Rob Johnson and Geoff Constable, Information Services, Aberystwyth University

rob.johnson@aber.ac.uk geoff.constable@aber.ac.uk

http://paws.aber.ac.uk

PAWS - Powerdown And Wake System

• Motivation

• Background and history

• Greening ICT Project Funding

• How it works

• Rival products

• Future

Motivation

• Need for public sector bodies to be more efficient and save costs

• Deployment in student workstations achieves both without downgrade to service

• Pressures on Universities to be more green

• Win/win money and CO2 saved

What is PAWS?

• Desktop power management with auto-sleep and wake capabilities

• Prototype deployed live in AU student workstations

• 650 Desktop PC’s were on 24/7

• Now only awake while in use

• Awake 110 watts; asleep 1 watt

Cost savings…

• 1 computer = 2.5 KW/h units of electricity per day…• Without power management:

- 4375 units of electricity per day - £127,750 per year!

• The average utilisation:- public service computer = 20% - staff computer = 23%...

• With PAWS power management in place:

A total potential saving of £100,000 per year for 1750 computers at just Aberystwyth University!

Live statistics can be viewed and displayed…

These live statistics provided at http://power.aber.ac.uk/paws

JISC Greening ICT Funding of PAWS Phase 2

• Received a £50K grant• Two main goals:

1. Staff environment2. Portability to other Institutions

• Funding is until December 2011.• Open source community• Chance to work with other organisations in delivering

the solution where their IT infrastructure will be different

• Swansea University and Trinity St David Universities

User Interface

Administrator Interface

Main Features of PAWS?

• Server Controlled

• End user has the power!

• Savings statistics are auto-generated

Sleep Modes

• Forced/scheduled sleep

• Sleep when logged out

• Idle sleep

• Warned sleep

• Scheduled/remote wake-up

Wake-on-LAN

• Technology to remotely wake up computers

• Means the computer can be put to sleep…

• …then woken up remotely

• User has control from Client Manager GUI

• Can wake computers for out-of-hours maintenance

Extras that the PAWS PSV Client provides…

• Monitors and logs computer and energy use

• Useful for auditing, planning and logistics

• Automatic logout – provides user security

• Abandoned memory stick alert!

Pros

• Financial - £100k savings per 1750 computers p/a

• Environmental - 700 tonnes of CO2 per 1750 PCs

p/a

• Free – open source under Apache GPL

• Can be developed further, or tuned to local

environment

Cons

• Client Agent must be installed on host PC

• Easier with new PCs and standard build

• With legacy PCs WoL must be configured (working

on scripts to automise installation)

• Maintenance, Support

• Not out-of-the-box (yet)

Alternatives

• 1E Nightwatchman approx £10/PC p/a

• Powerman – cheaper, but…

• Group Policies

• Free utilities – lack central provision

• User settings

Progress

• Interface development

• Agent development• Beta test rollout completed to I.S. Development

Team

• Beta test now fully functioning

• Moved to 64-bit server

Next steps

• User guides and help pages

• Roll-out to I.S. and Estates Departments

• Evaluation of roll-out and user feedback

• Generic development

• Implementation in Swansea/TSD

• Publication of Open Source Code

Goals

• Useful resource for the educational and public sector

• Adoption by all Welsh universities would save £1million p/a in bills…

• … and 7,000 tonnes CO2 p/a• Adoption by organisations and users• Community development and support• Possible sustainability based on support model

Rob Johnson and Geoff Constable, Information Services

rob.johnson@aber.ac.uk geoff.constable@aber.ac.uk

http://paws.aber.ac.uk

Rob Johnson and Geoff Constable, Information Services, Aberystwyth University

rob.johnson@aber.ac.uk geoff.constable@aber.ac.uk

http://paws.aber.ac.uk