Tips » Reducing Data Center Costs » Tip 1 - Reduce Power Consumption with Group Policy

Tip 1 - Reduce Power Consumption with Group Policy

by Greg Shields

Times are hard. Cable news now refers to today's college graduates as the "lost generation," with nearly half having troubles finding work. Businesses everywhere see escalating costs due to inflation and health care, all the while business itself is slowing down for many industries.

What can an IT professional do? With little to no access to budget, and even less opportunity for business-altering changes, how can the IT department assist the business with its money problems? One area that always helps is in cost savings. Although every IT organization strives to one day be a profit center, most businesses still today see IT as a necessary cost to get the job done. Thus, your best chance to help your business is to find ways to optimize, automate, and reduce the total cost of IT ownership.

In this series, you'll find 10 tips that'll help you do just that. These data center money-saving tips will help you reduce costs in all sorts of areas, from license harvesting to power reduction to automating your processes. Some might require an up-front purchase of assistive software to get you there, but only when that up-front cost can be quickly recouped by budget-minded businesses. If you're in charge of making your annual budget lower than the year before, read on.

Using Group Policy to Enforce Power Reduction

Group Policy is a great tool for enforcing configurations. Being an already-installed component to every modern Windows OS, this tool can help you force down smart power settings for desktops and laptops everywhere.

Faronics (www.faronics.com) develops a software package called PowerSave. This product enables desktops and laptops to be powered on and off at will, reducing their power consumption to zero outside your normal business hours. At the company's Web site is an ROI calculator that gives you an approximation of how much money you're spending on sheer power costs. Did you know that a 500-desktop business that pays 14 cents per kilowatt hour spends almost $45,000 every year just to power those machines? That's an incredible amount of money spent for leaving computers on for the other 16 hours of the day when employees are home.
If external tools aren't in your budget, consider looking at alternatives using Group Policy. Using this tool, you might not be able to completely power down your computers, but you'll get them to a low level of consumption for no added cost.

The first group of settings to watch are under Computer Configuration | Policies | Windows Settings | Administrative Templates | System | Power Management. In the root of this folder is the Group Policy setting Select an Active Power Plan. Here, you can configure targeted machines to switch to the Power Saver plan. This plan slightly reduces processing power, so it might not be the best solution for your most high-powered of workstations. But for those who make limited use of their machines, the reduction in power consumption can be noticeable.

If reducing horsepower to reduce power isn't your idea of good customer service, consider other alternatives. Microsoft's Engineering Windows 7 blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/06/windows-7-energy-efficiency.aspx) suggests that 43% of the total power consumed by a desktop is used for lighting its LCD display. Turning off that display when it's not in use can significantly dial down the meter. This configuration is set in the Video and Display Settings subfolder of the previously mentioned path. Look for the setting Turn Off the Display, and set it to a very aggressive number to get the best savings.

Also power friendly but without the annoying performance reduction is setting a sleep timeout for your desktops. Configuring a Windows desktop to sleep after 20 minutes of inactivity ensures that it moves to a low-power mode when the user walks away. A system in sleep (or its cousin, hibernation) mode generally uses between one and three watts of electricity and can generally return to a useable state within only a few seconds after the user returns. Both sleep and hibernate timeouts can be configured in the Sleep Settings subfolder of the previously mentioned path.

If you're interested in learning exactly how much money you can save by making these subtle changes, the US Environmental Protection Agency "Energy Star" Web site includes a handy Excel calculator (http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_enterprises_winVista). This calculator takes as inputs the number of machines in your environment as well as details on the time-to-sleep and estimated power consumption metrics to output a cost-savings report. You'll be amazed at just how many dollars you can save with a few Group Policy mouse clicks.

Greg Shields is an independent author, instructor, and IT consultant based in Denver, Colorado, and a co-founder of Concentrated Technology. With nearly 15 years of experience in information technology, Greg has developed extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft systems management, remote application, and virtualization technologies. Greg is a Contributing Editor and Columnist for TechNet Magazine, and is the author of five books, including Windows Server 2008: What’s New / What’s Changed. Greg is also a highly sought-after instructor and speaker, speaking regularly at conferences like TechMentor Events, and producing computer-based training curriculum for CBT Nuggets.  Greg is a recipient of Microsoft "Most Valuable Professional" award with a specialization in Windows Terminal Services.