wildernessVoice

Thin Computing and Green Initiatives

So, there is so much buzz about green computing these days, you’d almost think environments were truly efficient. Often times, however, it’s only buzz and lacks real substance. I see this a lot amongst storage and server vendors.

Here is a Byte and Switch article entitled, “Virtualizing NAS for Green Storage“.  It discusses the power saving merits of reducing the number of File Servers within an organization. Hmm… duh! Of course that will cut power costs. So will cutting the number of clients. So will cutting the number of servers. So will…

When we consider what it means to be “green” what do we really care about? I honestly do not think we really care about real estate when it comes to power savings. That’s a concern of a different sort. When we consider being green, we need to look at the application. Sure, we may actually need an energy efficient computing farm or transaction platform. But I would still argue that this is not representative of the masses. Bear in mind that my premise for this is that there are many more smaller companies than there are are medium to large ones. Making a difference at the entry point does a couple of things: 1) it makes a cost difference for those who most likely impacted by the energy costs; and 2) it aggregates better to make a more significant difference for the environment.

Before anyone asks whether or not I believe it’s unimportant to make a difference in the enterprise, please stop. I’m not arguing that at all. Instead, I’m arguing for making a difference where it’s likely to matter the most, first. Then let’s worry about how to get things into the enterprise.

In going through this discussion, I would like to examine the effects of going green on a private school, I’m currently working on.  The initial rollout is for 15 students with the ability grow to 30 students per classroom, if necessary.

I’d like to examine two scenarios, including the use of laptops vs thin clients. I’ll look at both rollout costs as well as the costs of energy consumption.

Common Stuff

1. 24-port Netgear JGS524 GbE switch with cost of $8.96 per port and a power consumption of 40 Watts
2. Sullego ES110 1TB NAS File Server with cost of $3,000 and power consumption of approximately 156 Watt

Laptops

1. Asus Eee PC (7″ LCD) with cost of $399.99 each and power consumption of 23 Watts
2. (optional) Compaq Presario C700T (15.4″ LCD) at $499.99 each and power consumption of (battery charging 15w, LCD 15w, hard drive 12w, WiFi 16w, CPU 26w) 84 Watts (max) or 64 Watts if we disable WiFi and remove the battery

Thin Clients

1. nComputing L130 Thin Client at $169.99 each and power consumption of 5 Watts
2. Asus 16″ Widescreen LCD at $139.99 each and power consumption of 55 Watts
3. PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse at $11.98 per set and power consumption of 2 Watts

On an initial costs basis, the Thin Client scenario will be a bit cheaper per station. But the power consumption of going such a route vs the laptop route is pretty significant, nearly 39 Watts per station higher. But this may be a bit extreme. After all, the Eee PC has only a 7″ LCD screen vs the 16″ widescreen in the thin client example. Is 7″ reasonable for such an environment. My guess is No.

If we substitute a “real” laptop for the Eee PC one, then the power consumption is going to be fairly comparable if we take measures to disable certain functionality on the laptops, which basically defeats the purpose of having laptops in the first place. However, the costs for each station go up considerably.

What makes the thin computing model attractive is that the Applications and the Data can reside on the server itself. Under normal circumstances there would have to be an additional server involved. However, because the Sullego ES110 has the ability to not only provide robust File Server functionality, but also rich server and server virtualization functions, it can easily consolidate several servers and network storage into a single, fast, RAID-protected platform.

When you then amortize the total costs of the thin client environment across 15 students, we’re looking at a per student cost of $536.29 per student. Again, you have to bear in mind the benefits of sharing applications off a server (preferably open source ones) as well as the benefits of centralized data protection. From a power consumption standpoint, we are looking at a total nominal consumption of 1,126 Watts.

If we were to remove the central server and drive everything into merely the higher end laptops, we’d be looking at a per student cost savings of $36.30, but a power consumption increase of 134 Watts. In other words, power consumption goes up and and we completely lose backup and ease of administration.

Clearly, the best of all worlds would incorporate something like the Eee PC, but with a more conventional LCD screen. 7″ or 8″ isn’t sufficient for long term use. But it’s nice to know that it exists as an option. In this example, the leading contributor of costs and consumption is the size of the display. Perhaps the next thing to consider is even more energy efficient types of monitors.

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