Posted by Dan Burnheimer on Fri, Jul 31, 2009
Everyone has heard of it by now. Trade in your car and get cash from the government for buying a new, fuel efficient, smog reducing, environmentally friendly automobile. To qualify for the $1 billion program aimed at spurring auto sales and driving the huge SUV gas guzzlers off the road, the clunker must have an EPA city-highway "combined" rating of 18 miles per gallon or lower. The buyers then get a $3,500 incentive if the new car gets 4 to 9 mpg more or $4,500 for 10 mpg or more. The new car also must itself have a minimum 22 mpg combined rating. The program ends Nov. 1, or when the $1 billion runs out.
Why don't we offer this for old Clunker Computers and Servers? Outdated hardware is a drain on power and drains your patience as you wait for old, slow clunky computers to load/reboot and open programs. In fact, let us know if you have an old outdated server or workstations, and we will give you a credit on a new one.
My time and sanity is worth the upgrade, trade-in-credit, whatever you want to call it.
And here is a similar view from one of our Engineers in the field, David Quiram...
Cash for Clunkers! Cash for Clunkers! I hear this everyday, from the TV, the radio, the email blasts, and my wife. I was thinking the other day that yes, this is a good idea for getting better quality cars on the road, reducing the impact of the vehicle on the environment, and stimulate the economy. Too bad the IT world doesn't have this....but we do, sort of.
The IT version of Cash for clunkers for now is virtualization. We are taking outdated servers or servers that are not being used to their full potential, but using there allotment of energy, and replacing them with a virtual version of that server. Thus saving energy to run the server, space in the data center, and cooling power to cool a whole server. But this is old news to all of us. Either you are for virtualization or against it. The people against it seem not to trust the technology or are not comfortable with not having a dedicated box for the server.
What we need is a next step for those who do not want to be virtualized. If you are not going to replace your servers with a virtualized version what other options are there? We need to have programs in place where you can replace your older server which is energy inefficient with a new server which has been designed to be energy friendly. This will be the same as the Cash for Clunkers program. Remove older machines for more energy efficient new machines, reduce the impact the server will have on the environment, and stimulate the economy. This doesn't have to stop at the server level; there are plenty of opportunities for replacing the old workstations, CRT monitors, and outdated printers. As a further incentive I think it would be great if the government got involved (just a little bit) and offered tax incentive to companies and small businesses to get their technology replaced. You will be rewarded for saving money, by the government no less!!