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| 11/22 |
| 2009/3/29-4/3 [Computer/HW/Laptop, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:52768 Activity:high |
3/29 "Leaving computers on overnight = $2.8 billion a year"
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/130078
\_ Not good for hardware to power it up and down all the time. I
always leave all my computers on all the time, except for
laptops which I allow to sleep (but still be powered).
\_ How is this the case for desktops but not laptops? I don't see
how turning something off at the end of the day would cause a
problem. Seems like less wear and tear.
\_ It's more wear and tear to power cycle and lubricants get
cold. Your system will fail more quickly if you turn it
off every night in my experience.
How laptops are different:
1. Their h/w is better designed for low or no power.
2. They are much better about sleep/wakeup than desktops,
in part because of 1.
3. If a laptop dies it's not usually a big deal because
they are not expected up 100% of the time anyway.
\_ Here you go. Welcome to the 21st century.
http://tinyurl.com/dcur84
http://tinyurl.com/6egwdu
\_ From a link found in one of your links:
"[Temperature cycling] is a well-established failure mechanism and a
stress on components," McCredie pointed out. "What it really comes down to
is all these things -- chips soldered on modules, soldered on boards and
connectors -- that expand and contract when they heat and cool.... When
they all contract and expand at different rates, they can fail. That's
ultimately the bad thing with power cycling," he said.
--Brad McCredie, an IBM fellow for the Systems and Technology Group
You can say "Cycling power on a sick system is
going to bring attention to latent component
weaknesses that go unnoticed in operation" which
maximizes "server availability", but that's an odd
way of looking at it. If you don't power down the
system then you won't have the failure and your
availability will be greater. I have gone through
just a few dozen exercises where equipment in an
entire data center was powered down and equipment
always fails at a much higher rate when that
happens. Whether it's just highlighting a latent
sickness is semantics. If you don't power it off,
then it won't fail, even if the power off is not
the root cause.
\_ Well, if you want to cling onto any comment
as a way to rationalize your practices, that's
fine.
\_ why give this guy a pass? Fuck that!
this is our planet too. --ecoterr'rst
The way I synthesize everything is if
you're not power-cycling a lot, you'll very
likely be fine for the useful life of the
product. It's a tradeoff between perceived
higher failure rates, which may go up "negligibly"
with occasional power cycling, versus the cost
to your pocketbook and the environment of running
hardware 24/7 even when it's not being used.
There are multiple comments that suggest that
turning off your equipment at night (or whenever
it won't be used for an extended period of time)
is the better tradeoff, but of course you
conveniently ignore those points.
P.S. A datacenter is a very different use case
than a typical home or work desktop. Although
powering down parts of a datacenter would still
appear to be much more a logistical problem than
a hardware failure problem.
\_ Different use case, but basically same
components. If they fail measurably (not
"negligibly") in that case then they will
fail at your home, too. Most people probably
do not notice because a 1/N failure rate
means you will likely be fine, but when the
number of machines is 1000N it's a noticeable
issue. I always count on a power outage to
result in dead hardware. You can make the
argument that a 5-10% chance of failure (say)
over the lifetime of the system is low, but
I'd rather just keep my system up. The key
point here is not that I am against powering
off equipment, but realize it comes with a
non-negligible risk of failure. Given my
experiences I just keep my equipment powered
on. As far as being environmentally aware,
maybe you should talk to the people in the 55
story buildings who leave the lights on all
night. Go anywhere in SF, LA, or NYC
to see that lots of lights are not on sensors.
Those "spectacular city views" are wasting a
lot of $$$.
\_ well, if you have control of the lights
in the skyscrapers, by all means, turn
them off when not in use. If you don't,
you should make wise choices about the
things you do control. -tom
\_ I gave up on convincing him. Guy just
doesn't want to do it.
\_ I like my h/w to not fail. Maybe you
don't mind if it does. You can
pretend the h/w won't fail, the OS
will always boot fine, and the s/w
will start up fine every time if you
want to but there is evidence to the
contrary. It's not a case of comparing
my $500 machine to the $8/month bill
and saying that I can replace the
machine with the savings over the life
of the machine. Having my machine
fail is *BAD* and causes me grief.
If you turn yours off every day then
more power to you. My experience has
shown that IBM guy (who *you* ignore)
is correct and power cycling systems
results in failures. You know that
server in the corner that no one knows
what it does exactly but is VERY
IMPORTANT and the guy who built the
s/w that runs on it - and only on
that very h/w - left 15 years ago?
DON'T TURN IT OFF OR REBOOT IT.
Now, if you understand why that is a
bad idea extend it to your own system
because the same physics are at work.
Now if a h/w failure is meaningless to
you because you have great backups and
no need for quick recovery and can buy
another machine and so on then go ahead
and power down, but that's analyzing
risk/reward which is not the same as
saying there is no problem with
powering your system down. There is.
\_ You speak as if hardware won't fail
if you don't turn it off. It will;
it's just a matter of time. And if
your plan for handling the failure
of a VERY IMPORTANT system is to
not have it fail in the first place
by not turning it off, you're just
stupid. Although I've seen people
have just such "plans", but then,
newsflash, there are stupid people
out there.
\_ It will fail more rapidly if you
keep turning it on and off every
day, whether that's because
the components are stressed
or just because latent failures
materialize. I know HP said
that the h/w won't, but I
doubt they tested systems
under real world situations
like under a desk with a case
full of dust bunnies. My own
experience has shown that h/w
will fail when powered down
and I dread it whenever
electrical work has to be done
because it means something is
going to die. Sure, sometimes
h/w dies anyway but it's
*guaranteed* something will
die when everything has been
powered off. I have seen this
many times over 12 years now. |
| 11/22 |
|
| tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/130078 I leave my laptop running overnight because I know it'll take five minutes or more to get things going in the morning -- not just booting up, but launching the various apps I start the day with, downloading my overnight email, filtering out the spam, and otherwise "getting settled." But all the power wasted while computers are sitting idle overnight adds up, and one study has finally tried to measure it. On a CO2 basis, that's 20 million tons of carbon dioxide, about the amount produced by 4 million cars on the road. available for download here (scroll down to "PC Energy Report US 2009"). But big numbers like that become almost meaningless in an era of trillion-dollar bailouts, so to put the wasted energy in perspective, the study provides the data in terms you can better understand: If you run a company with 1,000 PCs left on overnight, you can save about $28,000 a year if they are turned off after hours. Of course, it's also a fact that your PC will function better if you restart it regularly, and nightly shutdowns can help you avoid having to suddenly reboot in the middle of the day when you'd otherwise be productive. So even though this little laptop, by my math, eats up only about a quarter's worth of power overnight, maybe it's a smart idea -- and ultimately a time-saver, too -- to shut it down after hours after all. Report Abuse You don't want to restart your computer and files so you just leave your computer on is just really being lazy and foolish sorry chris but you really set yourself up on this one. My gaming machine and monitor are totally shut off when not in use. The computer that I use to go on line, and do the daily tasks like printing. Is put into "hibernate" when not in use, and I shut down the monitor. Using hibernate lets me get back to work pretty quickly. I also create "restore points" a couple of times a week, and restart the computer after. Several apps create restore points after they have scanned the system for various problems. Opinions expressed by the Advisors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Yahoo! receives no compensation from any manufacturer or distributor nor does it compensate any Advisor for the coverage of any product or service in any Advisor's content. |
| tinyurl.com/dcur84 -> www.itworld.com/hardware/55724/10-power-saving-myths-debunked Why Android-Powered Netbooks Could Kill Windows October 6, 2008, 02:41 PM -- InfoWorld -- Companies are finding themselves embroiled in a power crisis as they struggle to find ways to rein in soaring energy costs -- as well as do their part to address global climate change. However, how can you be certain that the power-saving strategies your company has adopted are, in fact, the best ones? After all, there are plenty of myths out there about saving energy that are patently false. In this report, we examine 10 such myths and bring the truth to light. The extreme temperature and current swings of power cycling can stress electronic components (especially capacitors and diodes) in a machine. Fact: Power cycling healthy electronics is not a source of stress. The same electrical components that are used in IT equipment are used in complex devices that are routinely subjected to power cycles and temperature extremes, such as factory-floor automation, medical devices, and your car. There is a kernel of truth in this myth, however: Cycling power on a sick system is going to bring attention to latent component weaknesses that go unnoticed in operation. Power-on diagnostics are brief yet rigorous and can be performed remotely on servers with dedicated management controllers. Fact: Idling servers at zero workload as hot spares is an egregious waste of energy and an administrative burden. If customers need to wait while you spin up cold spares to handle rising workload, brag about it. For a Web site, put up a static page asking users to wait while additional resources are brought online. As for the wait, people will stay on hold if they know their call will be answered. Build power management into your services architecture and make it part of the message that you send to users and customers. Model to model and brand to brand, servers exhibit wide variances in power-up delay. This metric isn't usually measured, but it becomes relevant when you control power consumption by switching off system power. Servers or blades that boot from a snapshot, a copy of RAM loaded from disk or a SAN can go from power-down mode to work-ready in less than a minute. Chained Exploits: Advanced Hacking Attacks from Start to Finish By Christopher Poelker and Alex Nikitin; The complete guide to today's hard-to-defend chained attacks, Chained Exploits demonstrates this advanced hacking attack technique through detailed examples that reflect real-world attack strategies. Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers By Louis Testa; A mentor-in-a-book for engineers who suddenly find themselves managing a development team, Growing Software guides new managers through the tough decisions they'll invariably face. Recent IT Jobs Whether you think Easter eggs are a security risk, a childish display of vanity, or just good clean fun, chances are you harbor a little nostalgia for them. Strap on your devil-may-care attitude and let's uncover some old favorites and new goodies worth trying. Favorite software Easter eggs Whether you think Easter eggs are a security risk, a childish display of vanity, or just good clean fun, chances are you harbor a little nostalgia for them. Strap on your devil-may-care attitude and let's uncover some old favorites and new goodies worth trying. Case Study: AISO grows its "green" business AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper. Myth of the Million Dollar Database In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost. com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Ten simple questions can shape your business communications. Take our short Unified Communications survey and be entered to win an Microsoft Xbox 360 from Avaya. |
| tinyurl.com/6egwdu -> weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2008/12/pc_power_manage_1.html Energy conservation Turning off PCs during periods of inactivity can save companies a substantial sum. In fact, Energy Star estimates organizations can save from $25 to $75 per PC per year with PC power management. According to a recent report by Forrester titled "How Much Money Are Your Idle PCs Wasting?" That also results in a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions. Perhaps some companies are being swayed by myths about PC power management. Forrester debunks this myth as follows: The average desktop draws 89 watts per hour. If it's left on overnight for 16 hours, it consumes 142kW. It's impossible for the power surge that occurs when powering on a PC to rival that figure: "You would be drawing energy at a rate of 17 kWh -- the equivalent of 44 HP DL580 servers at 100 percent utilization. Moreover, the average US wall outlet can only provide 18 kW of draw, which is about one-tenth of what the power surge would require." Though at times entertaining and whimsical, screen savers aren't power savers. As the report notes, "Certain graphics-intensive screen savers can cause the computer to burn twice as much energy," according to the EPA's Energy Star Program. A screen saver displaying moving images consumes just as much electricity as an active PC. A blank screen saver is slightly better, but most screen savers don't save energy unless they actually turn off the screen, or in the case of laptops, turn off the backlight. In short, it's better to place PCs in a lower power state than it is to run a screen saver. There may have been some truth to this once upon a time, the report notes, but today's new and improved modern hardware can handle it. The Forrester Report cites findings from the Rocky Mountain Institute: "Modern computers are designed to handle 40,000 on/off cycles before failure, and you're not likely to approach that number during the average computer's five to seven year life span. In fact, IBM and Hewlett Packard encourage their own employees to turn off idle computers, and some studies indicate it would require on/off cycling every five minutes to harm the hard drive." The report goes on to say that "powering down your computer may actually extend its life cycle by reducing the intake of dust, which can cause fans to seize up or parts of circuit boards to overheat." It's perfectly possible to rouse PCs from slumber for patches, updates, and backups. "This is most often achieved using WOL (Wake on LAN) technology -- an Ethernet networking standard that allows PCs to be 'woken up' from a lower power state after receiving a 'magic packet' network message. Alternatively, recent hardware improvements such as Intel vPro can offer similar functionality without relying on the WOL standard," according to the report. The Forrester report does acknowledge that end-users have very little patience for downtime. However, it suggests that "potential user complaints can be mitigated by communicating the positive financial and environmental benefits of PC power management." Drive Consumer Engagement with Entertainment Metadata - Opportunities to leverage entertainment metadata are expanding dramatically, creating differentiators for the companies ... The Latest Advancements in SSL Technology - Increasing online fraud has caused online businesses to become more concerned about the security of their site since their... Security and Trust: The Backbone of Doing Business over the Internet - Learn about technology that helps online businesses protect sensitive customer data, authenticate themselves, and build... Stopping data leakage: Making the most of your security budget - The need to control the flow of corporate information is acute. This paper gives practical guidance on how to use your IT... Assessing endpoint security solutions: why detection rates aren't enough - Evaluating the performance of competing endpoint security products is a time-consuming and daunting task. InfoWorld is a leading publisher of technology information and product reviews on topics including viruses, phishing, worms, firewalls, security, servers, storage, networking, wireless, databases, and web services. |