How do you choose computer hardware? Price? Features? Sales pitch? We urge you to consider using some standards that have been generated to help us understand the environmental impact of computer and tech hardware.

You are probably familiar with the EPA's Energy Star program, but do you know about EPEAT certification? EPEAT is a system that helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select electronic products based on their environmental attributes.

All EPEAT-rated computers are also Energy Star compliant. That is one of the EPEAT criterion. However, not all Energy Star computers and monitors are EPEAT-rated. Energy Star rates a wide variety of hardware, from refrigerators to TVs. They look only at the energy efficiency of the hardware. EPEAT has many more criteria, some of which include the types of materials used in creating, packaging, and shipping the hardware. Energy Star is a U.S.-based rating system. EPEAT, while developed in the United States, has now been adopted by over 40 countries around the world. Both have searchable lists of compliant hardware.

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This is part two of a two-part series about virtualization. In the first post, we attempted to explain what virtualization is and why you should care about it. Here, we explain more about server virtualization and share our own positive experience with it.

Server Virtualization

If your organization has multiple server computers that supply your computer system with email, Internet, print services, databases, data back-ups, password authentications, a place to store documents, and more, then server virtualization is something that can save your organization money and energy. Virtualization software can cut server power consumption by up to 80%.

Server virtualization is software that allows you to optimize a single server computer so that it is able to do the work of multiple servers. Did you know that most servers are only utilized between 10 and 15%?

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Don't know what virtualization software is or even care? Well, you should.

If you aren't using it directly in your office, I bet you are using it through one of your software providers without even knowing it. Is your website or email hosted somewhere outside your office? Do you use Salesforce.com or an online donor database? I bet they are using virtualization. Most large services who host software like the ones I mentioned above should be using this technology if they aren't already.

If you are a small to medium-sized nonprofit, why should you care about cloud computing? Because it can save you time, money and help spare the environment.

What Is Cloud Computing?

Here is how the CyberOptic Group describes it:

Essentially, cloud computing enables computer software and hardware resources to be accessed over the Internet without the need to have any detailed or specific knowledge of the infrastructure used to deliver the resources, much like a utility model. You really don't need to know what the phone company or electric company does on there end to enable calls and allow the lights to go on when you flip the switch; and, you really don't want to know as long as when you plug into it, it works.

I bet many of you are using a form of cloud computing without knowing it. Current examples are Gmail, Yahoo mail, Google Docs, Salesforce, and Microsoft Office Live Workspace. They are often called Software as a Service (SaaS). A company provides access to their software applications over the Internet and you access it through your web-browser. If you are using email hosted by a company, like one of those mentioned above, you and your staff don't have to manage an in-house email server like Exchange. You simply sign up for the accounts and all the back-end stuff is handled for you.

This post is by Steve Longenecker, who is a principal infrastructure consultant at Community IT Innovators in Washington, DC. Community IT Innovators, or CITI is an employee-owned, triple bottom-line company that provides computer tech support to nonprofits and socially responsible businesses. They're an important green IT practitioner in the U.S.

When one of CITI's clients needed to replace their two servers we set them up with a single server with virtualization software on it. The single server replaced an old domain controller that authenticated users and also hosted Microsoft Exchange for email and provided file and printer sharing. The other was their old terminal server that allowed users to access applications and documents on a shared network hard drive. These are very common functions for server computers.

Our clients primarily use Windows server for their server software.

Just last week, TechSoup officially has a new donor partner — Sun Microsystems — which has started donating remanufactured Sun Fire X4100 M2 x64 servers to eligible nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup. These are robust, factory remanufactured 2.5 GHz computer servers that have hot-swappable hard drives, power supplies, and fans. If one essential part of the server fails, it can be replaced with minimal downtime. These servers come with the Sun Solaris 10 operating system, but will work with other operating systems and also with virtualization software that allows a single server to do the work of multiple servers.

Petri IT Knowledge Base, an excellent IT resource from Microsoft MVP in Israel, posted a plain-English post on Windows 2008 licensing concerns when using Hyper-V technology. Definitely bookmark-worthy if you are planning on virtualizing in the near future using this technology.

This post was contributed by Nate Solloway, a new guest blogger to our team. Nate has been supporting the infrastructure needs of Community IT Innovators (CITI) clients since 1998. Community IT Innovators (CITI) is an employee-owned company committed to helping social mission organizations effectively use technology.

When it came time to plan our latest network upgrade at Community IT Innovators we opted to virtualize our server infrastructure. As a typical 60-person organization we have file, mail, database, Web and remote access servers. With our systems and software going through the usual 3-5 year replacement cycle, our IT staff was looking for a solution provided the most flexibility going forward. Virtualization provided the benefits of a smaller server room footprint and a smaller carbon footprint. What is virtualizatioin, you ask? Check out this video answering just that question from ZDNet and this article from TechSoup called Virtualization 101 for more.

We began to explore virtualizing our servers while troubleshooting existing installations with performance monitoring tools. We were consistently surprised by what a small percentage of the processor these hulking servers were using most of the day. Large in footprint and small in efficiency, we began exploring products that would allow us to consolidate the need to keep operating systems separate but on a shared piece of hardware.

Virtualizing the standalone servers in our server room proved to be consistent with the green IT guidelines that are starting to trickle down to even the smallest organizations. CDW's data centers studied the effects of virtualizing servers and power consumption. A standalone server had 75% percent of the carbon footprint of a mid-sized automobile. The same functionality virtualized and then sharing hardware had a carbon footprint of 1/6 of the original with no loss in delivering services.

TechSoup Global has added Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to our roster of green products* on TechSoup Stock. What is Hyper-V and how can it help your organization become a greener office? Hyper-V (or hypervisor) is a no-cost addition to Windows Server 2008 that allows you to optimize a single server so that it is able to do the work of multiple server computers, virtually. It is an astonishing software technology that can cut data center power consumption up to 80%.

TechSoup Global recently virtualized our server infrastructure. This year we traded in our old servers, installed blade system server computers with virtualization software, and integrated the entire solution with the storage area network. The results so far have been:

Next time you're in the market for a new computer, look for one with the Energy Star logo (pictured below). Energy Star computers consume 15 to 25 percent less energy than standard new computers, according to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.