NetworkWorld has a good article on the Reality of Virtualization and Going Green.

Data center managers see green, battle virtualization hangovers in '08

Data center managers who championed virtualization and green computing in 2007 now face the task of delivering the benefits they promised -- something industry watchers say will be no small feat.

Just as virtualization is no slam dunk, neither is green computing. Industry watchers say that working toward a greener computing environment isn't going to be easy for most data center managers due to technical, political and other reasons outside the control of IT.

"Legislation is coming about putting corporate responsibility programs in place, but in a lot of cases IT doesn't fall under the umbrella of corporate responsibility," says Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president of global enterprise research at the Yankee Group. "IT needs to start understanding more about data center facilities and find ways to design data centers to eat up less power."

The problem is very few of these Data Center managers have energy monitoring systems to measure the before and after results of their virtualization/green projects.  So, when it comes to proving they are greener, they'll be stuck without data. 

You can address this issue by creating an Energy Supply Chain Management system. For ideas see Energy Management as a Corporate Strategy.

For most industries, the cost of energy is outpacing all other variable costs. For example, the cost of natural gas increased over 250 percent from 1993 to 2006. The cost of fuels and power increased over 110 percent during this same period; the bulk of the increase, 81 percent, occurring in the last four years. Managers are asking, “What can we do to better manage these costs?” “How can we better utilize our valuable renewable and nonrenewable resources?”

Additionally, companies are now recognizing that their customers expect them to be part of the national and global energy sustainability solution. Devising strategies to meet our current and future energy demands in an environmentally responsible way is no longer the sole work of academia and government.

The WSJ with MIT Sloan published an article today which appropriately describes one of the reasons I started working on Green Data Centers. After 14 years at Microsoft, 7 years at Apple, and 5 years at HP, I felt that it was time to do something different, and I quit with no idea what I was going to do.

One area I started working on and had an interest in was how many systems, especially home automation systems were put together for short term objectives of making the sale, and how frustrating it was for home owners when things broke to know the root cause of what broke and whether the repair actually really fixed the problem or systems were just rebooted to mask the problem. Which took me down the path of monitoring and metering. Narrowing down the area of what to focus on I discovered water well systems had the largest value impact to real estate values.  Land without water isn't worth a whole lot, and there were plenty of high end real estate being built on large acreage on the top of the hills with great views.15% of US homes are on well water systems, and the percentage is higher for vacation/2nd homes/future retirement.

Then my paths crossed with Pat Kennedy, CEO and founder of OSIsoft. In our discussion of real estate monitoring systems, Pat mentioned the problem of energy consumption in data centers, and how he wanted to measure the power consumption of applications. Having worked on system software and power management for both Microsoft and Apple, I was thinking how to do this, and how difficult it was given almost all the focus on power management was on laptops.  I remember in 1999, talking to Server OEMs about using Windows 2000 power management features and they just looked at me strange and asked why would you want to save energy on a server.

But, Pat hit on a good idea, I went back and thought about this more. Many of the same principles I was applying to home automation, water well monitoring systems applied to monitoring data centers. I researched this more, signed up for the EPA working group distribution, contacted more people, and even nominated the subject for a Microsoft internal Technical Readiness event with the help of Lewis Curtis and George Cerbone.

This last year has been an interesting ride, and I now write for TechNet Magazine, speak at a variety of events, consult with various companies, and I am back at Microsoft as a vendor working with a lot of people who are passionate about Green Data Centers.

My latest effort was to start with this blog, and get more information out there quickly and regularly on Green Data Centers.

Today is exactly my 18 month anniversary of leaving Microsoft and taking the risk to "Get Ahead by Going Backward"

-Dave Ohara

Human Resources
How to Get Ahead
By Going Backward

When it comes to advancing a career, sometimes the best way to take a step forward is to take a step back.

For most people, a promotion is the cure for a stagnating career. They've accomplished and learned all they can at one job, so they aim for the next one up the ladder, hoping it will bring them bigger personal and financial rewards.

But a few pursue a much riskier strategy. Instead of trying to move up, they take a lower-level job that gives them valuable new skills and experience. They're prepared to accept a short-term loss of income and prestige, betting that the knowledge they gain will lead to a better job down the road.

Mike Manos presented at a special event for IT Forum as part of thank you for the attendees who registered early.

Kevin, Arlindo, Frank, and I (http://greenm3.typepad.com/green_m3_blog/2007/11/microsoft-it-pr.html) sat in and were thoroughly entertained with the presentation, and had some good laughs.

One of the most amazing things is Mike was faced with the challenge of presenting during lunch (it is bad to be the presentation keeping people from food) and presenting in the auditorium which seats over a 2,000 people with glaring lights in your eyes. He couldn't see past the first 10 rows to read the audience, and see if anyone was leaving.  Well I didn't see anyone leave and 96% of the people turned in feedback on the session. This was the highest feedback rate of any presentation at the conference, and a great indication of what people thought about the topic of how Microsoft runs its data centers.

Mike had over a dozen people come up after to ask questions.

For those of you who attend IT Forum in EMEA, you can look forward to Mike being on the list of speakers for the next IT forum.

See http://unthrottled.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3B07BABB3D3318AA!574.entry for Mike's entry on his presetation.

I left Seattle 7a on Monday, and arrived 7a on Tues in Barcelona to a sold out 2007 IT forum http://www.mseventseurope.com/teched/Itforum.

Thanks to Arlindo Alves http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/, Frank Koch http://blogs.technet.com/chitpro-de/, and Kevin Sangwell http://blogs.technet.com/sanger/; we have momentum building for customers to think about Green Data Centres and how IT can be more efficient in its use of resources.

The early movers/innovators in this area have already increased the efficiencies of their data centers, developing an energy supply chain strategy, saving millions in energy costs.

On Thurs Intel is presenting the following talk.  An interesting Green solution they are presenting is highlighted below on how they are communicating to powered down systems.