Share a computer with a co-worker, get a rebate from utilities

Virtualization—the ability to use a single server for multiple tasks—has taken off like crazy in the data center world as a way to both cut hardware costs and electricity costs.

And in the near future, utilities may start pushing virtualization to cut desktop computing costs.

That’s the word from Mark Bramfitt, Principal Program Manager, Customer Energy Efficiency, at Pacific Gas and Electric. Mark is the guy that sets up and monitors programs at PG&E to cut computing costs. In these programs, PG&E effectively gives companies rebates to adopt energy efficient devices. (We’re on a panel later today at the Flash Memory Summit.) PG&E, he said, may initiate a desktop virtualization program.

Potentially, it could be quite popular. Garden variety data servers without virtualization software only utilize their processors about 15 percent of the time. With virtualization, a data center manager can crank that up into the 85 percent range and get more computing per watt.

Desktops are even more profligate with energy. If you have a Windows computer, hit control-alt-delete and check your CPU utilization. You are probably only using 6 to 15 percent of the CPU’s power. Thus, there is room to share. (I have a Mac—easily the worst computer I have ever owned in my life—and haven’t figured out how to check CPU performance. But believe me, the time required in getting the smallest task done with thus thing means it guzzles the same or more than my old Acer.)

Desktop virtualization would essentially be a form of thin client computing. You no longer would have a desktop. Instead, you and your co-workers would have thin clients that tap into a server in a computer room. Thin clients each consume about two watts and a server running ten of them would consume 160 watts. A desktop PC can consume 65 watts or more. Thus, a ten-unit thin client installation would consume 180 watts (ten two-watt thin clients and a server) while a ten unit PC fleet will consume 650 watts. PC power consumption will be This doesn’t include monitors but that’s equal for PCs and thin clients. Notebooks can rival and beat thin clients in power consumption, but they cost a lot more too.

You could also set up a network where worker A has a PC on his or her desk and worker B has a thin client that shares the PC’s CPU, memory and hard drive with A. Each worker would be separated by a virual partition so that they couldn’t read each other’s email.

Thin clients have been the next big thing for, oh, a good fifteen years or so, but energy consumption may finally give them the oomph that they need for mass adoption. NComputing, a thin client start-up in Redwood City, already has 1 million seats deployed. They’ve only been selling computers for about two years. Pretty impressive.

Bramfitt, though, said that not all programs set up by PG&E gain favor with IT managers. They have responded to programs to promote virtualization and new types of energy efficient air conditioners for server rooms, but not other programs. IT managers, he said, aren’t quite used to working with utilties. Also, they don’t pay the power bills so they still aren’t completely tuned to cutting their utility costs.