We here at Grist love computers, even if sometimes they don't love us back. Every once in a while, a piece of technology comes out that you can't help but get excited about (and I'm not talking about the iPhone).
The internet has physical houses in which information, services, and sites like this one are stored. These computers, known as servers, are the "always on" engines that power the constant activity. Due to the mission-critical nature of such machines, performance and reliability are of primary importance. Terms like "energy efficiency" and "ecological footprint" rarely find the ears of system administrators.
So it's a pleasant surprise to stumble on a server that not only hosts websites and email, but is engineered from the ground up to have that minty fresh "green" stamp on it's case.
British firm Zybert's Z1 GEM server, which among other things is made completely out of recycled (and recyclable) parts, when "always on" runs at 45 watts and on 1 watt when idle. That's about 25 times less than a modern toaster -- 1146 watts -- and almost half the the wattage of a typical light bulb.
Zybert was founded by retired physicist. It's a new company, but already they are making waves, with their Z1 server being nominated for a Server of the Year by influential trade mag Network Computing.
Although the Z1 has yet to hit the shelves of American computer shops, I will be curious to see how this company and its products do from here. Perhaps a future Grist site will be rolled out on one of these babies -- here's to hope.
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Comments
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bhurley Posted 9:15 pm
22 Feb 2007
I predict that more and more sites will put the "this site runs on green power" logo (and it would be great if some organization would create a standard logo, much as the WC3 or W3C or whatever it is created standard logos for compliance with Web standards. And if that logo links to the green server directory I think you'll start seeing a lot of people switching over to green servers.
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Janis Mara Posted 4:42 am
23 Feb 2007
The little green computer that could - I love it! I'm interested to know: you explained that the server when "always on" runs at 45 watts and on 1 watt when idle, and that this uses way less energy than a toaster, no less. How much energy does it save compared to other servers?
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Jerome Woody Posted 5:38 am
23 Feb 2007
To answer that, it's good to compare the Z1 to a server of similar capacity. For example, the Dell PowerEdge 840 workgroup server was designed to do pretty much the same jobs as the Z1 (small business level file serving, email, low to mid-traffic web server, etc).
According to Dell's Spec Sheet, the PowerEdge 840 runs at 420 Watts, almost ten times that of the Z1 (it's not toaster difference, but what is?). To Dell's defense, the Spec sheet does not give any information regarding energy saving features that may come bundled with the machine, but at risk of being to presumptuous, I doubt they can beat 1 Watt in idle mode.
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bhurley Posted 5:38 am
23 Feb 2007
Note, however, that according to their site the Z1 GEM server is marketed as an "office server" -- I'm not sure if these babies are up to the task of internet hosting...someone who knows more about servers would have to answer that question.
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Jerome Woody Posted 7:25 am
23 Feb 2007
I wonder that too. According to a review of the machine on Personal Computer World, it does have Apache2, Mysql, and PostgreSQL preinstalled on the machine, but I reassert that this is presumed to be for small to medium size websites.But perhaps a cluster of Green Gems could be enough to power a Enterprise site like Google, Amazon, etc.
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heapmaster Posted 2:15 pm
30 Mar 2007
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