Powering Down The Client

Strategies For Saving Energy On The Client Side
A traditional, high-level discussion covering power consumption in the data center inevitably focuses on the usual suspects, such as servers. But increasingly, managers are looking toward clients as prime opportunities for saving energy, and there are plenty of methods for knocking down the power they consume.

“The speed of innovation is powering an energy-efficient revolution in the computer industry,” says Leslie Sobon, director of brand management at AMD (www.amd.com). “The advance of energy-efficient computing technologies means enterprises have a number of options to improve energy efficiency throughout the enterprise, helping them to save energy, reduce escalating energy costs, and extend the longevity of their PCs.”

For some enterprises, focusing on saving energy on the client side can require a shift in philosophies, but it’s not necessarily one that ultimately delivers less performance. On the contrary, today’s technologies are built to blend performance with energy conservation, but making the most of that balance needs the right plan.

Put Clients To Sleep

According to Rick Brenner, principal of Chaco Canyon Consulting (www.chacocanyon.com), enterprises can divide the task of saving energy on clients into both short- and long-term goals. For the short term, he recommends configuring machines to revert to sleep mode automatically after an appropriate idle interval. However, he adds that sleep mode doesn’t save as much power as using the off switch.

“Many employees can turn their machines off completely overnight and on weekends,” Brenner says. “If they don’t, the usual reason is the hassle of opening up the right documents and applications to get started the next day. Make this easy for them by writing—or showing them how to write—startup scripts or defining startup applications and documents.”

Brenner says that these off-button strategies can help enterprises save more than 50% of their existing power consumption. This approach also requires managers to ensure that employees who are on vacation, traveling, or are otherwise absent have powered down their machines. Another of Brenner’s short-term recommendations is that enterprises increasingly promote telecommuting, which he says “shifts all processor-related power consumption from the office to the employees’ homes.”

For the long term, he suggests that enterprises downscale their purchases of desktop machines and instead focus on buying notebooks, keyboards, and screens. This method not only conserves energy, he says, but also preserves data in the event of a power failure. This notebook-centric focus can save enterprises about 40% of their existing power consumption, depending on configuration, and entails other benefits.

For example, employees will more likely be enticed to bring work home with them. On the downside, notebooks are far more vulnerable to theft, and PC support staff might require additional training to handle notebooks instead of desktop machines.

Focus On Software

Client technology continues to change, but it’s a safe bet that multicore computing is here to stay for the long haul. However, Cory Isaacson, CEO of Rogue Wave Software (www.roguewave.com), explains that while multicore processing can save power in theory, application software must be able to take advantage of these newer technologies through concurrent processing.

“In general, it’s easier to add additional hardware to solving an application performance problem, but often with fewer results than are desired, and, of course, exacerbating the power consumption cost and adverse environmental impact,” Isaacson says. “By contrast, software optimization can offer dramatic performance improvements while reducing or eliminating the need for expanded power consumption.”

Although Isaacson says that software optimization can require the applied expertise and time of professional developers to accomplish, it can nonetheless be done today with confidence. In fact, he notes that utilizing concurrent computing designs in applications not only can reduce current hardware dependency but can forestall hardware expansion requirements—in turn decreasing power consumption.

Process Development

For an enterprise accustomed to funneling its energy-saving efforts primarily into the server side of the data center, grappling with a client-side energy plan can be a tricky endeavor. Isaacson recommends inspecting software first before automatically assuming that additional hardware is required.

“It takes a good understanding of the application code base to do this, but it’s well worth the investment in the long run. If new hardware is required, developers and IT should look for opportunities at the application software level, as perhaps less hardware can do the job,” Isaacson says.

Naturally, employees are an important piece of the puzzle, and AMD’s Sobon says that companies can convince employees to embrace and stick with energy-saving measures by sending monthly or quarterly consumption or money-saved updates. “If employees are aware of the significant savings that can incur by simply turning off their PC at day’s end, they will more than likely put in the effort to do so,” she says.

However, not all experts agree that employees will buy into these measures. Chaco Canyon’s Brenner says that enforcement that takes the form of exhortations intended to lead to desired results will simply not work, and neither will enforcement in the form of incentives and disincentives.

“Enforcement should take the form of restrictions on infrastructure and equipment,” Brenner says. “Only when the equipment is selected with energy consumption in mind will we make lasting changes in the consumption pattern.”

by Christian Perry