- The aim of this section of the Low Carbon ICT wiki is to provide information that helps IT managers and end-users to minimise the electricity consumption by PCs and laptops when they are not doing useful work. Desktop computers are left on to:
- Allow ICT manager to install software patches
- Save the time required to start up a computer from off
- Allow remote backup services to access computers
- Allow end-users to have remote access to their computer (e.g. to retrieve files)
- To run email filtering processes
- To run 'keep-alive' processes e.g. using SSH clients
Unfortunately, since these events are typically short-lived, keeping computers on for these reasons means that they are still likely to consume large amounts of electricity without doing useful work. It is possible to provide a tools to for end-users and ICT managers to reduce this wasted energy. However, the provision of new tools will need to be accompanied by people adopting more energy efficient ways of working.TableOfContents([2])
Overview
Tools and techniques
Support
Local power management
- Automatically putting a computer into S3, S4 or S5 power states
- Issues
- when in standby computers cannot easily be switched off automatically
- computers don't wake from S3 or S4 reliably
- don't want to interrupt services that may be running in background
Enable end-users to configure power management
Distribute power management setting centrally
Remote power management
Switching computers on remotely
Wake-on-LAN
- Introductory text
- ["lcict:wol"]
VPro
Switching computers off remotely
- How to turn computer off remotely
More efficient working practices
create matrix of: (1) practice/ activity description (2) measure of how much energy will be saved (3) who the practice is relevant to * switching monitor off will prevent it turning on when accessing computer remotely
- implement power management