In order to minimize the energy consumption, the report will first identify the components that are consuming most energy in a system. Clearly, above mentioned are those components, thereby the hard part is how to approach to reduce the energy and get the same benefits and efficiency as per requirements. As author San M. defines "the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems", such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment." It is a really good and comprehensive definition for the green computing whose scope is still under deployment. Green use, green disposal, green design, and green manufacturing are the four major aspects according to Murugesan S. et. al., 2007, which need to be identified and addressed properly.
Presently there are two prospects which are running in parallel. First, ability to change the existing IT infrastructure to Green IT and secondly able to find way to make and present Green IT solutions from now on for future use. Both processes are running side by side and they are not only providing benefits to our environment but also proving to save a huge cost for the organizations as well. For example, if the maximum information is routed to a nearest data center with the lowest power consumption, then that will not only save the energy. Secondly, the use of data centers at one place are also beneficial as they act as a centralized database and all the physical requirements for physical data center are met at one place rather than going for distributed data centers which will overall increase the cost of energy.
Hardware is the actual source which uses energy because of the software that runs on it. By making the hardware more energy efficient to provide same results for the software without compromising on the efficiency required by the user, there by energy consumption can be minimize to a great deal. This can be done through a number of ways. To start off, as mentioned above we have to build hardware that meets the needs of Green IT. Secondly, mention by (Judy S. et, al., 2002) that replacing the old hardware that used to consume a lot more energy as compared to the new ones, for example, monitors which used cathode ray tube (CRT) at first in 90s and early 2000's consumed a huge amount of energy. Nowadays with LCD's replacing the old monitors, it is a huge saving in terms of energy consumption. Also, LCD's are more beneficial as they occupy less space and do not dissipate that much heat unlike monitors. Moreover, energy can be saved by not only replacing the old equipment with the new one but using both of them efficiently. For instance, either one is using a monitor or LCD; they should be turned off after a certain amount of idle time to save the energy. Using screen savers, hibernation, standby techniques, we can save a huge amount of energy if we look in the broader spectrum. This is where we need to spread the awareness among the masses in order to take Green IT to a next step. Although manufacturing new products meeting the recommendations of green it are very essential but that does not mean we should use them inefficiently. This comes in the category of "Green Use" as defined by San M. et, al,. 2007.
In terms of talking about green IT, this report will explain the development of prototype software that is compatible with Green IT environment. Also the process of manufacturing it should be based on the Green IT environment. It should not be at all like we design and manufacture Green IT products but the process of doing so consumes more power and does not comply with the Green IT regulations. In Green Design, the designer has to make sure that the devices are more efficient and either they consume the same power or less than the previous model. Same case applies to software too. They should be designed on the same basis to utilize minimum resources and yet providing the enhanced set of features.
Virtualization is another major aspect which has for now proven to be one of the best techniques in saving energy as well as resources. Using different virtualization techniques, one can easily utilize those resources which are not fully used. For example, in most organizations, servers deployed only use 15-20 percent of their resources at max and rest of the resources are rendered useless. For those and for other similar machines which do not utilize their full capacity, we can deploy and install virtual machines on them and thus save the resources for extra hardware describe by Ziming Z. et, al,. (2010).
Last parts, Green Disposal come in play. With the new technology being implemented and developed every day, the old equipment eventually cast off and disposed off. This process has to be "Green" too for our environment. For instance, disposing off CRT monitors and other hardware equipment into the open environment is totally against our planet's health as it is just another waste where our earth is used as a bin. Thus, this process has to be designed in such a way that it does not harm our planet.