Saving Energy is One of The Top Benefits of Server Virtualization

From David Marshall | InfoWorld:  Server virtualization on the x86 platform has been around now for more than a decade, yet many in the industry still consider it a "new" technology. But those of us who have already adopted the technology in our own environments have grown to believe we can't live without it. Many of us also have the opinion that there is simply no going back to a "physical-only world."
As hard as it might be for fellow enthusiasts to wrap their arms around it, many people have yet to drink the virtual Kool-Aid. Fellow Kool-Aid drinkers may be asking themselves, "Why is that?" And that's a great question.

Server virtualization has been a game-changing technology for IT, providing efficiencies and capabilities that just aren't possible when constrained within a physical world. And while server virtualization has continued to mature and advance itself, some virtualized organizations are still not taking full advantage of the offering -- stalling their virtual environment at something far less than the 100 percent virtualized data center of the hard-core virtual administrator.
There are many benefits to an IT organization or business when choosing to implement a server virtualization strategy. With the technology we have today, there's no reason to remain idle and simply watch the parade on the sidelines. If you are still waiting to get into the game, here are 10 great reasons why you should be jumping into the server virtualization game with both feet. These are tried and true benefits that have withstood the test of time (in this case, the last 10 years).
10. Save energy, go green
Maybe you aren't a "save the whales" or "tree hugging" type of person. That's cool. I don't wear the T-shirts either. But seriously, who isn't interested in saving energy in 2011? Migrating physical servers over to virtual machines and consolidating them onto far fewer physical servers means lowering monthly power and cooling costs in the data center. This was an early victory chant for server virtualization vendors back in the early part of 2000, and it still holds true today.
Read more

Read more...

What Green IT can do for you?

Author: Nancy194 Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 each year and it aims to inspire awareness and promote a healthy environment. Everyone is "Going green" in one way or another and it is currently observed in many countries around the world.In today's world of big business going green need to be one of our top priorities which will be good for the planet and at the same time beneficial for business. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need.

Earth Day initiatives will attempt to change the importance that people place on the environment. Government, many companies and individuals have already adopted and following the green practices to help our environment. Following and operating a green business is not only good for the environment but good for companies because it is not the matter what the product or industry. There are very simple things you can follow to run a friendly environmentally business irrespective whether big or small the business would be.

It is very essential to follow eco-friendly best practices for going green to prevent waste and decrease the cost.

Corporate IT organizations are going green and looking for help to do so.

They target:

• Improvement in sustaining their IT operations and infrastructure


• lower operating expenses, particularly for electricity


• reduction or avoidance of capital expenditures


• alignment with corporate green initiatives that raise customer perception


• contemporary appeal to current and prospective employees


• Compliance with existing and prospective regulations.

Going green is easier than ever before. The Green IT Economic Summit 2011 will showcase recent breakthroughs in Green hardware and software technology. It will present state-of-the-art knowhow that is empowering cutting-edge businesses to use resources efficiently, delivering profit and sustainability.

Start planning to register for Earth Day 2011 TODAY.Love the earth: it's the only one we've got so let save the world and save ourselves.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/information-technology-articles/what-green-it-can-do-for-you-3193165.html

About the Author
The 2011 Green IT Economic Summit will take place at the luxurious Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. http://www.greeniteconomicsummit.org/venue.html

Read more...

PDF - A Green Technology for Paperless Office

Author: Ricky Wong

Why Does Paperless Office Become So Significant

In several years ago, paperless office is still a new concept to most of us. As the increasing pressure from environment and resources brought by the rapid economic development, more and more environmentalists are advocating energy saving and environment protection. Consequently, the concept of paperless office came into being and becoming an irreversible trend. Paperless office envisions an office with no paper but digital documents. Every work by everyone in every office will not be done on paper but computers. Besides getting rid of a lot of clutter and saving storage space, an additional benefit of a paperless office would be a reduction in environmental impact - since no trees will be cut to make paper and no carbon dioxide emissions when printing paper.

PDF – the Ideal File Format for Paperless Office

In such a paperless environment, a good universal digital format is needed to save all the documents in. This is where Portable Document Format (PDF) comes in. PDF format have a variety of features like security, compact size, accessibility, and usage restrictions. It can save all kinds of formats in it – Word, Excel, or just about any other format. With only a free PDF Reader, PDF files can be used on any system and all platforms with no exceptions. Moreover, PDF files are considerably smaller than other formats, which make them easier for files storage and sending over the Internet for exchanging. With numerous advantages, PDF is electronic equivalent of paper and comes as the best format to be used in a paperless office.

How to Establish Paperless Office

With help of computers and scanners, paperless office is not hard to establish. People could use scanners to import paper documents like government reports, contracts, invoices, quotations into computer for long-term storage. The scanner takes a snap-shot of the image then turned to a scanned PDF. The problem with the scanned PDF files created by using a scanner
is that they are not electronic character-based files but unsearchable images of document. As is known to us, character-based PDF files saved from Word, Excel or other formats cannot be edit directly, leave alone the image-based scanned PDF. There are some professional PDF editors like Adobe Acrobat can scan paper documents to character-based and searchable PDF documents and edit them directly, but most of them are extremely expensive and far from cost-saving. Following shows you two ways to deal with scanned PDF files and un-scanned PDF files when need to edit them.

OCR Technology – for Scanned PDF

In order to convert a scanned document into an electronic character-based file, OCR technology (Optical Character Recognition) is required. According to Wikipedia, OCR is "the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text". OCR technology can interpret each character image of scanned PDF, thus makes it possible to convert these scanned images into editable and searchable formats like Text or Microsoft Word. There is plenty of OCR software on the market like Adobe Acrobat that can scan paper documents to searchable PDF documents and edit them directly. But they are all expensive. Actually, there are some free alternative services available online. OCR Terminal is one of them that can let people convert scanned images into searchable text. People could register an account then gain the chance to convert 20 pages every month for free and it is enough for most of us.

PDF to Word Converter – for Normal PDF

The free PDF Readers are only designed for viewing PDF files. People may turn to PDF editors when need to edit or modify PDF files. However, PDF to Word Converter is more cost-saving and can let users convert PDF back to Word format for easier editing. It preserves text, layouts, images and hyperlinks well. After editing, users can easily save Word back to PDF if necessary with free PDF creators.

Based on PDF technology, paperless office is an environmentally-friendly and cost-saving green room indeed. There are many reasons to concentrate on paperless office. Even for those unpersuaded by ocean acidification, global climate change, desertification, topsoil erosion, pollution, or wars over resource depletion, a sense of "greenliness" is growing. Consequently, it is our common responsibility to develop paperless office with great efforts.

Read more...

New Green Software Application Technology

The software developer company Climate Earth has developed new application technology that measures and analyzes the carbon impact inside the supply chain, from the production of a carton of orange juice to the construction of a giant skyscraper...

More info

Read more...

Green Friendly Touchscreen Mobile Phone

Consumer cell phones are amongst the most environmentally damaging of electronic products. Each phone is made up of a bevy of toxic materials, and with dozens of millions sold and discarded to landfills each year, it’s no wonder that cell phone companies are square in the targets of green advocacy groups.

Samsung’s Blue Earth cell phone aims to diffuse some of the criticism labeled at the company by offering consumers a debatably green friendly handset. Announced back at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, the handset is made mostly of recyclable materials, including old water bottles, while the packaging is paper printed with soy ink, which sounds about as hippy dippy as it gets.

However, the Blue Earth appears to be a capable little phone. It’s a touchscreen device with a 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio, Bluetooth, 3G support and a microSDHC slot, as well as the usual support for music and video codecs. The phone is also low power, sucking up only 0.03 watts in standby, and can be recharged via the solar panel on the back of the phone.

More info at the Samsung web site

Read more...

Realizing the Value of a Green Data Center

Integrate Facilities and IT. Realize the Value of the Green Data Center.


As data center costs continue to rise, green is the word of the day. What it means is cost savings through consolidation and lower energy usage, as this white paper shows. See the role energy consumption plays in today’s data centers, and how IBM Tivoli® solutions can help optimize energy use. Free White Paper from IBM here

Read more...

Cheap Linux Computer Runs on 2 Watts

From Michelle Bennet:
As far as green gadgets go, this little desktop computer will give Dell and (to a lesser extent) Apple a run for their money.

The CherryPal promises to be affordable, efficient, and powerful enough for the average PC user. At first glance, that stats on the system look modest, and for good reason. This design actually cuts out 20% of PC components to reduce energy usage. But fear not, despite being small (the size of a paperback), the CherryPal claims it can start up in 20 seconds, and cloud computing provides more power/storage when you need it. A Linux operating system (now more user friendly than ever), and cloud computing means you won’t need to worry about viruses or install protective programs that can slow down your PC.

On a more green note, the CherryPal is supposed to sell for under $400 (monitor, keyboard, etc. not included). It should hit the market on August 4th, 2008. For that price and low energy use, it will appeal to wallets as well as the environmentally conscious. Though there is some understandable skepticism, I’ll praise any manufacturer that lowers the bar on PC environmental impact.

I recently took a blow to all of my electronics in the same week (Murphey’s Law at work), so it’s nice to see alternatives on the market. I’ll definitely have my eye on this cute little computer that thinks it can.

Read more...