I was a having a brainstorming session with another smart guy, I don't want to name him, because the idea is too controversial.  We were discussing Green Ideas and we stumbled on the issue of Security being un-Green.

Why? Security at its simplest level creates friction in processes to make things more difficult, this takes more energy, effort, and other resources.  The enemies of your Green IT efforts will be your Security group as they will not want to compromise their security policies.

Now I am not arguing for no security.  It is requirement of any system, but how much security creates an environmental cost which is not sustainable?

As a demonstration of the extreme, no change that the typical methods, see this ComputerWorld article that discussing removing hard drive data.  None of their techniques is environmentally friendly.  They are all about destroying the drive so it is not usable.

April 18, 2008 (Computerworld) With stories surfacing on news channels regularly about lost or stolen data or the ability to recover data from discarded or resold computers and their hard drives, Computerworld decided to look at some cheap methods of removing that sensitive data from your hard drive permanently. And, what better place to look than YouTube?

While some of the behavior in these videos clearly displays a somewhat alarming level of violence and pent-up rage (and are probably illegal), we nevertheless were fascinated with the myriad ways to destroy a hard drive -- from a plasma cutter to a train to machines we don't even know the name of -- not to mention aluminothermic reactions.

Who knew there was such a subculture devoted to abusing hard drives? We even tried it ourselves, and you know, it is kind of fun. Make sure to go to the end of the story to see our version of disk destruction.

Please remember to wear safety goggles if you attempt any of these at home. Which you probably shouldn't do. Seriously.

Computerworld's recommended video is here http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1351827287/bctid1507761342

EETtimes has an article about Data Center Convergence No longer a Pipe Dream with a quote from Renato Recio an IBM Distinguished Engineer.

"Somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies are going to be building data centers in the next three years," said Renato Recio, a chief engineer for server networking at IBM Corp. "They are looking for technologies to make them more green, and this network convergence group has that value--this rings for customers," he said.

The moves fuel a broad industry drive to run networking, storage and clustering traffic over a single, mainstream pipe in tomorrow's data centers. The aim is to create one converged fabric, reducing the cost and power requirements of supporting today's multiple switches, adapter cards and cables.

The Green aspect comes from the power of the network chips.

A broad group of vendors announced their first products for Fibre Channel over 10-Gbit Ethernet last week. Separately, startup SolarFlare today is expected to announce a transceiver that can power 10-Gbit Ethernet up to 100 meters over copper on a single 65-nanometer CMOS chip that dissipates just 5.5 watts.

The work on the 10GBase-T standard for Ethernet over copper lines only indirectly fuels the network convergence. Its primary aim is to lower the cost of and expand the market for 10-Gbit Ethernet, which has been limited to expensive optical and short-reach copper cables to date.

Running 10-Gbit signals over copper typically has required multiple chips using as much as 12 W. The SolarFlare SFT 9001 transceiver could slash the power budget in half, but the company is still characterizing first silicon on the part, which it hopes to sample in May at less than $100.

There has been wide coverage in the news on Dells new Blade Servers, and the Green Data Center features have helped to get attention.  Power savings are claimed to be

The PowerEdge M-Series consumes up to 19 percent less power and achieves up to 25 percent better performance per watt than the HP BladeSystem c-Class¹. Compared to the IBM BladeCenter H, the M-Series consumes 12 percent less energy and achieves up to 28 percent better performance per watt¹. Built on Dell’s Energy Smart technologies, the PowerEdge M-Series enables businesses to save on power and cooling costs while increasing server capacity. The M-Series also provides lead-free configurations, delivering a “green IT” solution that further helps customers minimize their environmental impact.

To achieve these kind of savings Dell must have made significant inroads in power and cooling design.

Dynamic power management enabling administrators to set high/low power thresholds to help ensure blades operate within their defined power envelope;

Real time reporting for enclosure and blade power consumption, and the ability to prioritize blade slots for power to provide optimal control over power resources.

At Microsoft's IT Forum in Barcelona, I moderated a Green Data Centre Panel Discussion where Ed English from Dell spoke.  I am going to reach out to Ed and see he has any more details on the power and cooling improvements.

Digging on the web site here is Dell's white paper on the Power Distribution System for the new blades.  It's great they added real time AC power draw #'s the trick is what tools you can use to get the data.  Here are some other highlights from the paper.

Power for the Dell PowerEdge M1000e Modular Server Enclosure system is provided by a set of Power Supply Units (PSUs) that are installed in the rear of the enclosure. Each PSU is capable of delivering 2360 Watts of power to the system at 12 Volts DC (note: PSUs take in single phase 180‐264v AC and convert it to 12v DC to supply to the system). Three PSUs provide enough power for an entire fully loaded PowerEdge M1000e system, however the PowerEdge M1000e holds six PSUs to support redundant power modes.

The PowerEdge M1000e system has a Chassis Management Controller (CMC) that performs power monitoring and management for the enclosure. The CMC provides the following functionality:
• Power Monitoring
o Reports the enclosure’s real time AC power draw
o Reports maximum and minimum AC power draw with a time stamp
• Power Management
o Manages and allocates the system power budget, ensuring sufficient power is available based on PSU population, redundancy status, system
configuration, and any power limits set on the enclosure
o Allows users to select required power redundancy mode
o Allows users to optionally set a maximum AC power draw for the enclosure
o Allows users to set a power priority for enclosure slots in the event that the CMC needs to reduce system power consumption
o Manages Dynamic Power Supply Engagement (explained below)

Lewis Curtis from Microsoft forwarded on the tests run by Neal Nelson & Associates comparing AMD Opteron vs. Intel Xeon.

Recent tests by Neal Nelson, an independent computer performance expert, show that while some Quad-Core Intel Xeon based servers delivered up to 14 percent higher throughput, similarly configured Quad-Core AMD Opteron based servers consumed up to 41 percent less power. The test servers used 1 gigabyte memory modules at 4, 8 and 16 gigabyte main memory sizes.

"By themselves the Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) processor chips may use less power, but all current Intel Xeon servers require the use of Fully Buffered memory modules. These FB-memory modules appear to consume more power than the DDR-II memory modules used by the AMD (NYSE: AMD) based servers. The result is that in many cases an Opteron based server actually uses less total power than a Xeon based server." observed Neal Nelson, designer of the test.