[News] Linux Starup Receives $21 Million Investment
Roy Schestowitz
,----[ Quote ]
| SiCortex, a startup that makes Linux computer clusters, announced that it
| has closed a $21 million round of funding, led by Chevron Technology
| Ventures through its venture capital arm, CTTV Investments LLC. The
| funding will go toward expansion of sales and marketing efforts and
| continued product development.
`----
http://au.sys-con.com/read/281354_p.htm
That's nothing to sneeze at.
High Plains Thumper
True. Here is an odd bit of information. Wake on LAN
technology has been around for a while as a green feature for
PC's, yet until Microsoft SCCM (System Center Configuration
Manager) 2007 is deployed, earlier Systems Management Server
(SMS) 2003 required a third party solution to wake up PC's for
patches.
http://www.faqshop.com/sms2003/default.htm?http://www.faqshop.
com/sms2003/sms2k3otherindex.htm
| Does SMS 2003 Support Wake-on-LAN?
|
| Contributed By: Cliff Hobbs [MVP SMS]
| SMS does not support Wake-On-LAN out of the box. However
| SMSWakeUp from 1E is an integrated product that provides
| this functional> ity:
|
| http://www.1e.com/smswakeup
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sms/sms2003/techf
aq/tfaq13.mspx
or
| Q. Does SMS 2003 support Wake on LAN technology?
| A. Wake on LAN technology allows a computer to enter a
| powered-down or sleep state, but enter an active state upon
| receiving specific network packets. SMS 2003 does not
| currently include Wake on LAN technology, though there are
| some third-party applications that provide Wake on LAN
| within SMS.
I have always wondered why some corporate shops kept their
PC's powered up 24 hours a day, when there was potential to
save energy by putting them in sleep mode, to be awaken by the
server.
1.7 GHz PC at idle consumes approximately 60 Watts.
A corporate or educational campus with 1,000 PC's:
60 Watts/PC x 1,000 PC's x 24 hours/day x 365 days/year x .001
kilo-Watt-hours/Watt-hours = 525,600 kWh.
East Coast US cost of $0.125 per kWh nets annual cost of
$65,700 or 35,478 GBP required to keep PC's powered up
annually.
--
HPT
Roy Schestowitz
In the summer of 2001 I made an exception and read Bill Bryson's book on
American culture (I rarely read textbooks, if ever). one of the chapters
(taken from his fortnightly newspaper culumn) analysed the issue of
electricity consumption in great depth. It concentrated on PC's and lights.
The 'waste culture' is something that's costing a lot not just in terms of
money. It also harms the environment. And many have a muchly-justified pet
peeve that gets them annoyed when they see this. In fact, here on British
radio and TV there seems to have been this large-scale campaign recently
(many the past month) whose focus is the amount of money one saves by
switching off unneeded lights/lighting sources. I can't recall if PC's were
part of the message.
I always switch off my monitors when the PC's are unattended, but I cannot
shut down everything because I run Web/computational servers on my
workstations. In any event, as a side note, the CS department began making
use of wake-on-LAN a few years ago. It all happened after someone had made
the suggestion and pushed very hard (even campaigned) to make this a
reality. There is nothing to be lost because the machines will take under
half a minute to function nicely (even SSH access from the outside will
achieve this). I don't know if something like hibernation is involved
because I only work on these Fedora clusters from afar, so I don't see this
while facing the physical thing.
Last year the medical school installed lights that have motion sensors so
they switch themselves off if nobody is around and are set alight when
someone walk down the aisle. In this building where I work there are 4 or 5
floors and it's a football stadium-sized building, if not larger. I imagine
that the hard work on replacing all the lights will be worth the investment
very shortly. The savings must be huge.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
7:05pm up 7 days 19:49, 8 users, load average: 0.15, 0.45, 0.55
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
Peter Hayes
>
> In the summer of 2001 I made an exception and read Bill Bryson's book
> on American culture (I rarely read textbooks, if ever). one of the
> chapters (taken from his fortnightly newspaper culumn) analysed the
> issue of electricity consumption in great depth. It concentrated on
> PC's and lights. The 'waste culture' is something that's costing a lot
> not just in terms of money. It also harms the environment. And many
> have a muchly-justified pet peeve that gets them annoyed when they see
> this. In fact, here on British radio and TV there seems to have been
> this large-scale campaign recently (many the past month) whose focus
> is the amount of money one saves by switching off unneeded lights/
> lighting sources. I can't recall if PC's were part of the message.
Apparantly, all the domestic A/V equipment, TV, VHS, Sat box, etc
currently left on standby in the UK consumes the output of one large
power station. Add in the 50 million or so DVB-T boxes we'll need after
analogue switch-off and that's another power station, or the entire
output of all those windfarms springing up in areas of outstanding
natural beauty.
But all this is only relevent in the summer. The rest of the time TVs,
PCs etc add to background heating so nett cost is zero or thereabouts.
--
Peter
High Plains Thumper
Those windfarms unfortunately more often than not must be
backed by fossil, nuclear or hydro power. Customers require
reliable utility power; other power must be supplied when
there is insufficient wind to provide utility grade power.
This means a minimum of a 15 MPH (24 KMH) breeze to keep wind
farms operational.
Usually when power is needed is in mid summer for air
conditioning demand, when winds tend to be at less than
optimal.
A savvy corporate culture will ensure that by allowing
desktops to go into hiberation, waken by a LAN call for
maintenance and updates will save them overhead expenses with
electrical utility savings.
Figure that instead of keeping PC's powered on, that they
could hibernate after 20 minutes of inactivity. During an 8
hour work day, figuring an average employee is away from
his/her desk for 2 hours and a 1 hour lunch break gives us PC
on for 6.67 hours per day.
Per
http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/about/competitive/attachmentd.html
annual productive hours are say, 1,776 per year per employee.
This discounts for vacations, sick days, holidays, etc.
1,776 hours/year : 8 hours/day = 222 productive days/year.
6.67 hours/day x 222 days/year = 1480.74 hours/year PC is on
for employee.
Figure PC has antivirus updates pushed weekly and entire disk
is scanned weekly, update and full disk scan takes 1.5 hours.
(1.5 hours/week + 0.33 hibernate delay) x 52 weeks/year =
95.2 hours/year for full scan virus checks. Figure same for
defrag.
Updates are pushed every other week for applications and
operating system, say take say 45 minutes.
(0.75 hours/biweek + 0.33 hibernate delay) x 26 biweeks/year
= 28.1 hours/year for updates.
Hours on per year = 1480.74 employee + 95.2 virus check +
95.2 defrag + 28.1 updates = 1699.2 hours.
Potential hours off are 365 days/year x 24 hours/day - 1699
hours = 7,061 hours.
Per http://uk.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/19/81216/5460
at electrical costs of 11.89p/kWh, an office with 100 PC's
has a potential annual savings of:
60 Watts x 1/1000 kWh/Watt x 7,061 x 100 PC's = 42,366 kWh x
11.89p = 5,037 GBP or 9,328 USD.
According to
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/CollinTam.shtml
at average kWh costing 14.31 cents in New York, savings are
6,063 USD or 3,274 GBP.
It may seem trivial when dealing with multimillion dollar or
quid budgets, but those are low hanging fruit savings.
--
HPT
Peter Hayes
That's not a problem here in Scotland... :-(
Our problem is more in winter when a blocking high settles over the
country. No wind = no windfarm output, meantime nighttime temps drop to -
10C or even -15C and daytime temps might struggle to get to 0C.
So, as you say, we still need conventional power stations.
Trivial, indeed, especially when you consider that implementation costa
are one IT person doing the rounds of all machines, setting sleep and
hibernate properties.
It's a pity, though, that Windows machines don't wake up very reliably.
--
Peter