Upgrading Your OS? Why Not Upgrade to a Greener IT?
Author: Mike Lovell
Date: April 30, 2009
Well, you've almost made it (and by you I mean all you IT managers that skipped Windows Vista). The release candidate for Windows 7 is out and if you are any kind of IT professional, you've been playing with the beta to see what it is all about. If you haven't tried it out yet, let me sum it up for you; it's pretty good. It's not going to melt faces, but it is a pleasant improvement over Vista.
But I didn't write this article to try to convince people to move to Windows 7. Frankly, you are all going to anyway. Sure, you snubbed Vista and you threatened to move to Linux or Apple, but you knew deep down you would go back to Windows. A Linux powered network might sound like fun, but you know your boss would have some sort of brain hemorrhage if he or she sat down to a screen full of Gnome. This upgrade has waited long enough and most IT professionals are going to be neck-deep in Win7 over the next year.
So, here we are. We have a brand new Microsoft OS that we all have to get ready to deploy. However, something is changing in our world of IT. Sustainability and consolidation are the new focuses of today and it is about time you started planting your own garden of Green IT. Since you are going to be upgrading your OS anyway, why not include some lean, mean, green computing as part of a new direction in your IT infrastructure?
Why is Windows 7 and Green Computing such a good fit? For starters, if you want to start using virtualized workstations, Windows 7 loves running on a Virtual Machine. Win7 works much better in a VM environment than Vista ever did. It probably has a lot to do with Win7 being a lot less of a resource hog. Even when you allocate a Win7 VM with only a gig of ram, it runs positively snappy. This lesser requirement for resources is very important when you want to load up a lot virtual workstations on one server. Under my own testing, I've found that you can load up a large number of Win7 VMs on one machine and it handles the task marvelously.
Remote Desktop in Windows 7 playing MP3s. Note the Aero effects.
That's all well and good, but what about connecting to those VMs? The whole point of running these virtualized workstations is to be able to use lower energy computers (notebooks, nettops, netbooks, thinclients, etc) to these VMs to save energy. For this task, I look to old reliable; Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol. It is included with every version of Windows and it recently got its own upgrade to version 6.1. It is very clear, to me at least, that Windows 7 was designed to work exceptionally well with RDP.
Granted, there are not many features that are new in this version of RDP. It has been long thought that when you are using remote desktop, you can only expect to do work. For the most part, that is still true and productivity applications like word and excel work great through RDP. But RDP coupled Win7 comes with a few tricks that were available in Vista, but did not work particularly well. First, sound streaming to your client computer from the VM works well and requires no setup. MP3s and online music players (blip.fm, last.fm, etc) work great. And, while it is not as good as running it on a regular computer, I have found that sites like Youtube work fairly well (as long as you don't try something crazy like full screen). The real kicker (this is something I never got to work in Vista) is that Aero works great through RDP in Win7. Not a deal breaker either way, but it is a nice touch. From my own testing, using Win7 through remote desktop feels almost the same as using it natively. From my gigabit home network, my home wireless, or even at a local cafe, the experience of using RDP with Windows 7 from a VM is the best remote virtualized workstation experience available.
Remote Desktop running Youtube. It's a little choppy, but it works.
Even if you are not ready to jump your whole IT infrastructure to a virtualized setup, Windows 7 has other green features. This was also part of Vista, but since you skipped Vista, I should probably mention it. Win7/Vista will allow you to setup shutdown and standby policies right in your group settings. No more relying on everyone to turn off their computers at the end of the day. This will save a great deal of energy, as I mention a lot on this site.
My point? When it comes to greener computing and remote connecting to virtualized workstations, Windows 7 seems to be everything we have been waiting for. It is definitely posed to be the best OS for IT managers wanting to add virtualized workstation features on their network. The time is right and the technology is here. I'm not going to say anything crazy like Windows 7 is without flaws, but, if you're going to be moving to it anyway, there is no good reason to not consider upgrading to a Greener IT infrastructure during Win7 deployment.
If you still need convincing on the Green IT side of things, check out our other articles like the Benefits of Green IT. If you have any questions or comments on this article, feel free to contact us.
Testing Setup
Server: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 G0, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Nvidia 8800GT, Asus P5Q Deluxe Motherboard, Windows Vista 64bit, Ubuntu 8.10 64bit
Client: Shuttle SN45G with AMD 2500+ Barton, 2GB DDR RAM, ATI X800 Pro, Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 32bit
Netbook: Asus Eee PC 2G Surf, Windows XP
Virtual Machine Software: VMware Workstation, VMware Server, Sun VirtualBox
