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The theme of this issue, “Green Computing,” is especially important and
timely: As computing becomes increasingly pervasive, the energy consumption
attributable to computing is climbing, despite the clarion call to action to
reduce consumption and reverse greenhouse effects. At the same time, the
rising cost of energy — due to regulatory measures enforcing a “true cost”
of energy coupled with scarcity as finite natural resources are rapidly being
diminished — is refocusing IT leaders on efficiency and total cost of ownership,
particularly in the context of the world-wide financial crisis.
We are pleased to have Lewis Curtis, Principal Architect on the
Microsoft Platform Architecture Team, as our subject matter expert on
this topic and co-editor for this issue. In the first article (page 2), Lewis
provides a holistic approach to greener architectures, and he also helped us
subdivide the topic in five perspectives:
Physical. The Genome research project, described in “Wireless Sensor
Network for Data Center Monitoring” (page 28), uses heat distribution
data from a wireless sensor network to optimize data center design and
server provisioning in order to avoid overcooling the entire data center.
Operating Platform. Hardware resources are often allocated based on
a worst-case scenario that may happen with a low frequency. As a result,
complete farms may be as much as 90 percent underutilized. Read Mark
Pohto’s article on SQL Server consolidation (page 35) to learn more
about virtualization and other consolidation tactics.
Sustainable Intelligence. An Energy Usage Profile (EUP) is an essential
tool for measuring energy consumption in various domains such as
hardware, operating systems, users, and applications, as the Software
Architect of the Future explains in the article by Steve Stevanovich and
coauthors (page 24).
Application Development. Solution architects also have an
opportunity here, as coauthors Dan Rogers and Ulrich Homann point
out in “Application Patterns for Green IT” (page 16). Green computing
discussions today tend to focus on the platform, hardware, and
data centers. However, application inefficiencies, such as suboptimal
algorithms and inefficient usage of shared resources causing contentions,
are originators of higher CPU usage and, therefore, energy consumption.
The Cloud. In their article on green design principles (page 9), Kevin
Francis and Peter Richardson also cover utility computing-based
delivery models. Insofar as this these models consolidate organizations,
consumption has the potential to be remarkably reduced as the Internet-
scale data centers in which services are hosted can make efficient use of
shared resources (servers, storage, cooling mechanisms, and so forth).
Now and in the future, green computing will be a key challenge for businesses
and presents a leadership opportunity for all architects. It is an exciting time to
be an architect. Celebrating the relaunch of the Architect MVP (Most Valuable
Professional) program, we interviewed Udi Dahan (Architect MVP for four years
now) in our Architecture Journal Profile (page 22).
We hope you enjoy these thoughtful articles on green computing. We invite
you to visit the Microsoft Environmental Sustainability portal at http://www.
microsoftenvironment/, and as always, we welcome your feedback at
editors[at]architecturejournal.net.