MSP Center Plus

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Managed Service Providers can leverage the power management features of MSP Center Plus to standardize power settings across thousands of desktops/laptops (spanning multiple customers) enabling huge savings on energy costs. This whitepaper illustrates how.

Green computing

It refers to the practice of using computer resources efficiently using techniques such as virtualization, power management, materials recycling, and telecommuting (in this whitepaper we will limit ourselves to just the power management). Though the ultimate goal is to save planet earth through reduced emissions, there is a lot of scope for financial well being by following these practices as they result in huge savings on energy costs.

Every computer consumes energy

As i write this document on my Dell Latitude D620 laptop, while listening to KennyG's Rhythm and Romance, the underlying CPU and every little part inside my laptop consumes some amount of power for its operation. Quite obviously it would consume less energy now compared to what it consumes when i run the MSP Center Plus probe and monitor thousands of devices, download a heavy video from youtube.com, or work up a huge graphic on photoshop. Thats why hardware vendors publish two power numbers. One is the Typical Thermal Power which indicates how much the hardware consumes on normal load (such as writing a document) and Maximum Thermal Power which indicates the energy consumed on peak load or worst-case scenario.

CPU consumes the most

The major portion of the consumption happens at the CPU, unless you have a heavy grahic card which has separate CPUs nowadays which consumes more, so lets focus on the CPU power numbers. The CPU thats mounted on my laptop is an Intel Core 2 CPU model number T7200. [Right click on my computer icon and choose properties]

The Thermal Design Power (TDP) of this processor is 34W (watt). [You can get this info for several other CPU models from this wikipedia page -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation] TDP is equivalent of maximum thermal power.

Lets calculate energy bill

Lets do some calculations here. If i run my laptop non-stop 24 hours for 365 days, then i am going to burn 298kW hour for a whole year

and at the average retail cost of 11.53 cents per kW hour in California, my employer would be paying approx $34 per year

assuming that an MSP is managing a total of 1000 such desktops with similar configuration then all desktops put together burn $34k on electricity bill per year

extrapolating this figure for 5 years makes the electricity bill touch $172k in 5 years!

To know the average retail price of electricity in your region checkout this website - http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/electricprices.html

How much of this can i save?

Assuming that my company works from Monday - Friday from 9AM-6PM, then the amount of actual working time for my desktop is far less than the non-working time.

The percentage of working hours vs non-working hours is stunning. The non-working hours are 73% of the total time.

If all these dekstops are idle during off-office hours thats a direct 73% savings

And industry reports say that desktops are active only 58% of the time during office hours. Rest of the time is spent on non-computer activities such as phone calls, meetings, lunch, and refreshments. If someone can apply stringent power management schemes and ensure that desktops consume less energy during the idle time (42% of time) then it results in

So the total savings would be

or simply 84% of your energy bill is saved.

Power Management For Computers

Power management refers to the ability of the Operating System to directly control the power saving aspects of the underlying hardware. This includes automatically turning off system components such as hard discs, monitors etc after a period of inactivity. In addition to this the system might choose to hibernate, a state at which most components including CPU and RAM are switched off.

Windows has this power management option since its early releases as eary as Windows 98. The power management options in my Windows XP machine are given below

Power Scheme

You can launch the Windows Power Options Properties screen by right clicking on the power icon on tray and choosing Adjust Power Settings. You can modify, delete, and add (save as) new power schemes from this screen.

Hibernate

Enabling hibernate option in every managed desktop and laptop is very important from a power management perspective. Hibernate is more like a soft shutdown. The system stores everything it has to the harddisc, cleans the memory, and then shutsdown.

Advanced options

The advanced options screen gives options such as password protect, power buttons options, show icon on taskbar etc. You can configure each power buttons differently.

Standardizing Power Management Settings Using MSP Center Plus

MSP Center Plus uses an agent-server architecture where tiny software agents are installed in each managed desktop/laptop. You can issue commands to these agents from the central server user interface.

Power Management Options

Following are the list of power management features available in MSP Center Plus

Creating a power management scheme

MSP Center Plus uses a template equivalent model for all configurations. For example, to apply a power management setting to 1000 desktops you need to open the Power Management Configuration screen, input all required details and then apply it to select desktop and laptop users.

Shutdown idle desktops during non-office hours

The draw back in Windows Power Management feature is that it doesn't allow one to deploy different power schemes for different time periods. For example office hours vs non-office hours. A lot of desktops and laptops stay awake all night and all weekends just consuming energy for nothing. If there is a way to shutdown idle user desktops during non-office hours it would be really save a lot.

MSP Center allows you to achieve this using a simple VBScript and the scheduler configuration. You need to write a simple VB script such as this

myDayName = weekday(Date)
Wscript.Echo myDayName
myHour = Hour(Now)
Wscript.Echo myHour
'if day is saturday or sunday or hour is less than 9 or greater than 18 then shutdown
If(myDayName =7 Or myDayName=1 Or myHour < 9 Or myHour > 18) Then
 Call ShutDown()
End If 
 

Sub ShutDown()
 Set objWMILocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
 objWMILocator.Security_.AuthenticationLevel = 6
 objWMILocator.Security_.Privileges.AddAsString"seShutdownPrivilege",True
 set objWMIComp = objWMILocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2") 
 
 'Get connection To local wmi
 Set Connection = GetObject("winmgmts:root\cimv2")
 
 'Get Win32_OperatingSystem objects - only one object In the collection
  WQL = "Select Name From Win32_OperatingSystem where Primary=true"
  Set SystemClass = objWMIComp.ExecQuery(WQL)
 
  'Get one system object
  For Each System In SystemClass
    System.Win32ShutDown (1)
  Next
End Sub 

Save the VBScript as working-hours.bat. Now you have to apply this script to all desktops and laptops using the MSP Center Plus scheduler option.

Turning off screensavers

Even screensavers consume considerable amount of energy and hence it is advisable to turn them off. You can turn off the screensavers of thousands of desktops and laptops remotely using MSP Center Plus. It helps you write into the registry of each computer to turn off the screensavers.

Manual steps to disable screensaver for currently logged on user 
To disable the logon screen saver, follow these steps: 
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedt32, and then click OK.
2. Locate the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. In the Details pane, double-click the ScreenSaveActive string value item.
4. In the Value data box, replace the number 1 with the number 0, and then click OK.
   
User Key : [ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop ]
Value Name : ScreenSaveActive
Data Type :  REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data : ( 0 = disable screen savers ) 

You have now disabled the screen saver.

Disabling screen saver using MSP Center Plus

Custom group option

MSP Center Plus allows you to group the users based on department or other rules such as location (first floor, second floor) etc. All the above mentioned configurations will be applied based on this grouping. For example if you wish to standardize power settings across all users in finance department of customer Reliance, then you need to create a custom group as shown below.

The group thus created will be selected when you apply a power management configuration. See picture below.

Conclusion

Whether your intentions are to save planet or not, you should try the power management options in your managed desktops and laptops for it saves a huge amount of money for your customers. With tools such as MSP Center Plus giving you the required control and flexibility it is all the more easier to do it. For more details on MSP Center Plus please visit http://www.mspcenterplus.com For a free 30-day trial of MSP Center Plus visit www.mspcenterplus.com/download.html

This product is priced at $25 per object for all its features including power management. Other featurs include remote monitoring, patch management, asset management, software license management, remote control, SLA management, an integrated helpdesk, professional service automation with tech scheduling, timesheets, invoicing and a lot more. For clarifications on this document or assitance please email mspcenterplus-support@manageengine.com