Green Teens
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Helen Keller
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Morgan County has implemented a solution for computers in the school system that had a very positive impact on energy usage throughout the entire school system. You may have noticed that the big monitors and desktop computers are gone and replaced with flat screen monitors and a small computer about the size of a Wii Game Console. 

This is a system using VMware and Wyse thin clients. Click here to read the study on this project.
Below are some facts from their websites and to the right a video about these Green efforts.

(source - www.wyse.com)

Wyse thin clients:

Over the past few years, improving energy efficiency while minimizing the environmental impact corporations have on global warming has become a top-of-mind business issue (and expense) with senior IT executives. These issues have helped propel cloud client computing to the forefront, as a cost effective solution which leaves a very small environmental footprint. At a very high level, cloud client computing offers users the benefit of consuming less power, but that's just the beginning.

Here are just a few things to consider:

  • Less materials and energy are used in production compared to a PC
  • Wyse thin clients are small in size and weight which reduces the cost and energy required for transportation
  • Less materials also means less to dispose of at the end of its life
  • Up to 90 percent of the unit can be recycled, and up to 99 percent of the packaging can be recycled as well
  • Low heat output means less power needed for air-conditioning systems
  • Wyse has implemented an ISO 14001-based environmental management system and Wyse products meet stringent ROHS requirements
  • Meets mandatory WEEE recycling process
  • Longer product lifespan over a PC - 5 to 7 years
  • Wyse thin clients can be managed remotely, so maintenance and software updates can be delivered without support staff having to visit the user?s desk

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(source - www.vmware.com)

VMware:

While VMware has successfully reduced our own corporate carbon footprint through a variety of ways at our headquarters, our virtualization solutions are positively impacting the environment all over the world.

Gartner2 estimates that 1.2 million workloads run in VMware virtual machines, which represents an aggregate power savings of about 8.5 billion kWh—more electricity than is consumed annually in all of New England for heating, ventilation and cooling.

While this is a good start, there are plenty of opportunities for saving even more energy and money. Analyst firm IDC3 states that the un-utilized server capacity equates to approximately:

  • $140 billion
  • 3 years supply of hardware
  • More than 20 million servers

At 4 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually per server, these un-utilized servers produce a total of more than 80 million tons of CO2 per year. This is more than is emitted from the country of Thailand and more than half of ALL countries in South America.