I spent my lunch time researching my proof of concept design. I Googled Solar Panels and found everything from cool DIY YouTube videos to full service companies. Finding a package wouldn’t be that difficult. Monitoring the package and integrating its data into our current network would be a little more involved.

Monitoring the output of a solar panel can be done with the Ravica Power Monitor. The power monitor can read both 120v and 22v. With this monitor you are able to determine up/down state and measure voltage on a constant basis. With this data you can be alerted on the sensor exceeding a pre-defined threshold with  industry leading notification options like: SNMP traps, email, SMS, MMS and the recently released Skype support. You can also use the data to trend the panels output.

I was done, a quick proof of concept that could work. Imagine being able to show your company how much the IT department is saving! It might be a dream now, but someday it will be reality. Bigger ideas have been planned on the back of a cocktail napkin. Mine was in a Google note book, so I am a step a head!

Did you notice that the price of oil is up again?

- Jimmy D

“There are hundreds of areas identified as server rooms or data centers – from small server closets to large enterprise data centers, each with unique needs. Despite differing specifications, one key important conservation practice is to keep servers out of undesignated spaces; they should be housed in a server closet, server room, or data center that adheres to the energy-saving best practices.” – UMICH.edu

The University of Michigan has pointed out simple ways to adjust how your current setup can be adjusted to help you save energy and your environment. They list options for data centers the size of a closet (1 to 2 servers) to Enterprise size (100′s of servers)

Corria Nucci from Informationweek’s Green Computing Webblog points out that one of the best ways to save energy is to consolidate your servers. This option has become popular in recent years due to the power of the recent processors and the ease of “Virtual” environments like VMWare.

Analysts, however, are skeptical about all the new marketing over greener IT. “Many of the answers are things that don’t generate publicity, such as rightsizing the facility and supporting green design principles,” says Steve Wallage, a managing consultant at BroadGroup.

The end result is that companies are not buying into the hype due to cost or lack of supporting data. They just can’t see it helping.

The best answer? IT analysts and vendors both agree it is in metrics: studying power consumption, reallocating  server loads, refocusing airflows—and even in simple measures such as shutting off a server that’s not in use.

This can all be done with simple equipment that will help you monitor your server rooms environmental conditions, such as Ravica’s “Used Power Monitor Sensor” and the “Temperature” and “Air Flow” sensors. In the end, these small steps will not only help the world be a little greener and possibly cut down your energy and equipment costs.

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Jim Dougherty aka “Jimmy D”
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!

Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/jimmydnet

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