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.

So… back around the end of last year, I did a post and solicited opinions for hosted services and other social networking items. My original intent was to stress the capabilities of my company’s products. But then I began to consider some of the numerous deficiencies of current online sites. Anyway, things have taken a new turn.

Recently a friend of mine asked me about going down this path again. The caveat… he wanted to do a Christian version of Myspace and asked me to consider it. Over the course of several days, I considered this idea. We met for dinner to celebrate a mutual friend’s birthday and after everyone else departed, we discussed the idea further.

I informed him that I thought it was a bad idea. Professing Christians are some of the worst people on the planet. Consider this:

Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most
respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Ghandi nevertheless
admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when
the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Ghandi he asked him, “Mr.
Ghandi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you
appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?”

Ghandi replied, “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ.
It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

I couldn’t say it any better than that. Mr. Ghandi had hit the nail on the head.

But why should this be so strange for us to comprehend? After all, who did Christ keep around himself? Sure he had his disciples. Other than that, he was routinely found in the company of the down and out, the lepers, the sick, the harlots, the demon possessed, etc. You weren’t likely to catch him in the company of the religious. Why? They actually sought him out.

Christ routinely considered this crowed to be self-righteous and worthy of his contempt. They professed to know God, but refused to keep his word. Instead, they had a form of godliness, but denied the power thereof.

Over the past number of days, my site has seen a considerable amount of traffic. Odd, since I haven’t really done a post for quite a while. The hits were mostly coming off a friend’s site, where I was listed as a contributor. Apparently, some folks took exception to a series of posts I did back in November titled, “Keeping It Real, A Look at Motivational Posters”. The first two were rather harmless. The third was definitely on the questionable side of things. So I took some measure to refrain from offending some. I put this disclaimer on it:

“Anyway, this is the one I said would probably be offensive. So, I’ve
made an edit and I’ll make the image small like a thumbnail. If you
aren’t overly sensitive, then by all means click to enlarge it.
Otherwise, don’t bother. Just move on. I usually don’t post offensive
materials. But these were just too funny. And I do have a sense of
humor.”

Apparently, these individuals have opted to ignore my warning, view the poster, and take offense; so much so that it has now created problems for my friend. As a result, I have been deleted from his site and he may end up deleting his site altogether.

The irony of self-righteousness is that it seeks to conform others to its own notion of morality. In the end, it seeks to corrupt– not to make holy. This is why Christ had a problem with such individuals. And this is why others, like Ghandi, are so turned off. If it weren’t for the grace of God in election, no one in his right mind would turn to Christianity. But it’s not because of the doctrines. It’s because of the people.

I dare say that most of today’s Baptist churches would shun Paul, Spurgeon, Gill, and even Edwards. They wouldn’t be welcome in their churches. They would despise Christ for loving his enemies rather than casting stones at them. They could have God in their daily presence, yet do as the Jews and seek out Pagan ways instead.

In the end, who is this an indictment of? Of me? Of my friend?

We need to carefully consider those we associate with. By that, I don’t mean that we need to only hang around folks who reflect positively on us. I’d rather be around individuals I disagree with or have significant differences with if they’re at least genuine.

It is sad that my friend is going through a tough time. I’d like to apologize and show regret for bringing things down upon him. I’ve never made a post on his site to warrant such wrath. Instead, these individuals have invaded my site and are now bringing down judgment upon him and upon me. What do have to say about that?

Shame on them. I can only hope that God will be more gracious with them than they are with others.

Now, I have been a fan of using 2.5″ drives in servers and storage systems for a while. But sometimes the rationale for actually pushing such solutions escapes me. The primary reason for this is the cost difference between a 2.5″ drive vs an equivalent 3.5″ drive.

In this article published by Byte and Switch, one of the reasons for moving forward is, “The 3.5-Tbyte SP1224s is Xyratex’s first offering to use 2.5-inch drives, which the vendor is aiming at applications requiring high input/output operations per second (IOPS). By packing 24 2.5-inch drives into a 2U form factor, Xyratex claims to offer double the performance of its predecessor, the 4U, 24-Tbyte SP1424s, which relies on a dozen 3.5-inch drives.”

But this is comparing apples to oranges. Think about it for a second. How can this new solution provide TWICE the IOPS of its predecessor? Both offer support for 24 drives. The predecessor supports 15,000RPM drives whereas the new solution supports up to 10,000RPM drives. Hmm… I’m not quite getting the math. 24 drives is more like two dozen drives– not a dozen. I suppose someone should have proof read the article.

The article goes on to discuss the “green” aspects of the new storage system. But even this is a bit misleading. For example, the SP1424 supports SATA and SAS drives. BTW, there’s no technological reason the new system can’t support both drive types. It’s got to be a positioning thing. Anyway, consider a 2.5″ Savio drive’s capacity of 146GB vs a Barracuda’s 1000GB’s. On a per drive basis, that’s a power consumption difference of 5.5W. Across the entire enclosure, this equates to 88W. However, when you factor the capacity difference, it will require almost 7 enclosures to equal the storage capacity. That 88W advantage becomes rather meaningless when you look at the additional 728W of power that’s necessary to equal the same amount of capacity. That works out to nearly $640/year. So, the positioning is a little bit off.

In all fairness, another aspect of the positioning is towards transactions as opposed to capacity environments. And there’s not much I can do to disagree with that. But let’s avoid the green discussions. If one wishes to have both transactional benefits along with better power efficiency, then SSDs are a better fit than 2.5″ drives. Now, the costs will go up tremendously; but isn’t the environment truly worth it if you are that “green” sensitive?

If you detect a bit of sarcasm, you wouldn’t be wrong. Like I said in the beginning, I’m a fan of 2.5″ drives, but I wrestle with the positioning of them. Ultimately, I believe economics are still a better rule of thumb. And it’s far easier to build fast, low-cost storage solutions with 3.5″ SATA drives than it is with any speed 2.5″ drive. And when you consider that 3.5″ drives can store 4 times the capacity of a 2.5″ drive, I really don’t think density arguments have much weight.

Thanks for the neat solution! But I still believe you’ve missed the mark. However, if you were to come up with a cheap, dense and fast solution, I might be a bit more interested. And I think the positioning would be a bit clearer.

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