Andrew Martin

A few months ago I was presenting at a conference in Kolkata aimed at stimulating adoption of IT in West Bengal. One of the other presenters at the event was the trade minister for the region and I was fascinated as he outlined the challenges and aspirations he saw ahead in West Bengal. However I was also struck by a comment he made about green computing. He mentioned that it was important to repurpose old IT equipment and recycle old computers from companies into the community.

I have no doubt that his intention is a good one. Taking computers discarded by businesses and placing them into the hands of community centres and schools is something that will deliver enormous benefit to large parts of the population that could not even begin to think about buying their own computers. However, is this green computing as the minister described?

The answer is “I don’t know” and the truth is, when you look into the issue of energy saving it is enormously complex.

On the surface, if you extend the life of a PC and keep it in use after the original owner has discarded it, that would seem to be a green practice, as manufacturing requirements for new PCs will be reduced. However, to really assess whether an IT-related policy is truly green, so much more needs to be considered than simply extending the life of a piece of equipment.

• How much energy was consumed in the manufacturing process?
• How much energy was consumed in the manufacturing of the components?
• What is the ongoing energy consumption over time? (Older equipment typically consumes more energy just to run.)
• How much energy will be consumed in the safe disposal of the product?

In short, to really understand if we are achieving green computing we need to consider the energy consumption over the entire lifetime of the product from manufacturing through to the final disposal process. For most of us this is an impossible task. It requires expert consultancy, a long-term vision with senior level commitment to that vision. Large, multi-national companies are taking this approach, but for the rest of us necessity demands that we take a more pragmatic approach.

The view that I have heard from many IT managers and directors is something akin to, “I believe in looking for efficiencies and cost savings and often if I can achieve these, the result is less power consumption and fewer wasted resources. If I can drive efficiency and save money, the spin off is that most likely I am being more green.”

On balance, I subscribe to this view. Efficiency is generally a good thing. When we utilise just enough resources to deliver the functionality that we need, then waste is trimmed, budgets are saved and over-consumption is eliminated.

When it comes to data protection, the practice is intrinsically “non-green.” Data protection involves creating duplicate copies of existing data. By it’s nature this process creates “waste” as it requires more storage hardware, dedicated storage networks, redundant systems, increased power consumption, and the list goes on.

However, all vendors in the data protection space are trying to drive efficiency, and in doing so, are finding ways to reduce excess resource utilisation. Examples of technology that aid the green cause, even if the reason for being is nothing to do with green issues, include: 

• Tape – Tape is offline media. It does not consume power when stored in a vault. Perhaps it is the greenest of all media?
• Data depulication – Compressing 30TB of data onto 5TB of disk is truly efficient. Less hardware required and reduced ongoing power consumption.
• MAID – Intelligently powering down disks that are not in use saves money on datacenter cooling and on powering the disks themselves.
• Virtualisation – converting physical servers or storage into virtual enables you to consume more resource from every piece of hardware you own.
• Cloud-based backup – Sharing a single backup infrastructure between numerous companies and users.
• Software enhancement – Things like “incremental forever” eliminate full backups, which in turn reduces media consumption.

Most of us believe the green cause in IT is a good one. Actually doing something about it can be complex and difficult. However, keeping up with the data protection technology curve is in itself a way to support a green agenda and save costs. When it comes to repurposing old PC’s in Kolkata, is that green? Possibly not. However, is it wrong? Well, that’s a moral dilemma and whole different debate!