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    <title><![CDATA[Discussion on Practical power-saving tips for IT pros ]]></title>
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        <title><![CDATA[KVM vs Crash Cart]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3484533]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[A little late to this thread, but have to put in my 2 cents for KVMs.  I am used to HP Proliants, we use 1U LCD keyboard/screen models with a KVM switch mounted 0U behind it.  The LCD goes to sleep when you close it and push it back into the rack.  The KVM switch is on the network and gives me an alternate path even if the ILO is hung.If you are thinking of the power draw of an older CRT; yeah, get rid of those dinosaurs!  But no fair comparing that to a modern integrated keyboard / trackpad / LCD unit.  Our current rack layout only needs one KVM switch/LCD every 5 racks.  Cabling is not a problem since it uses RJ45 to the server chassis.To me the very name &quot;crash cart&quot; implies things have failed, they clog up the aisles, not remotely accessible, and you have to deal with cabling every time you roll it to the next machine.  My worst experience was when called in to help a site that used carts; Fine when only one person needed to work on one machine for planned maintenance.  But when a network issue required 10 of us trying to each recover several machines at a time, the mess between racks became rather dangerous.  Not to mention machines that would only recognize keyboard/mouse if it were plugged in at power on.  Network was not letting us get to the OS or the DRAC to issue a clean shutdown/restart, the machine would not see the cart; had to plug in the keyboard and then push buttons for a hard power off/on!  Luckily things were already so hosed that there was no application activity to leave corrupted disk structures behind during that.If they had KVMs every few racks, with the KVM on a different subnet, much of that Charlie Foxtrot could have been handled from our desks instead of running around the computer room.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3484533]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[DWRandolph]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:34:03 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[These are good tips]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3463155]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Thank you for sharing them.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3463155]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[b4real@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Sun, 19 Jun 2011 18:40:09 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[save 30-55% of energy costs]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3444953]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Other things to look for:- incorrect row directionality- cascading equipment exhausts- recirculation within cabinets- blow-by at the rack bottom- uneven air flow- hot spots- air short-circuiting- leaky raised floors- hot and cold air mixing- humidity instability- improperly regulated reheat circuits- limited capacities- improper set-points- comfort cooling vs. process coolingThe guy who used to be Google's data center architect started Precision Air and Energy Services.  (Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with PA&amp;E, but the founder is a former coworker, friend, and IMO genius at HVAC.)  In a typical data center they can reduce energy costs 30-55% via precise air flow control and variable water/glycol flow.  They also train your staff to keep everything in balance after they're gone.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3444953]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[ccie5000@...]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:53:43 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[SSD's and get rid of the high powerd CPU's]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442832]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[I've done Blades and virtualized a lot of low volume servers but the biggest bang for my dollar comes from replacing boot Drives on the blades to SSD's. From a power consumption point of view I'm saving 99W per blade . The servers use two drives in a raid one array to boot but they draw 50W each the SSD's we replaced them with use only 0.5W each. All heavily used log volumes are on the SAN with the rest o fthe DATA and everything been running fine for the past year. I'm now planning to do that with the rest of my server farm as they retire. Now If I could only get SSD's for the SAN itself I could really cut power consumption on both spinning disks and cooling.   The other thing I noticed as did my data center manager was a few years ago some Intel CPU's ran really hot and consumed tonnes of power. Retire those servers quickly if you can by today's standards they're slow and hot.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442832]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[PVBenn]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:49:40 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[One main issue:]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442681]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Server rooms of major corporations and agencies do not account for the majority of frivolous IT consumption.  Being an independent consultant we see a lot of waste, both in the form of money and power.Small business folks have no clue what then need, and often this is taken advantage of by sales weenies, including consultants who are more sales oriented than focused on their customer's needs.  We have a client who bought eight big servers to run basic internal DNS, PDC, mail and web services from a Dell reseller.  We revamped his network with two and sold the remainder.  He was also sold a color laser printer, even though he prints less than two pages a day on average.  Forget the money he wasted, do the math and see how much power the excess gear drew over the years he had them running 24/7.  For his minimal use, he needed one minimal server, which could have run an Intel Atom processor, and perhaps one single CPU Zeon server.  The printer should have been a PDF writer for that limited printing.  The money he saved should have gone to replace the CRTs around the office.The take away is that sales oriented consultants will try to make as much commission as possible, giving the customer what they can afford rather than what they need, paying no attention to the power consumption.The reason I bring this up is that this pattern is likely repeated in small businesses across the nation.  The multiplicative effect of this pattern repeated makes a low estimate of the small business problem eclipse the savings of tweaking a fairly well run datacenter.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442681]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[Alpha_Dog]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:05:00 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[Windows 7 Supports GPO Power Management]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442596]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[You will have to upgrade.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442596]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[fhrivers]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 07:56:04 -0700</pubDate>
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    <item>
        <title><![CDATA[Raise the Temperature In the Server Room]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442608]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Why not raise the temperature in the server room to around 80 F?  According to studies done by Google and IBM, there's a sweet spot between reliability of your devices and energy consumption.  Why does a server room need to be at 65 degrees?]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442608]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[fhrivers]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 07:53:37 -0700</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[Group Policy doesnt cut it]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442111]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[Sadly native Group Policy support for power management is very hit and miss. The feature was added in Vista but cannot be used to control Windows XP power plans. GPPs can be used to provide power preferences to users but in many cases users can change these. All implementations have a number of common flaws. They only allow a sleep/hibernate to be configured and don't permit shutdown or logout as a power saving action. Similarly they don't offer the ability to have a different power plan at different times of the day, when nobody is logged on, anti-insomnia for rouge applications or schedule a shutdown at a specific time. There is a thriving industry in third-party power management software. The better products offer all of the above configurablity plus reporting. This last feature is critical to measure performance and spot problems. Data Synergy PowerMAN tool (www.datasynergy.co.uk) is a popular suite that gives IT staff all the tools they need to quickly and effectively deliver enterprise wide power management. The software is used by leading organisations including numerous universities, call center operatings, The US Dept of Energy and The US Dept of  Agriculture.]]></description>
        <guid><![CDATA[http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-343719-3442111]]></guid>
        <dc:creator><![CDATA[fionacampbell]]></dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:45:15 -0700</pubDate>
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