April 2010 - Posts

• Microsoft ConfigManager R3 and 1E "Best of Breed" Solutions

  MMS2010 saw Microsoft's Brad Anderson reveal the long awaited details of the new power management capabilities offered in ConfigMgr R3 during his keynote address.  This announcement also provided a segue in the keynote into Sumir Karayi's video explaining the 1E strategy around power management and related security patching at the enterprise level. Following this keynote, 1E delivered its "Gold" session to MMS attendees to further expand on all of this. Tuesday of MMS week also saw a press release issued by 1E outlining the importance of the Microsoft/1E strategy. Here's a key portion of that press release: “By working together with 1E’s best-of-breed energy efficient IT solutions, we offer customers a powerful combination of automation, reduced infrastructure and power management. As a result, customers can gain a deeper insight into their operations and drive efficiencies across their physical and virtual IT environments,” said Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Management and Services Division at Microsoft Corporation. The video and full press release are found here: http://www.1e.com/AboutUS/Events/MMS/MMS.aspx  So what's the bottom line? How does this impact the Systems Administrator? This comes home to roost in several ways. First is power management. I frequently get the question "What does 1E bring to the table that I can't get for free with R3?". The answer is perhaps best explained with a simple analogy or two. Terminal Services is included with all versions of Windows. It provides remote access just fine, yet Citrix built a major business offering value on top of the TS platform to satisfy more complex enterprise requirements. Likewise, Windows Backup is also provided out of the box, yet one does not back up the data center with it because the requirements are much more complex. The same may be said for the R3 power management functionality in ConfigManager and 1E's NightWatchman product line. R3 provides the Administrator with a power management solution which may be just fine for your needs. The addition of NightWatchman, however, provides significant capabilities above and beyond those contained in native R3. NightWatchman provides support for the MAC client in addition to XP/Vista/Win7. Client machines are also powered down even when rogue or busy processes are running on the machine that would otherwise prevent a standby action from occurring. Conversely, if a specified process that must be allowed to continue running is encountered, the shutdown is avoided until the process is complete. When a shutdown does occur unsaved user data is backed up to prevent loss of valuable work. Users are further empowered by allowing a postponement of a scheduled shutdown if desired. They also have access to their machines off hours and remotely via the Web WakeUp feature. Senior managers are also provided with a robust and hugely customizable web based dashboard for a comprehensive view into all aspects of their estate. The NightWatchman Server Edition extends significant power reporting and management into the data center (no, we do not shut down servers! ) This product also clearly reveals unused or underutilized physical and virtual servers. 1E introduces the concept of measuring "useful" work (as opposed to the traditional and overly simplistic CPU utilization measurement) to make these determinations. Secondly is the issue of security compliance and patching.   Simply having the ConfigMgr Client installed does not mean you are patch compliant. Are you seeing 100% success with your patch deployments? Are you touching every machine in the estate? Likely not. Does this conversation sound familiar? Have you ever had it?  Security team to Sys Admin team – “Are we completely security compliant?” Sys Admin team – “We sure are!. All of our PCs with the ConfigMgr client installed definitely are, so long as they were powered up during our maintenance windows, and they are healthy, talking to ConfigMgr to run the updates, and they've been rebooted to apply the installed updates.” At 1E we consider patch and security compliance success to be measured by several factors: Are security patches installed in a reasonable time, and "Success" reported? Are certain critical applications installed and running – e.g. the anti-virus client? Are certain required settings applied - e.g. is encryption turned on? 1E's Computer Health feature can help you ensure all of these are validated, all the time, often with automatic remediation. We even provide on-demand remediation of the WMI repository! Our solution is also Common Criteria certified – IT IS SECURE! it is also important to remember that effective processes are required to achieve complete patch compliance – it isn’t entirely a technology issue. Key in these processes are ensuring the machines are powered up and accessible; that they are healthy and receiving ConfigMgr policy; and, that they can be safely rebooted upon patch installation to complete the process. 1E's solution ensures they are powered on when needed (with no modifications to the WAN infrastructure required for WakeOnLAN support!), and shut back down again when completed. Summarizing all of this, one can clearly see why the combination of Microsoft's Configuration Manager product together with 1E's NightWatchman-series solutions provide a true "Best in Breed" combination for realizing both energy efficiencies and all the savings that provides, plus a fast and robust security compliance solution for the enterprise Administrator. Posted Apr 29 2010, 01:59 PM by 1E Blogs Filed under: System Center, 1E Products, ConfigMgr

• EU Code of Conduct for Data Center Efficiency

  Well it's not the most exciting blog title, but it's an important one so bear with me.. This code of conduct has been a long time in the making, and it's designed to assist in reaching aggressive EU targets (20%) for energy reduction via savings in the data center. 1E announced it's support for the code today along with other vendors such as 3COM, Microsoft and Dell. The EU Code of Conduct provides guidelines, recommendations and examples of best practice for data center managers, vendors, consultancies, utilities, Government, industry bodies and educational institutions. It is focused on design in areas such as software, IT architecture and infrastructure, which aim to inform and encourage them to reduce energy consumption without hampering the performance of such facilities.  Here's an extract... The Code of Conduct aims to: Develop and promote a set of easily understood metrics to measure the current efficiencies and improvement going forward in conjunction with other industry thought leadership fora. Provide an open process and forum for discussion representing European stakeholder requirements. Produce a common set of principles to refer to and work in coordination with other international initiatives Raise awareness among managers, owners, investors, with targeted information and material on the opportunity to improve efficiency. Suppliers of efficient services and equipment, as well as other organisations can become allied in and endorsers of these targeted campaigns. Create and provide an enabling tool for industry to implement cost-effective energy saving opportunities Develop practical voluntary commitments which when implemented improve the energy efficiency of data centres and in so doing minimise the TCO. Determine and accelerate the application of energy efficient technologies. Foster the development of tools that promote energy efficient procurement practices. Support procurement, by providing criteria for equipment (based on the Energy Star Programme specifications, when available, and other Codes of Conduct), and best practice recommendations Monitor and assess actions to properly determine both the progress and areas for improvement. Set energy efficiency targets, for public and corporate data centre owners and operators (targets are differentiated according to the size and status of existing data centres, the geographical location, the return on investments, etc). Broadly speaking the code divides the data center into two distinct areas namely the IT load (servers basically!)  and the Facilities load (everything else that uses power). In measuring the efficiency of a facility, the ratio of IT load to Failities load will be used to assess the 'facility efficiency', but so called 'asset efficiency' will also be used and this is where we come in. This metric looks at the way in which the IT assets (servers) use the power delivered to them. Our NightWatchman® Server Edition revolutionizes data center efficiency and server power management by measuring Useful Work across both physical and virtual servers. It provides the ability to reduce energy consumption across servers without any loss of availability by continually analyzing how much power is being used by business applications and how much is being wasted on unproductive processes. NightWatchman® Server Edition is the key to data center consolidation, making servers more efficient by reducing power draw and helping to identify and redeploy or decommission unproductive servers. Over the coming months it will be interesting to see some results emerge from this code of conduct. Being able to measure your efforts to a common standard is a great help to our customers who are trying to lower energy use and costs. Watch out for some 1E case studies in this area.. Posted Apr 29 2010, 07:59 AM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: 1E News, Green IT, Data Center, Server Power Management, For External Release

• 10 years of the Microsoft Systems Management community

  This year was a great one for 1E at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), but then it generally always is. After 10 years of attending this great techie convergence, it was a real honor to be recognized by Microsoft during the keynote on Wednesday. Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Management and Services Division at Microsoft commented, “By working together with 1E’s best-of-breed energy efficient IT solutions, we offer customers a powerful combination of automation, reduced infrastructure and power management. As a result, customers can gain a deeper insight into their operations and drive efficiencies across their physical and virtual IT environments.”  He then introduced a great video featuring our own Sumir Karayi and some lovely 1E solutions - take a look here. This got me thinking about our efforts at MMS 10 years ago when we were a relatively unknown small UK company. Sumir and I flew into Vegas not quite realizing the scale of this event. We knew that there was interest in our products and that people wanted to meet us. We knew this because of our participation in the very active online technical forums , where system admins exchanged ideas, problems and inspiration around Microsoft's emerging management technologies. These forums were a great way of introducing our new products and getting feedback from a core group of people who really mattered (and still do!) - the systems admins who manage their desktops and servers day in, day out. Anyway, we were finding it hard to meet up with people at this event in Vegas, so Sumir had the inspired idea of having some 1E t-shirts printed up with a giant logo.  We drove out to a print shop somewhere on the outskirts of town with our floppy disk (yeah really, remember them?) containing the 1E logo and returned to the conference with some very unsubtle looking attire indeed. And I still have mine! Most of those original systems management forum contributors are still around, and some of them, such as the legendary Ed Aldrich now work with us at 1E. Many of them I am proud to count as friends, and one of the most tireless and hardworking among them is Rod Trent. He's the founder of myITforum.com which sprang out of those early forums and conferences, and who celebrate their 10th anniversary this year. As a platinum sponsor of myITforum.com, it's great to see 1E still in the thick of the mighty Management Community. So congratulations to Rod and to all of the contributors to myITForum - you know who you are - and here's to the next 10 years. If you are new to the Microsoft Management community, you're lucky, you have a great support network ready and waiting!   Posted Apr 28 2010, 05:18 PM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: 1E Internal blogs, 1E News, For External Release

• Port Usage for NightWatchman Mgmt Ctr Power Management Products

  We're often asked for a comprehensive overview of all ports used in our WakeUp and NightWatchman power management tools. To help answer this question, the following is provided. This data is a snap-shot in time and likely to change. It is accurate as of the date of this posting. Posted Apr 28 2010, 01:35 PM by 1E Blogs Filed under: 1E Products

• Part 1: CSC Embarks on the NightWatchman Server Edition journey with 1E

  Welcome to the first installment of the CSC/ NightWatchman Server Edition case study blog! CSC has been exploring many different energy saving initiatives in its data centers, Upon viewing a demonstration of 1E’s newest power management tool designed to revolutionize data center efficiency and server power management, saw an opportunity to reduce power consumption without increasing hardware or considering server room expansions. CSC and 1E decided to team up and create this online pilot, delivering a case study at the end of the project. Throughout this blog, we invite our partners and customers to walk with us through our journey of installing and using NightWatchman Server Edition from 1E on a test group of servers within CSC to reduce our energy consumption. The first step on our pilot was to engage CSC data center teams, application owners, server administrators, Service Delivery Managers (SDMs) and create the project team. To kick off and get everyone onboard, we set up a web conference where the 1E team did a demo for CSC of the product and briefed the team on the features.  The biggest question the teams had was how the tool functioned if not by putting servers to sleep. We discussed at length to ensure everyone was satisfied the tool was not going to interfere with regular operation of the servers. Sharing this document also helped+. CSC/1E teamwork and good working relationship shone through when CSC began the server selection process.  Questions came up and were quickly resolved allowing us to move through our candidates and develop server lists.  To learn more about the servers that are good candidates for using NightWatchman Server Edition, please visit this page of the 1E website One of the lessons learned through this initial process was that a server system administrator was not always the person to ask whether a new tool can be installed!  Thankfully, CSC has a very strong change management process, where we discovered we needed to widen our circle of stakeholders for the project, and invited the application owners to join our teams.   Posted Apr 28 2010, 02:28 AM by 1E Blogs Filed under: 1E Products, 1E News, Green IT, Server Power Management, For External Release, Customer Spotlight

• Customer Spotlight: CSC Embarks on the NightWatchman Server Edition journey with 1E

  Welcome to the first installment of the CSC/ NightWatchman Server Edition case study blog! CSC has been exploring many different energy saving initiatives in its data centers, Upon viewing a demonstration of 1E’s newest power management tool designed to revolutionize data center efficiency and server power management, saw an opportunity to reduce power consumption without increasing hardware or considering server room expansions. CSC and 1E decided to team up and create this online pilot, delivering a case study at the end of the project. Throughout this blog, we invite our partners and customers to walk with us through our journey of installing and using NightWatchman Server Edition from 1E on a test group of servers within CSC to reduce our energy consumption. The first step on our pilot was to engage CSC data center teams, application owners, server administrators, Service Delivery Managers (SDMs) and create the project team. To kick off and get everyone onboard, we set up a web conference where the 1E team did a demo for CSC of the product and briefed the team on the features.  The biggest question the teams had was how the tool functioned if not by putting servers to sleep. We discussed at length to ensure everyone was satisfied the tool was not going to interfere with regular operation of the servers. Sharing this document also helped+. CSC/1E teamwork and good working relationship shone through when CSC began the server selection process.  Questions came up and were quickly resolved allowing us to move through our candidates and develop server lists.  To learn more about the servers that are good candidates for using NightWatchman Server Edition, please visit this page of the 1E website One of the lessons learned through this initial process was that a server system administrator was not always the person to ask whether a new tool can be installed!  Thankfully, CSC has a very strong change management process, where we discovered we needed to widen our circle of stakeholders for the project, and invited the application owners to join our teams.   Posted Apr 27 2010, 09:30 AM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: Customer Spotlight

• MMS2010: It takes more than a Volcano to stop 1E!

  So disappointed that 1E CEO Sumir Karayi, Mark Blackburn and myself didn't make it to Vegas for MMS2010! Seems there was a bit of dust around or something... If you are there however, do NOT miss the exciting stuff that our guys who did make it out there will be showing off (not jealous at all Ed) here's the Press thingy... LAS VEGAS (Microsoft Management Summit) – Tuesday 20th April 2010 – 1E, a software and services company that improves IT efficiency by identifying and reducing costs and waste in hardware, software, energy and time, today announced two significant advances in IT efficiency: NightWatchman® Server Edition 2.0 and NightWatchman® at the Microsoft Management Summit 2010 (MMS). With nearly 14 million licensed users of its software deployed across 1100 organizations in 42 countries worldwide, 1E’s energy efficiency solutions have helped its customers save in excess of $360M in energy costs alone, cutting CO2 emissions by three million tons. NightWatchman is the world’s leading PC power management solution with four million licensed users worldwide. “We’re proud to join Microsoft at MMS as a Gold Certified Partner and offer this loyal community a first look at our innovative suite of NightWatchman solutions,” said Sumir Karayi, CEO, 1E. “1E continues to lead the industry in empowering IT efficiency, reducing costs and saving energy for our customers.” For System Center customers, NightWatchman provides increased return on investment (ROI) through genuine power savings and enhanced computer health, reporting and remediation. For example, 1E’s Nomad Enterprise allows branch office server consolidation and zero touch Windows 7 deployment. In addition, Configuration Manager customers using 1E’s Shopping software will benefit from self service through a highly customizable work flow-based Web portal.1E solutions have been maximizing efficiencies to the System Center Configuration Manager infrastructures for more than a decade. “By working together with 1E’s best-of-breed energy efficient IT solutions, we offer customers a powerful combination of automation, reduced infrastructure and power management. As a result, customers can gain a deeper insight into their operations and drive efficiencies across their physical and virtual IT environments,” said Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Management and Services Division at Microsoft Corporation. NightWatchman Server Edition, the latest innovation from 1E, addresses the $24.7 billion of IT spend wasted each year on servers not doing any useful work. Traditional monitoring tools primarily focus on availability and performance but provide little insight on whether a server is providing any business value. NightWatchman Server Edition provides detailed efficiency and power reporting so that decisions such as decommissioning wasteful servers are made much simpler and the efficiency of productive servers can be further enhanced with Drowsy Server® technology. 1E will be presenting a session on Wednesday, April 21st at 10:15am, providing the audience with a sneak preview of NightWatchman Server Edition 2.0 and NightWatchman 6.0, which will be generally available later in 2010. Presentations and demonstrations of 1E solutions including NightWatchman, WakeUp, Shopping and NightWatchman Server Edition will take place throughout the week at the 1E booth [# 410]. Attendees will also discover how Nomad Enterprise can be used to simplify and reduce the cost of Windows®7 deployment. Posted Apr 21 2010, 10:22 AM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: 1E Products, 1E News, Green IT, Server Power Management, PC Power Management

• 1E Founders Reunited for MMS2010!

  It's about that time of year again. A time when any Systems Administrator or Manager who is remotely interested in Systems Management of  a Microsoft flavor migrates west to the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS). This year is a sell-out, with 3,000 attendees descending on the Venetian Hotel in sunny Las Vegas for a week of updates, learning, catching up with peers and friends, and perhaps even some  socializing. Before I decided to take up the farming life, I attended this event from 1999 to 2005. So it may come as a surprise to some to learn that my old friend and 1E CEO Sumir Karayi has managed to coax me out of my rural idyll here at Hillside Farm for a few days to attend the 2010 event! Fellow co-founder Mark Blackburn will be there too, and I think this may be the first conference that we've all attended in around 10 years. Excited? You bet. Coincidentally this year will also mark the 10th anniversary of the mighty myITForum - which for those of you who don't know is an unbelievable technical resource which is run by and for system administrators. 1E has been involved with myITForum pretty much from the start and as platinum sponsors of the site I am certainly looking forward to marking the occasion with my old buddy  and myITForum founder Rod Trent and others. For 1E this will be a huge event, with a large presence at the Expo, and the 'almost legendary 1E party' on the Wednesday for all our friends and customers. This year it’s at ‘Tryst’  nightclub and will be possibly the most fun to be had anywhere in Vegas that night. 1E staff from both our UK and US offices will be attending MMS, and this year is especially exciting in terms of our speakers. Andy Hawkins and Ed Aldrich will be providing a sneak preview of the upcoming releases of NightWatchman and NightWatchman Server Edition in their session on Energy Efficient IT (April 21 at 10:15). I just got off the phone with Andy and he assures me that there will be lots of real world examples of cost savings and case studies alongside some brilliant product demos. His co-presenter Ed Aldrich is one of the most knowledgeable systems management I know so this is one not to be missed. Our stand within the Expo will also be hosting some excellent stand presentations which are a great intro to our technologies if you are new to the scene. If all of that doesn't tempt you then we will also be giving you that chance to win one of three Dell Mini 10 netbook thingies, and have many other great giveaways during the week. If you are attending MMS2010 next week, then do drop by and say hi. If you are lucky you may walk away with a netbook. If you are even more lucky you may even get an invite to the party! see you in Vegas Guide to 1E at MMS2010   Posted Apr 15 2010, 02:17 PM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: Green IT, Server Power Management, PC Power Management

• Hillside Farm Spring Update

  Yes that's right. No energy efficiency, and not a Data Center in sight! Now that the long cold winter seems to be finally (and very gradually) fading into memory, I though I would share an update from my 'other job' as custodian of the family farm .   Spring at Hillside Farm Yes this last winter was a doozer! Lots of snow, freezing temperatures for weeks at a time and the usual associated problems such as frozen water troughs, ponds and fingers. my Galloway cattle outwinter, which means they are so hardcore tough that they don't need no girly barn to shelter in, they just hunker down behind a hedge. In fact I went out a few times and they all had about 3-4inches of snow on their backs, maybe it just adds to the insulation. The Herdwick sheep breezed through the freeze untroubled too. I took out some supplementary fodder at one point as the grass had been covered in snow for days, but it lay untouched. They would rather dig through the snow for the tiniest green morsel it seems. Here's our bull 'The Emperor of High Creoch' to give him his full title, and a lady friend.. So for the last few weeks I and my neighboring farmers have been collectively willing the ground to warm up sufficiently for the grass to start growing. It took a real hammering in the Winter months and this time of year always makes us slightly nervous as you see your stocks of Winter forage dwindle while waiting for the first green shoots of Spring. We managed to plant 275 Cider Apple trees between frosts too, so I've been keeping a particularly close eye on them as they didn't go into the ground in the best conditions. This week finally saw some buds appearing from the bravest little trees however, and within a few days they were all stretching up to the warm sun and bursting out all over. Wildlife too seems to have awakened this week, with birdlife in particular in a frenzy of nest building. We have Red Partridge, Reed Warblers, lots of sea birds such as Curlew and Lapwing about, and all full of the joys of Spring with their song. Our Barn Owl box seems to be popular with one of these rare fellows moving in almost as soon as I installed it in the barn. Brown Hares are pairing up and fighting in their seasonal 'mad March hare' displays and I've even seen a few Rabbits pottering about which is promising as they have recently been largely wiped out by a proliferation of Foxes in the area. We had thousands of Pinkfoot Geese invading over the Winter in search of food. Flocks of 5000+ were not uncommon, and as they mostly eat grass I'm glad to see the back of them as they return to Iceland for the Summer. We seem to have a stray pair that has decided to stick around this year however, having taken up residence on one of our ponds. Maybe we'll see some goslings in a few weeks! Around the farmyard itself, Spring is a busy time. Machinery maintenance and preparation, roof and water pipe repairs all taking priority this year. The grassland needs lots of attention this year due to the hard frosts, so today I'll be dusting off the grass harrow and 'scarifying' the pastures in order to stimulate growth. Pulling out all of the old, dead grass makes way for new shoots and helps to get sunlight onto the cold soil. I will also be spreading some lovely composted pig manure onto the meadows which is a bit like rocket fuel for grass.. Talking of pigs, I'm currently re-stocking our pig population and considering some different breeds this time. We usually go for the hardy British Saddleback as they thrive outdoors here but I do have a liking for the lovely ginger Tamworth, which they say makes fabulous bacon.. Recently we started conversion of what was the old dairy on the farm into a butchery. This will enable us to process and store all of the meat that we produce on the farm and will make a huge difference over the coming year. We will be curing and smoking our own bacon, making sausages and hams, as well as the full range of beef and lamb cuts. My friend Dave the Butcher is currently teaching me the ins and outs of being a master butcher and so far I still have ten fingers, but watch this space as there are some very sharp implements involved! As you can see, it's shaping up to be a busy 2010 on all fronts. This year we are also planning more tree planting, more cattle (if the bull has been doing his job) and are also considering a renewable energy project, so look out for more Hillside Farm updates in the Summer. I will leave the last word (or picture actually) to Tim the dog who has worked tirelessly through the Winter in her own inimitable one eyed sheepdog style..   Posted Apr 13 2010, 04:22 AM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: Musings

• Global Data Center efficiency standard agreed.. almost

  Standards can be a good thing, especially in IT (think USB, Firewire etc). Standards for measurement are great too, such as the Metric system which is used by most of the known world. Sorry couldn't resist that one America... What is more relevant and also very imporant to us folks here at 1E is a standard for measuring Data Center Efficiency, which is just one of the things we're about. Fortuitously enough then, that news reaches me today via the global telegraph , that good sense has prevailed in the world of Data Center metrics in the form of an agreed global standard in this field. Almost. The Green Grid has announced that agreement has been reached with various agencies  including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Save Now and Federal Energy Management Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Program, European Commission JRC Code of Conduct, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan’s Green IT Promotion Council, and The Green Grid. These participants have agreed on the use of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as the preferred energy efficiency metric. PUE as a measurement metric has been around for a while but hopefully this agreement will see the metric go global. This is important so that Data Centers of all shapes, sizes and nationality can be measured with the same set of rules, and it will also help to quantify the effectiveness of so called 'Green IT' initiatives with a recognised standard. In plain English, that means the CFO's may be a little happier about paying for it! One important entry in the agreement, which I feel has been a tad unreported, is in the following paragraph of the document. Desired Outcomes: Effective energy efficiency metrics that: 1. Measure the actual IT work output of the data center compared to actual energy consumption. It is of note that in the process to define IT work output, the following interim measurements are being defined and / or validated: a. IT - Measure the potential IT work output compared to expected energy consumption; and measure operational utilization of IT equipment b. Data center facility and infrastructure - Measure the data center infrastructure efficiency (PUE) So, as you can see I've highlighted the bit that excites me - just in case you missed it. This is what we've been trying to get over to people here at 1E for years, and that is the fact that it's all very well measuring the amount of energy that comes into the data center, and you can even measure things at the individual rack or UPS level, but to achieve true efficiency you need to monitor individual servers to see just what they are doing. Just because a server is on, well, it don't mean a thing. In the next paragraph of the agreement, it states: Guiding Principles The collective groups are in agreement on the following guiding principles, as an interim step toward the desired outcomes (1. b.). It is recommended that data centers begin to measure PUE according to these principles:  - Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) using source energy is the preferred energy efficiency metric. PUE is a measurement of the total energy of the data center divided by the IT energy consumption  -  The industry should improve the IT measurement capabilities to ultimately enable taking the measurement directly at the IT load (e.g. servers). At a minimum IT energy measurements should be measured at the output of the UPS  - For a dedicated data center, total energy measurement should include all energy sources at the point of utility handoff. For data centers in larger buildings, total energy should include all cooling, lighting, and support infrastructure, in addition to IT load So what they are saying here, is that in order to make your efficiency measurement as accurate as possible, you need to be monitoring your servers. Which is exactly why we introduced the concept of Useful Work™. Using NightWatchman Server Edition you can monitor the exact metrics that this agreement is talking about, and integrate the results into your overall efficiency stats. Our monitoring capability in NWSE tells you exactly what a server is doing and when. For instance it can highlight when backups are running (Useful Work™), or when a rogue application is chewing up the CPU and/or disk (Really Not Useful Work). Having identified a potential slacker server you can then implement our Drowsy Mode which is where the real savings start. BTW Really Not Useful Work is something I just made up but I quite like it and may submit it to the Green Grid for the next draft - what do you think? In summary, I think that this agreement signifies a great leap forward in Data Center efficiency measurement. China and India have yet to get involved but I'm sure it's just a matter of time, and then we will at least have a chance to implement true global energy savings. Useful Work Whitepaper NightWatchman Server Edition Homepage The Agreement in full (Green Grid)   Posted Apr 07 2010, 04:05 AM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: 1E Products, Green IT, Data Center, Server Power Management

• Give your carbon emissions early retirement

  Carbon offsetting  Carbon offsetting has been around for some time now, and on the face of it, seems to be a reasonable way of reconciling unavoidable carbon emissions both for companies and individuals. Offsetting works by planting trees, investing in various green projects etc in order to either absorb the carbon produced (in the case of trees) or by simply investing in projects that reduce carbon emissions in other ways. One example company that provides this type of service is Carbon Offsets ltd. They invest on your behalf in everything from renewable energy projects to projects that claim to prevent the deforestation of existing resource. Seems straightforward enough, but as ever, it's not. Over the last year or two there have been more than a few negative stories surrounding offsetting, to the extent that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating the validity of some schemes. The problems with offsetting as follows: Planting trees will only result in carbon absorption for the life of the tree. At some point it will die off and release the carbon back into the atmosphere. So tree planting simply cannot offset sustained overproduction. Carbon credits have also come under fire for funding projects that would have gone ahead anyway. Companies in the developing world are being paid retrospectively for energy efficiency projects that just made good business sense and have already been deployed. Not quite what we had in mind? Overall, I would say that there's just too much scope for cheating with offsetting, so I set off in search of an alternative and didn't have to look too hard. Carbon Retirement Like all my favorite ideas, Carbon Retirement is conceptually as simple as it gets. Rather than offsetting carbon emissions, you just retire permits from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). This scheme issues permits to all the largest polluters, industries such as iron and steel production and power generation using fossil fuels.  The allowances allocated in the EU ETS are called EU Emission Allowances, or EUAs. One EUA represents the right to release one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So, a company may decide to reduce its emissions by using a cleaner but more expensive type of fuel. Under the EU ETS this may save them money, as they will now need to buy fewer allowances to cover their emissions. If the fuel is so clean that it reduces the company's emissions below their allocation, they can sell the extra allowances to other companies that haven't been able to reduce their emissions enough. A market price for EUAs emerges as a result of this trading. Carbon Retirement simply buys and retires EUAs. You can visit their website and start retiring carbon straight away if you know how much you need to account for, or they will help businesses to decide just what their existing emissions look like before deciding how many tons to take out. I prefer this method of carbon emission mitigation because it actually takes these allowances out of the game. As the ETS scheme progresses there will be less allowances issued, making it harder for companies to maintain high levels of emissions without incurring financial pain, and that's the only way that you will get big business polluters to change their ways. In an ideal world we would all be reducing our emissions as fast as we can using tools such as NightWatchman Server Edition , as improving our overall efficiency and reliance on fossil fuels is far better than any type of offsetting. But realistically we do need offsets for now.By retiring your carbon you will be helping to put pressure on the biggest polluters to reduce their emissions too.   Posted Apr 06 2010, 04:49 AM by 1E Business Blogs Filed under: Green IT, Musings, For External Release