Green Computing 1

It is hard to imagine our life without computers in the 21st century. For work, office and personal use, the computer has revolutionized the way we view time and space. But computers typically use large amounts of energy and give out emissions that contribute greatly to green house gas emissions. Moreover, computer hardware, old machines, servers and other electronic components contribute much toxic e-waste and other harmful chemicals. The Governments of many nations have furiously debated on how to put a cap on this high energy consumption and emission by electronic gadgets. Non-governmental organizations have been talking about Green Computing which is essentially an environment friendly and cost effective way of power usage. Green computing can be achieved in four different ways:

1. Reducing the amount of energy required for IT needs.
2. Using sustainable energy sources.
3. Tweaking existing IT infrastructure in such a way that makes it more earth-friendly. For instance altering the amount of energy they consume and the material they are made of.
4. Adopting more environment friendly practices.

All of them combined actually lead to achieving quality work by being environmentally conscious and cost effective. One of the ways in which both ends can be achieved is through a process of or virtualization. Virtualization enables a single computer to run several and often different virtual ‘guest’ operating systems. In the typical office scenario, this would immediately make the company do away with a dedicated ‘server room’ which draws up large quantities of energy but when checked for output, shows very small levels such as 1 percent or even less. These ‘server rooms’ are also environment bombs which release loads of harmful green house emissions. So doing away with one is not really a bad idea! Present generation computers are designed in such a way that most of their resources remain under-utilized. On the other hand, virtual servers will help get optimum usage from computers. So on the same hardware platform. And it is not just a server-hosting technology. One can ‘virtualize’ all aspects of IT infrastructure with this technology.

Virtualization is being touted as the ‘next big thing’ in B2B ventures whereby a business entity can reduce computing costs by almost 40 percent. With reducing the amount of computing infrastructure, the need for real estate space also reduces. Less computing equipment also means less green house gas emissions paving the way for green computing and environmentally friendly green IT.