This communication will cover 2 developments that have been most publicized and will attempt to provide key points for attention.

Green IT

There are 3 levels of practices.  Light green is about improving the efficiency of computer components such as the CPU, PSU, memory etc.  For example, Supermicro has been able to supply a PSU model with an efficiency of up to 93% and this is approaching the theoretical maximum.  Intel and AMD have also come to the party and are able to supply CPUs with a lower TDP (thermal design power) and higher performance per watt.  Dark green is one level up on the agenda.  It is about revising computing schemes to save energy.  For example, Supermicro has released 2 lines of blade servers- Data Centre Blades and Office Blades.  The blades share a common enclosure and set of PSU.  Virtualisation is another approach and will be discussed below.  Deep green is the final level.  It is to do with the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  In brief, a 24x7 server will consume electricity that would emit a similar amount of carbon dioxide in the generation process as a 4-wheel passenger petrol car in a year.  Google has started building a data centre along a river using hydro power as an example.  For the average person like us, we shall be conscious that printing 1TB worth of text on paper will kill 50,000 trees which would otherwise absorb carbon dioxide.  People involved in IT should relate our daily practices to carbon and aim to be carbon neutral (carbon zero is the buzz word).

Virtualization

There are 3 areas for implementation.  Storage virtualization has been around for the longest period and is not much different to storage area networks.  The advent of SAS has allowed the migration of old data that were once real time based to be transferred from SAS to SATA hard disks. SAS has opened up a new application of virtualization under the title of data lifecycle management.  Server virtualization is currently the hot topic with VMware as the leader of the market and Xen trotting behind at a distance.  Xen is Linux based and consists of several different distributions from the likes of Citrix, Novell and Sun etc.  They will be united in the near future to use the Xen label.  Microsoft has also announced its Hyper V and will cooperate with Xen suppliers to allow inter-compatibility.  With the large install base and the high probability that Hyper V will be bundled within Windows 2008, we believe that Microsoft Hyper V will have a quick uptake to become the first runner-up.  Supermicro has already got certification of compatibility from VMware with ESX for many models and will supply an OEM version of ESXi (hyper visor) in the near future through Supermicro New Zealand.  Please contact us for further information as desired.  Ref: a third area of interest is application virtualisation but is a young development.