- Green I.T..Phone "Hohm" - Microsoft's new smart metering software
-
That might not be exactly what E.T. said but this week's announcement that Microsoft is soon releasing free home energy software also wasn't alien to many in the industry. Smart Metering has gained increased attention over the past two years as an opportunity area for IT. CNET rightly noted that they big guns of the industry including Cisco, HP, Intel and Google, are all over smart metering at the moment.
The free software essentially provides savings recommendations based on the home's features, usage patterns and appliances. It is built on Azure and Bing and allows Microsoft Hohm Utilities partners to automatically provision energy use data into the hosted software, although at the moment only 4 US providers have been announced. However energy companies interested in providing this functionality can request a lightweight SDK.
Hohm Sneak Peak snapshots:
Demo:
And an amusing Ad:
You can sign up for the BETA here: www.microsoft-hohm.com. Enjoy!
- **ATTN: Aussie businesses.Visit Microsoft US on a mission to "green" IT
-
Austrade and Microsoft have announced a less-than-covert mission to visit Microsoft US offices for a three day intensive boot camp on Green IT and innovation. The event is targeted at Australian businesses with innovative software technology and solutions that:
- improve energy efficiency
- address climate change and disaster management
- enable green IT
and have:
- a proven track record of selling technology solutions in Australia and offshore
- reference sites
- financial and management commitment to exporting.
You will meet and get access to industry executives at Microsoft, gain an understanding of how to position your company with future technologies like cloud computing, and discuss innovation and technology in panel sessions. As there are limited seats, applicants will be reviewed by a panel of industry leaders based on their alignment to the above points.
The cost is $4,140.00 which includes transportation in the US and the Austrade service fee for developing, managing and implementing the event. It doesn't include flights or accommodation.
For full details, check out: http://www.austrade.gov.au/EventViewBookingDetails.aspx?Bck=Y&EventID=2033
- *** Microsoft Exchange: Physical Vs Virtual Power Utilisation ***
-
There is a great whitepaper on TechNet comparing the power utilisation of native and virtual Exchange environments. With the recent announcement that virtualisation is fully supported for Microsoft Exchange, I know many customers that are considering it and some that were desperately awaiting it!
The whitepaper is called "Comparing the Power Utilization of Native and Virtual Exchange Environments" and it outlines a test methodology and power utilisation results for physical versus virtual Exchange environments.
Here is a snapshot of the results in WATTS:
This shows that the reduction of 8 physical servers to 2 physical servers (with a constant 32 processors) resulted in an overall 50% reduction in power consumption equalling around 8,582 kWh/year. This is equivalent to 6.2 tonnes of carbon emissions per year, equalling the carbon sequestered by around 1.4 acres of pine forest or CO2 emissions from 257 propane cylinders from your backyard barbie.
NB: This excludes storage, cooling and processor core consolidation.
There is some great data in this whitepaper - I highly recommend reading it if you are implementing Exchange and tossing up virtual Vs physical; or if you are looking for further power and cost optimisation opportunities.
On a slightly different but related topic, I was recently asked by a customer about using VMotion for HA/DR. If you are considering using VMWare VMotion, this is not yet a supported scenario. From the lips of our Messaging & UC expert here in Oz, Johann Kruse, below is a quick overview of the considerations for this particular area:
"We fully support VMWare as the virtualisation platform, but VMotion is not supported for Exchange Servers. If they do experience issues during a failover or outage, PSS/Premier would not be able to assist.
[As well as SCR] we recommend also using CCR for availability within primary site as it is fully application aware..VMotion is not application-aware, and using it can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as Exchange.
There is a whitepaper from the product titled Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548.aspx which I recommend.
Here is a comparison of CCR vs VMotion for availability....
| Virtual machine migration | Cluster continuous replication |
| Operating system heartbeat detection | Yes | Yes |
| Exchange server heartbeat detection | No | Yes |
| Copies of Exchange data | 1 | 2 |
| Requires shared storage | Yes | No |
| Supports Exchange-aware backup from passive node | No | Yes |
"
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- MCP Certification goes "green"
-
I received the latest MCP Newsletter today and thought it might be of interest to anyone who didn't get it - the usually paper-based MCP welcome kits will now be completely online, reducing paper waste (I know when I received mine many years ago I threw most of the paper in the recycling bin!)
Here is the official notice:
"Going Green: Announcing MCP Digital Certificates for Download
In accordance with the Microsoft Environmental Initiative, Microsoft Learning's goals are to reduce the environmental impact of our operations and products and to be a leader in environmental responsibility. To reduce the company's carbon footprint, we are transitioning from traditional paper to digital Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) certificates. Orders for MCP Certification Welcome Kits will discontinue on June 30, 2009. After that, if you require a paper certificate, you may order one beginning July 7, 2009, through the MCP member Web site. There will be a shipping and handling fee associated with your order. Give us your feedback on the Born to Learn blog--a great place for up-to-date information!"
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- ***Desktop & Server Energy Efficiency Calculators***
-
Microsoft has worked with Alinean to build an online Green Savings calculator for both Desktop and Server Energy Savings. It has a similar look & feel as the Green Virtualisation calculator I blogged about in November.
Instead of taking you through the steps for the calculators, I'd like to give my fellow Aussie IT Pros some specific information to help them customise the calculators to the Australian market. Many of the figures within the calculator are US specific but its pretty easy to change these once you know what the typical Aussie configs should be.
So go ahead and select "Register Now", complete that process, then on the first page customise the questions to your IT environment. For example:
Clicking Next will give you the following page - now here is where we'll customise to Australian standards - select the link - "Click here to review / edit detailed assumptions".
On the page that pops up, go through & change the following metrics:
| Metric |
Default Measurement |
Australian Measurement |
Australian Reference |
| Average work days per year |
218 |
223 |
Australians typically work 11 months of the year but this figure excludes holidays etc (see below). Obviously customise this if your business is quite different.
The total number of days is based on non-leap year i.e. 365 days.
|
Average non-work days per year (weekends, holidays and vacations)
|
147 |
142 |
Includes:
- 104 days of weekends
- 10 days personal leave
- 20 days annual leave
- 8 public holidays (NSW)
This varies depending on the year & your state in Australia so check out this LINK for a full list for 2009.
I used the NSW public holidays in 2009 for the numbers above, excluding the bank holiday in August because not everyone gets that!
|
| PC User Profile |
[your own] |
[your own] |
This should be very specific to the user profiles in your own environment.
|
| Non-Vista PC Profile & Windows Vista PC Profile |
[your own] |
[your own] |
These figures depend again on your specific environment. You can assess these specific figures using Microsoft Partner software such as Verdiem, which will report on usage profiles.
|
| Power Consumption |
- |
- |
Unless you know specific figures for your machines, its probably best to leave these figures as is.
|
| Current price paid for power per kW-hour |
$0.1082 |
$0.11 |
Based on the OECD reporting for electricity prices, Australia is slightly more expensive than the US so I'd recommend changing this although it probably won't make a major difference to the savings.
If you have your actual averages for power costs (check with facilities management) then enter these here.
|
Expected growth in power costs (starting in year 2)
|
6.0% |
See additional table below. |
This isn't really simple as there are different figures per state and per retailer, and dependent on the amount of electricity used. However IPART (who regulates retail pricing) have provided a 3 year indication of pricing increases for electricity which I summarised in table below.
|
Average carbon emissions per automobile (metric tons per year)
|
5.46 |
4.01 |
In Australia in 2005, passenger cars contributed 43.7 Mt of carbon emissions and there were 10,896,000 passenger cars.
|
Average carbon emissions per home (metric tons per year)
|
9.31 |
8 |
In Australia, the average household produces approximately 8 tonnes of carbon through electricity use. |
Energy price increases:
| 1. Locate your electricity provider |
| 2. Find out your total energy use (e.g. 20mWh) from facilities or whoever manages electricity in your business |
| 3. Correlate this to the appropriate 3 year average column (last column) |
| |
| |
| For example, if my business uses 20mWh per annum and my energy supplier is EnergyAustralia, my 3 year average figure is 7.3. I then enter 7.3% into the field "Expected growth in power costs (starting in year 2)" |
| Electricity Supplier: |
|
|
|
Energy Australia |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Total Energy use |
2006/07-2007/08 |
2007/08-2008/09 |
2008/09-2009/10 |
3 year average
(to 2009/10 FY) |
| 20mWh |
7.2 |
7.5 |
7.3 |
7.3 |
| 40mWh |
7.3 |
7.5 |
7.5 |
7.4 |
| 80mWh |
7.3 |
7.5 |
7.4 |
7.4 |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Electricity Supplier: |
|
|
|
Country Energy |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
2006/07-2007/08 |
2007/08-2008/09 |
2008/09-2009/10 |
3 year average |
| 20mWh |
8.9 |
6 |
6 |
7.0 |
| 40mWh |
8.9 |
6 |
6 |
7.0 |
| 80mWh |
8.9 |
6 |
6 |
7.0 |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Electricity Supplier: |
|
|
|
Integral Energy |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
2006/07-2007/08 |
2007/08-2008/09 |
2008/09-2009/10 |
3 year average |
| 20mWh |
7.7 |
8.1 |
8.1 |
8.0 |
| 40mWh |
7.7 |
8 |
8.1 |
7.9 |
| 80mWh |
7.7 |
8 |
8.1 |
7.9 |
Reference: http://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/files/Fact%20Sheet%20-%20Overview%20of%20Final%20report%20and%20determination%20on%20electricity%20retail%20prices%20in%20NSW%20-%201%20July%202007%20to%2030%20June%202010.PDF
- Green Grid: US/Canada Data Center Cooling Calculator
-
The Green Grid has released a quick cooling calculator to help US data centre and facilities managers determine how much "free" cooling is available to data centres using water-side economisers. However when using this calculator, remember nothing in this world is free: water is also a limited resource so there is a need to balance each environmental effect from a 'green' implementation.
For more water related blog posts and stories, checkout: http://www.greenm3.com/water/
And for more free Green Grid resources, check out: http://www.thegreengrid.org/library-and-tools.aspx
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- Gen 4.0 Data Centers: defining the challenges & challenging everything
-
Posting a quick one today while I am sitting at home with the flu (urgghhhh - its not the swine flu though!). I hope you are all feeling better than I am at this point and if any of this doesn't make sense I hope you'll forgive me.
Daniel Costello, Director of Data Center Services at Microsoft, has posted an interesting 2-part entry on the Global Foundation Services (GFS) Team Blog - starting with how they defined the challenges of their extensive data center deployment, and continuing today with a post focussing on how the engineers went about challenging the status quo.
Excerpt:
"Often the application of technology involves as much innovation as the technology itself. Rather than reinvent the wheel we looked at our industry's journey thus far. We started by questioning everything up to and including the roof and the very definition of a data center. With a lot of prior art in modularization, some of which has already been applied to the IT industry, we saw a good fit. The military has been deploying portable ground stations with IT servers and communications equipment for decades. And for some time now telecom companies have deployed pre-manufactured buildings which are then assembled on site as central offices.
As part of our design project we met to discuss the modular solution space with a group of folks from our Infrastructure Services team within GFS , including members of our hardware, data center operations, development, engineering, risk management, and security teams, as well as our internal product groups. (The original Gen 4.0 team from the two-day session is 100 percent intact and still working at Microsoft, by the way.) We knew we could modularize the server room, which we now call Server PACs. The challenge became how to modularize the entire facility. So we created other PACs: Generator PACS, Medium Voltage Switchgear PACs, UPS PACs, etc. Next, we developed the system electrical one-line diagrams and mechanical schematics for our four data center classes."
Full article here..http://blogs.technet.com/msdatacenters/
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- Energy & Paper-saving Office templates: What the…?
-
Last week I was going through a backlog of old emails and came across some information from the Templates Team Blog…and I thought “what the…”?
This team have published three templates that help save both paper and energy. And I never really had a deep think about this before (uh-duh!) – but once you take a look you’ll see there are some good tips in these templates that you can re-use for your own IT help sites and documentation for employees:
- Energy and paper-saving presentation - tips and settings to help conserve energy and space for online and printed slides in PowerPoint 2007.
- Paper-saving settings for print documents - tips and settings to help conserve paper for printed documents. Instructions are provided for making these settings the default for your new documents in Word 2007.
- Space and paper-saving settings - tips and settings for print and online documents, to help conserve space for documents that are viewed primarily online but may also be printed. Instructions are also provided in this template for making these settings the default for your new documents in Word 2007.
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- ** TechEd 2009 US announces Green IT Track - first ever! **
-
For my fellow green geeks in the US, Microsoft have announced their first ever Green IT track for TechEd 2009. Nice! There are 9 sessions specifically on Green IT, including:
- ARC313 - Understanding environmental compliance, policy and regulation for IT Leaders - I have seen a version of this internally and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to understand a bit more around how environmental management is achieved with technology.
- ISB206 - What's Behind the Cloud: Microsoft's Data Center Transformation - Christian is one of the key people working with The Green Grid from Microsoft on Data Centres.
- MGT201 - Microsoft System Center for the Datacenter
- VIR206 - Virtualization for Sustainable Computing
- WSV203 - Saving Power and Reducing Environmental Impact with Windows Server
- WSV309 - Enhanced Power Efficiency and Power Management Capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 - this one should be very informative. Stephen Berard is THE man for power management in Microsoft.
To register and to check out the full list and session descriptions, click yourself into HERE.
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- TechNet Special Online Edition: "Going Green"
-
A quick post today: TechNet Magazine has published a special online-only edition on Green IT. Topics include:
- *** Green IT Webcasts in April & May ***
-
Check out these Green IT Webcasts happening over April and May with some of Microsoft's best Green IT speakers including Christian Belady, Daniel Costello, Dan Reed, Jim Larus, Isaac Roybal, Adam Bogobowicz, and Stephen Berard.
| Title | Date | Time | URL |
| Manager Webcast Series - Green IT | 4/29/2009 | 4:00 PM GMT | http://bit.ly/8bX4N |
| Transforming the Data Center with Energy Efficiency (Level 200) | 5/1/2009 | 11:00 AM PST | http://bit.ly/12CFzf |
| Hyper-Green Virtualization: Scaling Enterprise IT for Energy Efficiency (Level 200) | 5/5/2009 | 10:00 AM PST | http://bit.ly/TFwxV |
| Cloud Computing Futures: Creating Greener Clouds with Microsoft Research (Level 200) | 5/6/2009 | 9:00 AM PST | http://bit.ly/18hsgU |
| Improving Energy Efficiency w/ Windows 7 Power Management (Level 200) | 5/8/2009 | 10:00 AM PST | http://bit.ly/fplU |
Also, one webcast from Microsoft IT already been hosted & the live recording can be found here:
| Title | Date | Time | URL |
| How Microsoft Does IT: Improving the Sustainability and Use of SQL Server at Microsoft (Level 300) | 4/21/2009 | Completed | http://bit.ly/2Mp0MS |
- New Windows 7 Power Management Whitepaper
-
There is a new Windows 7 BETA power management whitepaper available. Key points from the whitepaper include:
- Improved idle efficiency - Windows 7 reduces resource utilisation when the system is idle and reduces or eliminates background activity on the system.
- Timer Coalescing - for background activity that cannot be reduced, Windows 7 has been modified to defer then execute non-critical background activity at once. It also defers non-critical background activity when on battery power.
- Trigger start services - when your computer boots it loads a number of system services in the background. In Windows 7 these services will now use 'trigger start' i.e. they require a physical event to occur before the service is started.
- Enhancing power processing management (PPM) - driver support for latest PPM technologies.
- Device power management - added the following low power enhancements:
| Adaptive Display Brightness | dims the display after a period of time |
| Low Power Audio | support for latest Intel HD Audio low power specification |
| Bluetooth | "selective suspend" mode added |
| Networking | - Disconnecting the network cable = automatically goes into low power state & vice-versa
- Improved wireless low power mode configurable with group policy
|
- User Experience - includes enhancements including improved power troubleshooting and improved low battery alerting.
- Enterprise Power Management - more granular control integrated, including:
| Event Tracing & power request inspection | integrated into powercfg.exe with HTML based reports |
| Group Policy | - more granular control of the new features like Device Power Management (table above)
- plus you can now use Group Policy Preferences as well as enforcement to provide more choice
|
| New WMI power provider | allows Powershell 2.0 scripting of power data & settings |
| Power Policies | additional power policies built-in |
Also as a side note, there are also two new other documents on the Microsoft Environment site:
- Are digital downloads really more 'Green' than CDs?
-
At first when you ask yourself this one, you kind of go - of course! Think about all that packaging & shipping! But then you kind of go: wait a sec - those digital downloads are hosted in big, power-hungry data centres. Microsoft recently undertook a study where they invited in the Natural Resource Defence Council to review their analysis on this very topic. And the result was that digital downloads ARE more environmentally friendly.
A couple of the key stats from this report are:
- Digital download of Office (a nice chunky sized download that one!) avoided 8 times the amount of carbon compared to shipping & producing a DVD;
- Carbon emissions avoided through online purchasing of 10 million copies is equivalent to:
- the electric consumption of 7,715 US households, or
- 13,008 passengers cars driven in one year, or
- 231 acres of avoided Amazon rainforest deforestation.
Checkout the full paper here: http://us20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/go-green/
- **HOW TO: Green IT & Visio: Monitoring HVAC & Virtualisation with data connections**
-
So I am pretty sure we all use Visio to do our network diagrams & map out of architecture, however I recently found out about how Visio can be used to map out Green IT initiatives. The Visio Toolbox site has all the goodies for Visio. There are two particularly helpful tools in relation to Green IT specifically:
- Rack Server Virtualization - this is an add-in you can download for free. There is a good PDF as well explaining How to analyse Rack Server Virtualization.
- HVAC Monitoring with Visio - using a partner HVAC tool, you can setup monitoring inside Visio. For instructions on this DOWNLOAD the PDF.
Linking Data with Visio
The key to start using these tools are to know how to link data to a Visio diagram (you need Visio Professional for this functionality):
- For developers, check out this MSDN article on how to do this both programmatically: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb743267.aspx
- For IT Pros, open Visio, press F1 (Help), then search for "Create a detailed network diagram by using external data in Visio Professional"
Rack Server Virtualization: A planning scenario tool
Some key points on this add-in are:
- Identify the candidates for virtualisation from a rack & server view
- You can source data on elements like usage-over-time CPU utilisation direct from System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or WMI to get current CPU utilisation (snapshot in time only)
- Before & After visual analysis
- Ability to export your report afterwards
For more Visio Green IT resources, go to: http://visiotoolbox.com/en-US/visio_greenit.aspx
- Microsoft releases Dynamics Environmental Dashboard
-
On 9th February Microsoft launched the Dynamics AX Environmental Dashboard. The dashboard enables mid-sized organizations to track their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (out of the box) in an effort to help identify opportunities to cut costs and lessen their environmental impact from within their existing ERP solution. It allows companies to seamlessly capture and measure key environmental indicators as part of their everyday business processes.
The key features include:
| Feature |
Description |
| Shared data |
- Increase visibility and improve collaboration across your organization with the ability to publish Environmental Sustainability Dashboard reports to any employee's Role Centre using Microsoft® SharePoint® Web parts.
- Motivate employees to act by increasing awareness of your organization's environmental impact, their role in reduction efforts, and how they can help.
- Access the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard using Enterprise Portal in Microsoft Dynamics AX.*
|
|
Custom configurations and
reporting |
- Customize the dashboard to include information relevant to your organization, such as specific vendors, energy conservation programs, or conservation goals.
- Track direct and indirect energy consumption by month; identify specific contributing factors; and view the energy costs of each, such as electricity and fuel oil or heating costs.
|
| Greenhouse gas inventory |
- Create and track your own greenhouse gas inventory to understand your environmental impact and how that might affect your business in a carbon market.
- Capture data consistently over time that is auditable, and reduce your risk of exposure to potential regulations, taxation, or increases in energy costs.
- View the carbon dioxide equivalent of your emissions-the dashboard automatically
calculates the carbon dioxide conversions and presents the information in an easy-to-read graph. |
|
Tracking of Environmental
Performance Indicators |
Automatically track the four core GRI Environmental Performance Indicators for energy
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, including:
- EN3-Direct energy consumption that is generated onsite, such as heat and power.
- EN4-Indirect energy consumption that is generated from another location, such as a utility.
- EN16-Your total direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, which combines EN3 and EN4 and converts them into carbon dioxide equivalents.
- EN17-Other relevant indirect greenhouse gas emissions, such as those generated
from business travel, employee commuting, and waste disposal. |
|
Integration with Microsoft
SQL Server® Reporting
Services |
- Capture environmental sustainability data in everyday business processes by viewing data immediately and tracking it over time using the dashboard, which is powered by SQL Server Reporting Services.
- View detailed, integrated data, such as the quantity of energy purchased from a vendor, the associated costs, and the dates of the service period
|
With the Business Ready Enhancement Plan for Microsoft Dynamics, the dashboard is available at no additional charge to customers using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (only).
There is a good demo HERE.
I mentioned that out of the box you get two metrics (energy & greenhouse gases) however a Dynamics Developer can add in other metrics they typically need to measure, such as waste, water, hazardouse substances etc.
For more info, checkout: http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/environment.mspx
