How free tools are helping Partners HealthCare slash electricity costs by $2.2 million

Many network managers mark the beginning of a new IT initiative by powering on machines. For Ethan Fener, his plan to improve efficiencies at Partners HealthCare requires he be able to power down some 25,000 desktops.

Fener, director of application development at the Boston-based nonprofit organization, is fine-tuning his planned rollout of free tools from the U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program. When coupled with his existing Altiris desktop management software, the tools can shut down local and remote client machines that aren’t in use.

According to Fener's calculations, Partners could save about $2.2 million on electricity costs if IT is able to put thousands of unused machines to sleep at night, on weekends and at other times of inactivity. "The numbers are attention-getting. The out-of-pocket costs are quite low, and the potential savings are more than $2 million," Fener says.

Calculating savings

Fener started investigating the benefits of managing power consumption on desktops when Microsoft in 2006 shared details of its Vista operating system. The vendor says the power management features built into Vista can save between $16 and $30 per machine per year.

"I found the information very interesting but also quite useless because we have no Vista and no plans to have a lot of it for a long time," he says. "But it also stirred such an interest in me that I had to learn more, to see if there was a way to do this on our desktops."

First Fener wanted to learn what kinds of savings were possible at his organization, so he studied his user community. He found that on weeknights about 32% of Partners desktop users shut down their machines, and on weekends that number grew to 40%. With 60% of client machines running but unused, Fener determined the opportunity for savings was significant enough to start his project.

"We factored in EPA's figures on how much inactivity a computer sees during an eight-hour workday, and we went to HR to learn about average sick time and vacation time. We incorporated many factors that just kept improving our potential for savings," he says.

With Windows 2000 and XP machines in house, Fener asked Microsoft if his existing operating systems could be retrofitted to save power. The vendor pointed him to the government's Energy Star program, which provides interested parties with free dynamic link libraries (DLL) that when configured for a desktop environment can observe a group policy object (GPO) to control power and other settings on client machines.

Energy Star's EZ GPO software is free for download and works with Windows 2000 and 2003 servers, and Windows 2000 and XP client operating systems.

The software download enables network administrators to centrally control power management settings via GPOs. To Fener, that meant he could enable features on thousands of desktops that would let IT staff monitor power on client machines and then activate system standby, which in essence puts the computer -- the CPU, hard drive and more -- to sleep.