Rolf Kersten's Weblog

Munich Business Run B2RUN 2009

2009-07-23T13:59:33-07:00

Amidst violent thunderstorms tonight the Munich Business Run B2RUN 2009 took place in the olympic park of Munich. Lightning, thunder and rain just before the start - how fitting for this year's valiant Sun Runners team! Lightning and thunder subsided, the rain stayed with us. Did I mention that I love to run in drizzle rain?
Well, fortunately Sun HR had equipped us with a second set of shirts to warm the exhausted and wet heroes after the run. So we hat violent Red during the contest, and calming warming Green afterwards.

Klick on "Firmenlauf 2009" under the picture below to get the whole story:

Von Firmenlauf 2009

The role of design in Green IT

2009-07-11T10:13:37-07:00

Green IT in datacenters has come a long way, because the motivation is clear: Save big money by saving energy.

But what about consumers and green? A cool, nice-to-look-at and fun-to-use design is a must. This is what the Ecorider and a Sunray Ultra-Thin Client have in common, and that's why I was so excited last week to finally set the Ecorider in motion again:

Von IDG Green IT Konferenz

IDG held their "Green IT Channel Partner Conference" in the Skylounge, just 15km west of the Sun office in Heimstetten. So as I was invited to give a talk at that conference, which vehicle would be better suited to carry me there than the little green tricycle which carried me from Dessau to Braunschweig almost two years ago?

The talk was - of course - on the other nice-to-look-at and fun-to-use technology with a Sun Microsystems logo painted on it: The Sunray Ultra Thin Client. Our partner CCF told the audience that in a project for the city of Bad Soden near Frankfurt, those Sunrays save 4000 Euro energy cost each year. In absolute term that may no sound like much, but it helps a lot with user acceptance. The new technology is not a dreaded PC replacement but a green desktop, silent, frugal and good-looking.

Umwelt schonen mit intelligenter IT

View more presentations from kerstenr.

Seven Grams Revisited

2009-01-16T14:08:14-08:00

After the "7 gram story" not only did hit Techcrunch, but also my favourite german-language news site, let's revisit my original calculation:

In 2005, Prof. Paul A. Strassmann George Mason University, held a presentation “Google - A Model for the Systems Architecture of the Future”, pdf here. Slide 11 says that in those days, 31654 2-socket x86 servers worked in parallel to serve 40 million searches a day.

So how much energy does a 2-socket x86 server at Google consume? Google engineer Luiz André Barroso gave an answer in his 2007 paper "Power Provisioning for a Warehouse-sized Computer". They measured 143 Watts.

These 143 Watts have to be multiplied with a power factor. In 2007 I used a factor of 2 (the industry standard, meaning: "For every Watt fed into the computer you feed another Watt in Cooling etc.). In 2008 Google reported a PUE factor of 1.21. With this, every server actually draws 173 watts for power and cooling combined.

So 31654 servers times 173 watts times 24 hours gives us 131427 KWh energy a day. Divided by 40mln searches, that's 3.3 Wh or 2 grams CO2 per search, using 600 grams of CO2 for every KWh generated with the german energy mix of nuclear, carbon-based and renewable sources

In 2005, a dual socket x86 server meant two cores. Today we have eight cores and roughly four times the throughput per watt, bringing us down to 0.8 Wh or 0.5 grams CO2 per search

So the difference between the "7 grams" from 2007 and this calculation today is caused by: Quad Core CPUs, lower measured power draw of the servers, PUE of 1.21, carbon factor calculated with energy mix instead of coal only. Net result: A factor of 12

And the real number Google disclosed this week is even lower: 0.3Wh or 0.2 grams CO2

That is really not much: If you start a search every 30 seconds on a typical Laptop (30 Watts), your client uses more energy triggering than Google executing the search.

Wrong by a factor of 35

2009-01-12T09:24:13-08:00

Sorry Google: In 2007, I guestimated the carbon dioxide emission of one Google search to be roughly 7 grams. That number was never intended to frighten people from doing internet searches, because I always assumed that Google would implement Search as efficient as possible. Just think of the advantage you get when you do search 10% more efficient than your competitors while doing billions of searches.

After the Sunday Times had published last week that Alex Wissner-Gross estimates the same number Google now officially has answered.
I was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong by a factor of 35. Wrong even when you take into account that Moore's Law and Google engineers had 20 months to increase efficiency since my first guestimate.

So now we have it: One Google Search produces as much CO2 as 10 seconds of breathing!

Update: Could be that the Sunday Times directly took my number (after generating 0.2 grams of CO2 and finding this blog with a Google search) and connected it to other work done by Alex Wissner-Gross. Funny how an innocent number can make big news 20 months later!
At least I got my 2 seconds of fame on Techcrunch: "This obscure blog post" ... "Rolf Kersten’s Weblog (who?)" Cheers!

Ein Spielzeug für Systemhelden

2008-08-02T09:20:29-07:00

Es müssen nicht immer Joggingschuhe sein, mit denen man sich durch den Olympiapark bewegt.
Der Systemheld im Manne (und trotz ausgrenzender Werbung auch der Frau) fährt gern auch mal auf zwei hundertmal in der Sekunde kreiselkompaßgesteuerten Rädern umher.

Constantin und ich haben diese Tour zum Geburtstag geschenkt bekommen und sind heute bei prächtigem Wetter zwei Stunden unter fachkundiger Führung kreuz und quer durch den Olympiapark gefahren. Am Anfang noch etwas wackelig, am Ende bedauernd, daß die Höchstgeschwindigkeit auf 6km/h abgeriegelt war...

(Mehr Bilder bei Klick)

Firmenlauf 2008

2008-07-24T14:21:58-07:00

Heute abend war es wieder soweit: 32.000 Läuferinnen und Läufer haben sich - alle gewandet in ihre bunten Firmen-Laufshirts - auf die 6.75km lange Runde durch den Olympiapark in München gemacht.
Natürlich war Sun auch mit einem Team dabei:

(Mehr Bilder bei Klick)

Windows on a wireless Sun Ray

2008-06-01T06:13:30-07:00

Small computers a neat, but if you want to attach a real keyboard and a real monitor to something, ultra thin clients are the way to go. For a thin client, the thinner and dumber the better, because that saves on ressources building, running and recycling the box, not to forget administrative simpleness.

At work, I use a Sun Ray Ultra Thin Client daily (still the same box as eight years ago). The latest generation comes in a package even smaller and consumes only 9 Watts (measured at the 240V german power grid) of precious energy. So I wanted one at home. But I didn't want an energy-guzzling frigging server to serve the little Sun Ray at home - we have Sun Ray servers in the office, let's use them (and share their energy consumption with others). Second: I only have wireless at home. Will that bandwidth be sufficient for the Sun Ray?

Answer first: Yes, it will be sufficient. Even with low signal (two stories from Sun Ray to my access point in the basement). Have a look at this picture, and you'll notice a couple of things:

First: A little box with blue LEDs. That an ASUS WL-330g which just converts 100base-T to Wireless. Works with the Sunray out-of-the-box.
Second: Isn't that Windows on that screen? Yes it is. I connected with VPN (built into the Sun Ray) to our Sun Solution Center in Munich. There we run a Windows service proudly hosted by VMWare VDI on Sun Fire x64 servers and delivered via Sun Secure Global Desktop. That setup would even allow me to transfer my session to a browser window on another device. Or I could just pull my Smartcard (seen on the left) and plug it into another Sunray configured to connect to the Solution Center on the Internet to transfer my session.

Next task: Connect via VPN to our internal Sun Ray Servers in the office. I want my Solaris environment back!

OpenSolaris 2008.05 on the Eee PC

2008-05-12T10:11:43-07:00

Last week at JavaOne, OpenSolaris 2008.05 came out. I already blogged about my neat little Eee PC, which I use for Mail (Thunderbird and extensions), Web (Firefox and extensions) and presenting while on the road. So I decided to give OpenSolaris 2008.05 a try. The 600MB CD image download and burn went quickly. As quickly as attaching a USB CD drive to the Eee PC to boot from. From that on, the path got a little bit more rugged, but nothing insurmountable for the experienced marketeer:

First boot from CD looked great, but the EEE PC did not accept any keyboard input when asking for the language! This seems to be a known timing issue (see this bug report on opensolaris.org). The workaround is to add a "-v" to the end of the GRUB boot command. This can be done at the GRUB boot screen by pressing "e", then "e" again, add "-v" to the end, "return" and "b" for boot. After a successful installation, the "-v" workaround can be added permanently to the file "/rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst". Bonus: A lot messages to marvel at while the machine boots.

After a full backup of the Linux system on the Eee PC (using System Rescue CD with partimage to an external USB disk), we can start the OpenSolaris Installation process. Hint: Remove all USB connections not in use (external disk, internal SD card). With that stuff connected, my installation stalled at 84%, with that stuff removed, installation finished sucessfully after 70 minutes.

First boot of OpenSolaris from the internal 4GB SSD disk ("-v" still needed, see above) went as expected. Now we add the Eee PC version of the Atheros WLAN driver. Download the package, copy to the Eee PC, install as described, and - WOW - the Network Auto-Magic Deamon detects my Wireless Network and asks for a WPA key. Nice.

Now that we have network access, we could give IPS, the shiny new package manager, a try. It even comes with a graphical user interface. Finding OpenOffice 2.4 and hitting "Install" is a matter of three mouse clicks.

As with Linux, fonts like Arial are also missing in the OpenSolaris default installation. So we have to copy the missing *.ttf fonts to this target directory: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType Copy, restart OpenOffice, and we are done.

So now I have a tiny machine with Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice - and OpenSolaris 2008.05 to play with on long train rides.

Jahreskonferenz Klimaschutz und Ressourceneffizienz im ITK Bereich

2008-02-14T08:13:34-08:00

Mein Vortrag auf dieser Konferenz behandelt das Thema Thin Clients, damit mögliche Flexible Office Konzepte in Bezug auf Ressourcenschonung. Download als ODF oder PDF.

Präsentieren mit dem EEE PC

2008-02-01T13:32:24-08:00

Warum muß ich eigentlich immer drei Kilogramm Laptop und ein halbes Kilogramm Netzteil herumschleppen, nur weil ich irgendwo eine Präsentation halten und danach per WLAN ein paar eMails lesen will? Bin ich in einem Sun Büro, ist die Sache einfach: Meine Smartcard schließt mir meinen Desktop auf, wo immer ich bin.

Aber sonst? Jetzt gibt es eine Lösung: Den ASUS EEE PC, ein Linux Laptop mit Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird und auch sonst allem, was man so braucht. Und mit 299 Euro fast sechs Mail günstiger als andere modische Gadgets. Das ideale Arbeitsgerät für den Marketeer auf Reisen.

Also versuchen wir mal eine Präsentation zu laden. USB-Stick lesen, tut. OpenOffice (hochgerüstet auf die neueste Version), tut. Anzeige am externen Beamer, tut. Aber: Die Fonts sehen anders aus, manche Folien sind unlesbar. Hm. Die Präsentation habe ich mit dem in Solaris 10 enthaltenen Java Desktop System erstellt. Da sind Microsoft TrueType Schriften wie "Arial" mit dabei. Bei Windows natürlich auch. Bei Xandros Linux auf dem EEE PC nicht. Solaris 10 läuft zwar auf dem EEE PC, doch zur Zeit noch ohne Netzwerk. Nun ist das Nachinstallieren der Fonts unter Linux zum Glück einfach:

msttcorefonts in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/MS kopieren

sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

OpenOffice neu starten

Voila! Alles sieht aus wie auf der Sun Ray mit Solaris 10!

Na das ging ja schnell!

Unterschriftensammlung im Google-Zeitalter

2007-11-03T13:18:09-07:00

13949712720901ForOSX - die einfachste Möglichkeit, das Mitmachweb zum Unterschriftensammeln zu benutzen. In diesem Fall für die Petition, Java 6 in Max OS X "Leopard" zu unterstützen.

88 Hits bis jetzt...

Grüner Surfen - Update

2007-10-27T08:41:55-07:00

Wieviel Ressourcenverbrauch verursacht denn nun das Surfen im Internet? Und wie kann dieser Verbrauch erstens transparent gemacht und zweitens reduziert werden? Das war das Thema der Fachtagung „Grüner Surfen“ im Bundesumweltministerium in Berlin.

Einen umfassenden Bereicht gibt es bei heise Technology Review.
Oder Interviews zum Anhören beim Deutschlandfunk.
Meine Präsentation kann hier als PDF heruntergeladen werden.

Update 08.11.2007: Die EU-Studie "Energy Efficient Servers in Europe - Part I: Energy Consumption and Saving Potentials" kann hier heruntergeladen werden.

Meine Präsentation von der Sustainable IT Konferenz, Berlin - Update

2007-10-15T14:47:04-07:00

Am 17. Oktober halte ich anläßlich der "Sustainable IT Konferenz" in der Kalkscheune Berlin eine Präsentation zum Thema "Zur CO2 Bilanz des Internet". Es handelt sich um eine verkürzte und aktualisierte Fassung der EBAY Entwicklerkonferenz Präsentation.

Präsentation zum Download: ODF (10MByte), PDF (5MByte)

Update:

"Spiegel Online" berichtet über die Konferenz: Wieviel CO2 Avatare ausatmen

Mitschnitt der Podiumsdiskussion "Nachhaltigkeitsdefizite im Web 2.0" mit Markus Beckedahl, netzpolitik.org; Jürgen Neumann, berlin.freifunk.net; und mir

BerlinRider - EcoRider sightseeing in Berlin

2007-09-17T11:21:05-07:00

Berlin, early Sunday morning: Blue sky - "Kaiserwetter" - as we say in Germany. What suits a Kaiser, suits the EcoRider even better. Especially since there's no Kaiser any more in Berlin since 1918.
So we visited most touristic highlights of the city, from Potsdamer Platz to Alex back to Ku'damm. We met modern Rikscha drivers, Marx and Engels (stone version only) and the best Currywurst in Berlin. And planted the Sun & AMD logo on hundreds of (mostly japanese) digital camera SD-Cards...

BerlinRider

(Klick on the picture for 20 more pictures)

EcoTour Finale

2007-09-13T14:04:34-07:00

After motre than 1500km of cycling through Germany, the EcoRider arrived in Berlin today. We had a joint press conference with STRATO, Europe's biggest webhoster, on energy efficient and carbon neutral datacenters at Sarah Wiener's in the Hamburger Bahnhof. After that, the EcoRider headed to the old power plant of Berlin Moabit, where the energy track of the Urban Sustainability Conference took place. An old steam turbine and power generator from 1926 - what a great stage for the EcoRider!

EcoRider in Berlin

(Klick on the picture for 42 more pictures)

The Elm and End of my EcoRider trip

2007-08-29T07:35:20-07:00

The last day of my EcoRider trip as part of the Sun EcoTour saw me climbing hills in the Elm, a vast enchanted forest east of Braunschweig. The climbs drew half of the battery, or 600Wh of energy. How much brain energy I needed to constantly recalculate how many hills the battery may be able to serve in the middle of the forest was not recorded.

Update: Visualize the path of this day in Google Earth (KMZ, 19KByte)

EcoRider cycle paths between Schönebeck and Offleben

2007-08-28T13:52:30-07:00

An Autobahn, build for the Sun EcoRider:

More on the various types of cycle paths in eastern Germany, see my trip report (in german language, with pictures) here.

Update: Visualize the path of this day in Google Earth (KMZ, 30KByte)

Cycling the Sun EcoRider from Dessau to Schönebeck

2007-08-27T13:41:21-07:00

The full trip report (in german language, with pictures) is here.

Update: Visualize the path of this day in Google Earth (KMZ, 18KByte)

Als "Green IT"-Gastblogger bei Innovativ-In

2007-08-15T11:11:48-07:00

Durch die Sun EcoTour auf uns aufmerksam geworden, hat Elita Wiegand mich eingeladen, eine Reihe von Gastblogs zum Thema "Green IT" auf ihrer Innovativ-In Plattform zu posten. Hier die Links zu meinen fünf Postings:

Teil 1: Das Mitmachweb und der Klimawandel
Teil 2: 1.000.000.000$ Stromrechnung - eine gute Nachricht für das Klima
Teil 3: Leichter leben mit der Smart Card
Teil 4: Ran an den Strom
Teil 5: Wie vermarktet man Green IT?

Eco-friendly Webhosting

2007-07-30T02:12:58-07:00

Since a dedicated server easily draws 5000 KWh electrical energy for power and cooling, which is (at least for the german energy mix) equivalent to four tons of carbon dioxide emissions, everybody should have a second thought on how much CO2 his or her web presence produces.

Just like Car Pooling, shared webhosting can save a lot of energy. But if we share a server with somebody else, how can we find out how many nighbours we have to calculate our carbon footprint? The answer: http://www.myipneighbors.com/

Let's see:

www.systemhelden.com seems to live on a decicated server, since it is sharing its IP address with www.systemhelden.de only. But: systemhelden.com is running on a Solaris Container, so we are not using a physical server here.
One Shared Domain at Strato (that according to Strato only consumes just 1KWh per year) shares the IP address with 700-800 other domains. Combine that with many IP adresses configured in one server, and you get many thousand domains served from one server alone.
Our Sun EcoTour Blog shares the server with 17 other domains. Not bad. We just have to make sure to buy enough CO2 neutral energy to feed the Sun EcoRider and the web page.

A Blackbox powered by a wind turbine?

2007-07-13T13:09:47-07:00

Can you operate a datacenter without producing CO2? STRATO - the biggest webhoster in Germany - claim they can. They plan to buy their 30 Gigawatthours of electricity they need each year from a hybrid plant.

Sun is showing neat Blackbox pictures like the one on the right.

A Blackbox is a datacenter in a box - capable of running and cooling hundreds of servers drawing 200 Kilowatts of power. Let's see - a wind turbine producing 200 Kilowatts of electricit is no rocket science these days. Repower already builds monster turbines with a propeller diameter of 126m and 5000 Kilowatts rated power. But wait a minute: We cannot calculate with rated power, because the wind is not blowing with full speed 8760 hours/year. So what is a typical yield factor of a wind turbine?

End of 2006, wind turbines with 20,6 Gigawatts of rated power were installed in Germany, producing 30.600 GWh of electricity in 2006. That's a yield factor of 17%. Not bad.

So when adding a really big battery to the picture above, a wind turbine with 200 KW / 17% / (battery effciency 80%) = 1500 Kilowatts of rated power would be sufficient to feed a Blackbox. That's the smallest turbine Repower offers these days.

This is exactly why the Blackbox is not only clever engineering to cram as many servers as possible in a small footprint, but also an ecologically responsible concept. Do not bring (CO2 emission tainted) electricity to your datacenter, build your datacenter where CO2-free power is available!

EcoRider CO2 balance, revisited

2007-07-11T12:03:58-07:00

The last five days, Martin covered the first 300 kilometers of his EcoTour through Germany. The vehicle carried the pedaleur himself, luggage for a week and provided protection from heavy rain showers. Looking at other vehicles meeting these specs, how does the EcoRider compare?

Enter the competitors:


	BMW C1 motorbike	Smart FourTwo CDI	Sun EcoRider
Power Source	Gasoline	Diesel	Muscle/Electric power
Consumption	2.9 liters/100km	3.2 liters/100km	2.2KWh/100km
CO2 emission	77g/km	88g/km	22g/km
CO2 per person	77g/km	44g/km	22g/km

The CO2 emission of the EcoRider was calculated as if all the electric power would have been created by using a Diesel powered generator with an efficiency of 30%.

So even with homegrown inefficient power generation, using the EcoRider for dry trips with luggage up to 70km is better for the CO2 balance than everything else. And better for your health.

How CO2-neutral is the Sun Eco Rider?

2007-07-05T12:19:55-07:00

Before releasing our valiant driver into the first hop of the Sun Eco Tour from Hamm to Detmold next week, I head to undergo a test trip with the hybrid bike myself. So this morning, weather cold and windy, light rain added the mix, I went out for a ride of 30 Kilometers:

First lesson learned: To move a bike weighting 65kg you better have support of an electric engine to climb hills and generally sustain to go faster than 12km/h.

Eco Rider and an electric engine? Electricity is typically made from fossil fuels like coal, so we have to count CO2 emissions here. Let's see: The batteries were fully loaded this morning. According to the specs, that's 1296Wh full of finest electrical energy. After the 90-minute ride going 30km with mostly legwork but added electrical support to sustain a speed of 20km/h, the batteries were half-empty. So the non-human energy consumption of the Sun Eo Rider can be estimated at 2,2KWh per 100km. If that amount of electricity would have been created on a coal-fired power plant, 3,7kg of CO2 would have been created. A Toyota Prius creates 12kg of CO2 per 100km, but is able to carry five people plus luggage compared to one lonely biker and his bag in the Eco Rider. Not much of a difference on the CO2 balance sheet!

So we need to buy the electricity from a source who produces CO2 emission-free. 50KWh shold be sufficient for 2000 Kilometers. 50KWh - that's a light bulb switched on for 20 days. Or a small server (300 Watts), running for one week.

Eco Responsible Business Travel

2007-07-02T10:04:34-07:00

Next week the Sun Eco Tour starts in Detmold, home of Weidmüller, who won the Energy Efficiency Award in 2007 for saving 775.000kWh electrical power in their production plant every year. Detmold - that's more than 500km north of Munich, where I'm located. So what is the most eco-efficient way to travel to Detmold?

The most efficient way, of course, is riding a bike like the Sun Eco Rider. But since Martin is riding the Eco Rider, I have to find an alternative.

Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) offers a neat service that calculates the energy consumption and CO2 emission for every possible route. They compare going by rail (using their energy mix - Diesel and electricity created in coal, nuclear or hydro power plants), by car and by plane.

So this is my result for the Detmold trip:

24kg CO2 for the train trip, compared to 106kg for the car and 96kg for the plane. OK, that's Factor 4 - decision done - 5hrs, 20min on the train - finally time to read a good book again!

Andreas von Bechtolsheim testing the Eco Rider Hybrid Bike

2007-06-27T06:12:52-07:00

After unveiling his latest engineering masterpiece, the Sun Constellation System for HPC, Andreas von Bechtolsheim had a look at our little Eco Rider Hybrid Bike:

www.flickr.com

Constellation at TACC would be the most energy efficient HPC supercomputer. 529 Teraflops using 3 Megawatts would make it to #1 of the Green500-List by a wide margin. By the way - that's the same amount of energy one would need to drive 5000 Eco Rider Hybrid Bikes (30mph using 600 Watts of electric power, or - in power-saving mode - up to 20mph using human power alone)

Sun Eco Rider meets Blackbox

2007-06-22T13:02:06-07:00

Little Shrek meets the dark lord:

Watch out for the Sun Eco Rider hybrid bike

2007-06-21T23:55:46-07:00

Eco Responsibility is one of Sun's top priorities. To spread the word about our story, we are touring all over Germany this summer. The tour vehicle: A hybrid bike, the Sun Eco Rider. Typically moved forward on muscle power alone with support from an electric motor when hills get steep.

www.flickr.com

More Flickr photos tagged with ecorider

More information on the tour and an ongoing blog about the tour, people and places, not to forget eco topics can be found here: Im Strom der Zeit.

Eco friendly SPAM protection

2007-05-08T13:57:56-07:00

What draws more energy: Filtering 1000 SPAM Mails or doing one Google Search Request? - Surprise: It's the Google Search Request with twice as much energy.

You can run and cool a Sun Fire T2000 server for roughly 1.5 hours with 1KWh electral power. Symantec Brightmail filters 500.000 eMails during that timeframe (94 per second).

With 1KWh electrical energy, Google only is able do perform 250 Search Requests (4Wh per request).

So - Security is cheap and environment-friendly! To save mailboxes from SPAM and the environment from unnecessary CO2, DNS, Symantec and Sun did team up in Germany to deliver the most efficient and eco friendly SPAM filter solution on earth. That's what I call a cool offering!

Your CO2 footprint when using the internet

2007-05-04T11:29:06-07:00

How much CO2 does a Google Search produce? Servers need electrical power. According to recent studies, all servers in the US accounted for more than 1.2% of the nationwide annual electrical power consumption, more than all TV sets combined. And, according to Netcraft, the number of internet hosts has doubled since then.

The majority of electrical power is created by burning fossil fuels like coal, gas or oil, producing carbon dioxide CO2 ad global warming. So how much CO2 does one Google search produce? One EBAY auction or a SecondLife avatar? Or one blog on blogs.sun.com?

For a keynote at the german EBAY developer's conference I calculated the following numbers and compared them to the CO2 emission of a Toyota Prius hybrid car and a human being:

Web service	CO2 emission	Same emission as
One Google search	6.8 grams	56 meters with the Prius or running 170 meters
One EBAY auction	55 grams	420 meters with the Prius or running 1275 meters
A SecondLife avatar, 24hrs „alive“ for one year	332 kilograms	2734 kilometers with the Prius or (as a human) just living for one year
One blog post on blogs.sun.com	850 grams	7.6 kilometers with the Prius or running half a marathon

My calculations and the sources for the number of servers etc. can be found in my presentation (in german language, but the numbers should speak for themselves). Download ODF here or PDF here. Or view online the Flash presentation (created with StarOffice Flas Export) below:

As an example, this is how I calculated the surpisingly high blog post on blogs.sun.com number:

We are hosting 66183 blogs in 3 years, running on two T2000 (the best servers you can get when it comes to power efficiency).

A pair of Sun Fire T2000 servers draws 2*320Watts. Double that number for cooling and infrastructure, so you need 33628KWh in three years. That's 0.5KWh for every blog! One KWh electral power created in a coal power plant creates 1700 grams of CO2 - so the global warming effect of this blog is comparable to a runner running 21 kilometers (or sitting in front of his computer for one whole day).

ZFS rettet die Welt

2007-02-01T13:04:25-08:00

Endlich ist es soweit. Die erste Folge von CSI:Computer Systems Integration (formerly known as Solution Center Live) ist online! In dieser Folge zeigen wir, wie man mit einem Laptop, Solaris 10, ZFS und ein paar USB-Sticks einen Storage Server X4500 für den Hausgebrauch bauen kann:

Wer es selber nachbauen möchte: Der Chefermittler persönlich schreibt über die technischen Hintergründe in seinem Blog.

Viel Spaß!