management.
    PRINTER                  Select * from Win32_Printer Printer device management.
    PRINTERCONFIG            Select * from Win32_PrinterConfiguration Printer device configuration management.
    PRINTJOB                 Select * from Win32_PrintJob Print job management.
    PROCESS                  Select * from Win32_Process Process management.
    PRODUCT                  Select * from Win32_Product Installation package task management.
    QFE                      Select * from Win32_QuickFixEngineering Quick Fix Engineering.
    QUOTASETTING             Select * from Win32_QuotaSetting Setting information for disk quotas on a volume.
    RDACCOUNT                Select * from Win32_TSAccount Remote Desktop connection permission management.
    RDNIC                    Select * from Win32_TSNetworkAdapterSetting Remote Desktop connection management on a specific network adapter.
    RDPERMISSIONS            Select * from Win32_TSPermissionsSetting Permissions to a specific Remote Desktop connection.
    RDTOGGLE                 Select * from Win32_TerminalServiceSetting Turning Remote Desktop listener on or off remotely.
    RECOVEROS                Select * from Win32_OSRecoveryConfiguration Information that will be gathered from memory when the operating system fails.
    REGISTRY                 Select * from Win32_Registry Computer system registry management.
    SCSICONTROLLER           Select * from Win32_SCSIController SCSI Controller management.
    SERVER                   Select * from Win32_PerfRawData_PerfNet_Server Server information management.
    SERVICE                  Select * from Win32_Service Service application management.
    SHADOWCOPY               Select * from Win32_ShadowCopy Shadow copy management.
    SHADOWSTORAGE            Select * from Win32_ShadowStorage Shadow copy storage area management.
    SHARE                    Select * from Win32_Share Shared resource management.
    SOFTWAREELEMENT          Select * from Win32_SoftwareElement Management of the  elements of a software product installed on a system.
    SOFTWAREFEATURE          Select * from Win32_SoftwareFeature Management of software product subsets of SoftwareElement.
    SOUNDDEV                  Select * from WIN32_SoundDevice Sound Device management.
    STARTUP                  Select * from Win32_StartupCommand Management of commands that run automatically when users log onto the computer system.
    SYSACCOUNT                Select * from Win32_SystemAccount System account management.
    SYSDRIVER                Select * from Win32_SystemDriver Management of the system driver for a base service.
    SYSTEMENCLOSURE          Select * from Win32_SystemEnclosure Physical system enclosure management.
    SYSTEMSLOT               Select * from Win32_SystemSlot Management of physical connection points including ports,  slots and peripherals, and proprietary connections points.
    TAPEDRIVE                Select * from Win32_TapeDrive Tape drive management.
    TEMPERATURE              Select * from Win32_TemperatureProbe Data management of a temperature sensor (electronic thermometer).
    TIMEZONE                 Select * from Win32_TimeZone Time zone data management.
    UPS                      Select * from Win32_UninterruptiblePowerSupply Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) management.
    USERACCOUNT              Select * from Win32_UserAccount User account management.
    VOLTAGE                  Select * from Win32_VoltageProbe Voltage sensor (electronic voltmeter) data management.
    VOLUME                   Select * from Win32_Volume Local storage volume management.
    VOLUMEQUOTASETTING       Select * from Win32_VolumeQuotaSetting Associates the disk quota setting with a specific disk volume.
    VOLUMEUSERQUOTA          Select * from Win32_VolumeUserQuota Per user storage volume quota management.
    WMISET                   Select * from Win32_WMISetting WMI service operational parameters management.
      

     

  • News: ETS Deploys 1E's NightWatchman® PC Edition

    1E today announced that Educational Testing Service (ETS), a non-profit institution advancing quality and equity in education, has licensed its Power & Patch Management Pack. 1E Power & Patch Management comprises 1E’s market-leading flagship power management software NightWatchman® and availability management software 1E WakeUp™.

    ETS is currently deploying 1E WakeUp and NightWatchman, across its PC estate ensuring substantial savings throughout the organization and a significant reduction in carbon footprint.  The organization was aware that a large number of their desktop PC users were not turning their PCs off at night. With this in mind, ETS made the decision to initially roll out NightWatchman® and 1E WakeUp on 4,000 ETS desktop PCs. Based on initial projections, ETS is expecting to realize over $100,000 in annual energy bill savings.

    1E WakeUp gives an organization control and visibility of its entire PC estate and ensures that all PCs targeted for software and patch distributions are turned on and ready to receive them, reducing the chance that a PC will miss a vital patch. Built-in Wake-On-LAN functionality enables organizations to update PCs when required, rapidly and with 100% distribution success. Computer Health functionality enables you to monitor and resolve problems, periodically running tests and applying fixes designed to improve availability, reliability and performance. Web WakeUp allows remote users to power on and gain access to their office PCs.

    1E NightWatchman® empowers enterprise and small to medium sized businesses to significantly reduce energy costs and impact on the environment by enforcing corporate power schemes. It enhances the power management capabilities of an organization’s computer by providing graceful shutdowns with the ability to save opened files, closing applications safely and then powers down PCs to any state desired from ‘hibernate’ to ‘standby’ and ultimately  ‘shutdown’. It combines this with an effective scheduling system in a single, easy-to-use package. Deploying NightWatchman® across an organizations’ PC estate has been proven to save Dell $36 per PC per year.

    Frederick Manno, Business Technology Director at ETS, commented, “ETS is committed to being an environmentally friendly corporate citizen. We selected 1E due to its proven track record in the market. By leveraging 1E WakeUp and NightWatchman®, we expect to reduce our carbon emissions and benefit from lower energy bills."

    Commenting on the new win, Sumir Karayi, CEO, 1E, said, “If all of the world’s 1 billion PCs were powered down for just one night, it would save enough energy to light up New York City’s Empire State Building – inside and out – for more than 30 years.  That said, it becomes very clear that the issue of PC power management is not singularly an IT department problem; organizations need to educate their workforce and ensure that awareness of this issue filters down to each individual user.  We are delighted to be working with ETS to enable the company to optimize their PC estate in order to reduce IT cost, promote operational efficiencies and foster power savings.”

  • NightWatchman Server and the EPA's Three Levels of Greatness

    As technology becomes more advanced, our reliance on computers increases with every passing year and the demand we place on our planet is also increasing. We are consuming more power than ever before and emitting billions of metric tons of CO2 every year just to keep our lives ticking over. The IT industry accounts for about 2% of global CO2 emissions and within IT, servers and datacenters make up nearly a quarter of this figure. Now, 2% may not seem a lot but when you factor in that in 2006 servers and datacenters accounted for 61 Billion kWh’s of electricity and emitted 55 million metric tons of CO2 in the US alone. This level of CO2 equates to the yearly emissions of approximately 11 million cars.

    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) commissioned a report to the US congress in 2007 detailing the power and environmental impact of the nation’s servers and datacenters. Trust me, it makes for interesting reading! In the report the EPA noted that based on current trends in server and datacenter growth, if nothing is done, we can expect by 2011 power consumption of the servers and datacenters in the US will hit more than 100 Billion kWh’s. This means at least another 15 baseload power plants are needed just to support the increase. Baseload plants are the production facilities used to meet some or all of a given region's continuous energy demand, and produce energy at a constant rate, usually at a low cost relative to other production facilities available to the system. These plants will burn fossil fuels that we are rapidly running out of or create nuclear waste that we cannot safely dispose of. As I said, it makes for an interesting read!

    Anyway, enough of the depressing statistics. There is something that can be done. In their report, the EPA detailed three distinct states of change; ‘Improved Operation’, ‘Best Practice’ and ‘State-of-the-Art’. With improved operation, legacy servers are decommissioned and energy efficient servers are adopted wherever possible. In addition, the remaining servers are power managed to a degree. With the best practice model, servers and storage are moderately consolidated and power management is more aggressive and with state-of-the-art, decommissioning, consolidation and power management are aggressive. Of course, the business impact from state-of-the-art will be significant but in return, it offers the biggest energy savings and reductions in CO2 emissions; in fact an estimate of up to 80% improvement in energy efficiency. However, whilst the report provides some excellent information about the current and projected state of IT, it is designed as a government report and therefore doesn’t contain any technical solutions to these problems. This is where 1E steps in.

    1E have been working in and around the PC power management arena for the past 8 years and are now stepping cautiously into the server arena. With the pending release of their NightWatchman Server product, 1E hopes to help companies move towards the ‘State-of-the-Art’ model for their server estates with minimal negative impact on the business. NightWatchman Server helps companies to overcome the most fundamental of issues when considering server consolidation and virtualization (one of the key points underpinning the EPA’s model structure); how does one identify which servers can and should be reallocated or decommissioned and which of the remaining systems should be virtualized? NightWatchman Server utilizes a sophisticated analysis engine to determine decommissioning and virtualization candidates based on ‘Useful Work’. Useful work is defined simply as and processing occurring on a server which directly or indirectly provides service to an end user. For example, if a database server is running but none of the databases are being accessed by either a user or an application servicing a user, that server is considered to be doing ‘Non-Productive’ work. In addition, not only is that server consuming resources unnecessarily, it is also costing money in licenses that are no longer needed. Bottom line; reallocate or decommission. [Look out for my future blog post ‘Are your servers useful?’] Take another server that is performing useful work but only during the hours of 10am and 2pm Monday to Friday. That server by definition may be a good candidate for virtualization to save hardware and power costs. However, if for some reason, virtualization is not feasible, it is possible to reduce the amount of power that the server is consuming during periods of non-productive work with ‘Drowsy Server™’, a power saving mode. 

    Look out for Andy Hawkins’ blog post ‘Dynamic power management explained’ for more information on Drowsy Server.

  • Product Overview: Shopping

    As we've been hearing lately, so called Green IT projects are more than likely to be driven by cost rather than some overwhelming desire to collectively do something constructive about climate change. Shame on you all!

    Anyway, over the years we have found that one of the major costs to organisations is in the way that applications are delivered to end users. Historically, Microsoft Systems Management offerings have all been about 'pushing' software to the end user - usually at a pre-scheduled time. This is fine for delivering common applications, upgrades and patches etc. But what if you would prefer to allow users to simply install only the applications that they really required, and only if they were authorised to do so.

    1E Shopping delivers just this solution, and as pictures tell stories far more effectively than words, we put together this small video to explain just how we do it...

     

     If you want to learn more about Shopping you can do so at the main 1E website here

    Posted Sep 08 2009, 04:37 AM by 1E Blogs
    Filed under:
  • Why does PC Power Management have to be so annoying?

    1E Product Manager, Mark Blackburn sent this over. He's been hard at work trying to figure out just why users don't seem to love making the best of the Power Management that is possible in Windows.. 

    One of the great things about having such a large installed base for NightWatchman is the great information we can glean from looking at some of our customer’s data. Most of our customers perform a pilot of some sort before enabling power management so that they can quantify the savings that they’re making.

    I’ve been examining the data from these pilot periods which show how end-users are configuring power management on their PCs before it is changed by the IT department, and it’s thrown up some interesting statistics.

    Windows XP ships out of the box with the sleep timer disabled. Only 9% of desktop users actually changed this setting and enabled a sleep timeout.

    Windows Vista ships out of the box with power management enabled. The default power scheme (Balanced) sets the PC to go to sleep after 1 hour, yet over 55% of Vista users had turned off sleep completely.

    These facts together show that generally end users don’t care about energy saving on their PCs and would much rather the PC was available when they wanted to use it rather than having to wait for it to come back to life once it’s gone to sleep.

    Organizations should take heed of this – there is no point in unnecessarily annoying your end users by setting power scheme sleep timeouts. We’ve already seen how ineffective they are at reliably putting PCs to sleep overnight and at weekends (see “Why Power Schemes are not enough”) – only providing about 20% of the potential savings possible.

    Turning off power scheme sleep timeouts entirely and setting a nightly scheduled intelligent power-down using NightWatchman results in much greater energy savings (with rates of 87% of PCs in a low power state overnight and at weekends), and since NightWatchman uses its own methods to determine when users have gone home and then manages the transition to a low power state, this means that your end users are not annoyed by their PC going to sleep during the day.

    The end result is happier end users  because their PCs are available when they need them, and happier shareholders because of the money and CO2 emissions you’re saving.

  • Green IT: Good for business, good for the environment

    So what is the main driver for developing a Green IT strategy?  Is it for the green image?  Is it driven by the green advocate from within?  Or is it because the organization genuinely cares about the ever-increasing carbon footprint generated from the use of IT?

    Sadly, it would seem that the main driver is not motivated by good intentions, but by the increasing cost of energy to business to meet growing computing demand and the capital cost of data centers, according to Kenneth Brill, Founder of the Uptime Institute.

    The truth is, something has to be done before we run out of power.  By 2011 data centers will consume 3% of electrical energy, three times what it was in 2000.  In Ken Brill’s words “It's time that the nation's business and government leaders publicly commit their organizations to make enterprise IT and data center energy efficiency a strategic-level priority and set aggressive and quantitative goals for rapid improvement.”

    The surprising thing is many C-level executives (for example CIO, CTO, CEO) still don’t understand the significant savings that can be made through the implementation of some relatively simple green strategies.  [Look out for my future blog: Quick Wins For A Green Data Center Strategy]  A greater understanding is required of where energy is being consumed and wasted in IT in order to make informed decisions to reduce costs and carbon, enabling organizations to move forward and make improvements.

    The message is simple, by increasing efficiency, reducing energy consumption and complying with future regulation (UK: Climate Change Levy, US: Cap-and-Trade), your green strategies will offer costs savings benefits while transforming your organization.

    [Read my carbon tax blogs for more information on the Climate Change Levy and Cap-and-Trade Program]

    In a survey conducted by IBM & Info-Tech Research, 60% of respondent companies had realized benefits from Green IT in terms of decreased electricity and consumable use, decrease in investment, an increase in features and functionality and in meeting customers’ demands.  Companies have also realized rebates from utility companies or Government.

    So now that it’s been recognized and proven that green is good for your business and for your bottom line, it’s time to stop talking about it and start doing it.

    Posted Sep 07 2009, 05:45 AM by 1E Blogs
    Filed under:
  • News:1E Research Demonstrates That Out-of-the-Box PC Power Management is Inefficient

     

    This just in!

     Some interesting in-house research that explores how users fail to exploit the money and energy saving benefits available through managing their PC power usage..

    Read the full release here.

  • Energy Star for Churches

    I like to finish the week on a lighter note. After all, when you spend your working week alternately chasing sheep AND trying to think up new ways to save energy (and therefore the planet) you need a break sometimes!
    So this piece I came across earlier this week and initially it made me chuckle, then the more I thought about it the more it made me think...
    Here's the essence. Energy Star have a new rating... for Churches. Now the opportunity for puns is almost limitless here, and a quick search on Google finds that most have already been pinched!

    This seems to have created a stir in the blogosphere and has generated lots of articles with headlines such as 'Oh my Green God' etc, you get the picture.
    Anyway the Energy Star Congregations rating means that Churches have to measure carbon footprints, reduce energy usage and investigate alternate energy sources.

    All this is quite amusing until you read on..

    By improving energy usage at the 300,000+ U.S. places of worship by 10 percent each, a total of 2 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions could saved each year. This equates to 5.4 Billion Kwh of electricity..

    Doing this would make nearly $200 million available annually for other worthy projects.  Amazing stuff eh?

    This leads me to thinking that we have still only scratched the surface of energy (and therefore carbon) reduction. Churches are simply a great example of how we need to integrate energy saving into every aspect of our lives, not just business and home.

    So this weekend, if you happen to mosey on down to your Church/Mosque/other place of worship of choice, give the boss there a nudge and tell him or her to log onto: ENERGY STAR for Congregation , and turn off that computer in the vicarage!

    Amen! (sorry couldn't resist that one)

    Have a great weekend

    Phil Wilcock

    Posted Sep 04 2009, 05:43 AM by 1E Blogs
    Filed under:
  • 1E Events - Autumn 2009

    1E has a busy schedule in the next few months, with some really worthwhile events coming up so here's a quick summary - get along to one or two if you can!

     Government ICT, QE2 Conference center, London UK - 15 September 2009

    This is all about the UK Government initiative to be as energy efficient as possible in terms of their ICT usage - the appropriately titled 'Government ICT Goes Green 09! If you work in ICT for a UK government organisation you should be there. See the website for more details of who should attend.

    IDC ICT Sustainability Conference, Russell Hotel, London UK - 13th October 2009

    A more general event in terms of attendees, 1E is a silver sponsor at this conference which will take an in-depth look at efficiency in the ICT department — how to make service delivery more efficient and the changes in systems and application architecture that can reduce the cost of delivering applications and make them more flexible.

    If you are responsible for managing your IT infrastructure to improve sustainability and to implement a credible and sustainable "Green IT Strategy", this conference is for you.

    World Energy Engineering Congress, Washington, DC - 4-5th November 2009

    1E will be joining the commercial, industrial, institutional, and governmental segments of the energy marketplace in Washington this year for this one.

    WEEC 2009 is a showcase of environmentally friendly, sustainable energy products, including their GreenStreet Expo. Go along and check out exciting new developments in all things energy related.

     That's all for now, I'll post more event info as the dates approach. If you want to see a list of all 1E's upcoming events, simply check our website for details here.

     

     

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