Turn off servers to go green, experts plead

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European companies need to follow their Japanese counterparts in tackling datacentre space, power, and heat issues by switching servers off every evening, according to an expert.

Bernhard Brandwitte, director of enterprise servers product marketing at Fujitsu Siemens Computers said that turning off servers could save the expense of running systems.

"It may seem radical because organisations are told never to touch a running system. However, organisations can use combined storage devices to switch off the processing core and save money," he said.

Brandwitte admitted that this would only be suitable for non-mission-critical applications but companies could still save money by using virtualisation to consolidate physical servers. He said in doing so an organisation's could reduce its carbon footprint.

"Management software also enables administrators to power systems up or down remotely and transfer the processing load to poorly utilised servers," said Brandwitte.

"However, we must not just rely on this development in the data centre though. We must also learn from our Japanese counterparts and share best practice."

Others said that while projects such as the Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program aimed to replace legacy heating, cooling and lighting systems with more efficient systems, companies should not overlook IT systems and equipment.

"Research shows that IT is responsible for up to 40 per cent of a typical large UK enterprise's carbon footprint," said David Elwen, director at IT consultancy DMW. "With near exponential growth in IT hardware sales predicted, this footprint will only increase."

He said there were many simple measures that can be taken to reduce the corporate IT carbon footprint.

"Attacking the most power-hungry applications such as IT servers is where the most difference will be made," he said. "Contrary to popular belief, Google found that by turning up the temperature on their IT servers not only reduced the failure rate, but saved energy usage by turning off their cooling equipment."

Elwen said this was the sort of green policy which companies "should be considering first and foremost."

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