A Study of the Effectiveness of "Wake up on LAN" as a Means of Power Management

The growing awareness of the fragile nature of our environment, and of the damage that humankind is causing to that environment, makes it necessary to review the environmental impact of all aspects of human activity. One such area is the operation of corporate information technology (IT) systems. The growth in the number and complexity of such systems over recent decades has led to a consequent increase in their power requirements, to the point where for organisations of any size, “corporate IT” will be a major contributor to the organisation’s overall energy consumption. A drive for overall reductions in consumption will, in the words of the chair of the newly formed UK Environmental IT Leadership Team, mean “the IT department becomes the focus of carbon reduction policies”. It is therefore timely to consider the present situation in respect of power consumption within corporate IT systems, and to explore the potential avenues for reducing that consumption. In this paper, we will briefly overview the area of power usage in IT, before reporting on the outcomes of a specific project in which we explored the operation of the “wake on LAN” method in a real situation.