Green IT for Desktops

BIDMC has worked diligently to reduce operating costs and avoid staff reductions.

IT is doing its part to reducte operating and capital costs. One of our initiatives has been Green IT to reduce the power and cooling expenses of data center, as described in my blogs Kill a Watt and Some Like It Hot.

Our latest effort, announced this week, is power reduction for desktops.

Here's our challenge.

Many of our clinicians require "instant on" computing in clinics and operating rooms. Many of our staff require remote access to their computers via our SSLVPN Remote Desktop features.

How do we power down unused desktops but still meet the need of our stakeholders?

This week, we are modifying the settings of all our desktops - 8000 of them - to power down disk drives and monitors when they are untouched for 20 minutes. As soon as the workstation is used again, power will resume immediately. Thus, there is no need to power off computers manually. We'll do it automatically.

A screen print of our new settings is above.

When I announced this change, several folks were concerned about losing work or disabling their remote access. The systems aren't being powered down or forced into a hibernating state, the monitor is placed in a low power state and the hard drive stops spinning. We didn't want to disrupt work or prevent users from accessing their workstations from home and so this option was the best choice. It provides an opportunity for power savings but does not interfere with remote workers relying on RDP or SSLVPN.

Our commitment to Green IT will save money, improve our carbon footprint, and still meet the needs of all our users. Over time, I believe we'll move to thin client devices without moving parts that will have an even smaller energy footprint.

On a related topic, I was asked today about the kilowatt cost of Electronic Health Records, since the country will be implementing EHRs for 664,000 clinicians as part of the Stimulus Bill. I'm working with my energy experts to calculate our energy footprint using the extremely virtualized server/storage/data center infrastructure we've implemented for our community doctors. I'll report on that soon.