When it comes to ways to make an impact in the amount of energy consumed in your IT environment, power management is one of the easiest actions your company can make. With the budget pressures of today's changing economic environment, more organizations are realizing that their greatest opportunity to reduce utility costs lies in more efficient power management across their IT environments.
As Gartner recently stated in a recent report, organizations actively employing some form of IT power management can expect to save $43,000 dollars per year, compared with an unmanaged 2,500-PC organization. Outlined below are a few tips and tricks to understanding power management and the benefits it brings into your organization.
- Implement a power management tool or software- By implementing software, you are able to hibernate all desktops and laptops at once after business hours. This creates an efficient and fast solution rather than relying on end users actually turning machines off manually. Studies show that by implementing a solution you can save 250 to 300 kilowatt hours (kW h) per year per PC.
- Replace old desktops & monitors with Energy Star rated models- Replacing older PCs with never less power hungry models or Thin Clients can potentially save you 140kWh/year per PC. Also, remember to get rid of any CRT monitors you still own and replace them with LCD flat screen models. While multiple screens are a perk for office workers, consider one larger screen instead of multiple monitors as an energy saving option.
- Virtualize your servers- Reducing server count will help keep your PC costs per year down drastically consolidating many server systems into a single ESX environment can provide significant power savings and manageability advantages. Remember that reducing server sprawl will also greatly reduce cooling requirements for your server room.
- Do not neglect laptop computers- Think carefully before turning on Wake-On-Lan (WOL) with a laptop and make sure you aren't powering them on from the sleep state. If left in a computer bag, they might overheat. Many power companies don't give rebates on laptops as they solely focus on rebate programs for desktops.
- Schedule maintenance windows-Sleeping computers cannot be managed, so ensure you schedule maintenance windows when you plan to send out patches and antivirus updates to all PCs including remote employee computers. This allows you to improve IT operational energy efficiency and business productivity by automatically waking up offline machines for maintenance and system updates during off-peak hours.
- Conduct consistent audits- Make sure you are monitoring your power consumption on a monthly basis and report on your consumption so you can ensure compliance throughout your organization. Organizations will be able to monetize the effect of the power management policies with integrated power savings reports. These reports can be used to take advantage of potential power savings rebates, available from local power management companies or for showing a reduction in the overall carbon footprint.
- Rebate incentives- Most local power companies in the United States offer rebate programs to companies on their PC power consumption. These rebates can range from $5-15 per PC. Utilizing a power management tool to calculate your energy savings will give your local power company the proof that they need to issue you a rebate check.
Although IT might not be in control of paying the electric bill, they do play a big part in helping to reduce consumption which ultimately reduces costs. Finally, remember that when comparing power management software offerings, there are a multitude of nice to have features. However, your only actual monetary savings comes from the ability to turn off PCs and claim your rebate check from your local power company.