[6066] in Release_7.7_team
Re: I propose we change Athena to power off video monitors.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Lavallee)
Wed Sep 24 10:09:14 2008
Message-ID: <48DA49D0.9080805@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:08:16 -0400
From: Chris Lavallee <lavallch@MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: lavallch@MIT.EDU
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: William Cattey <wdc@mit.edu>
CC: Chuck King <chuckk@mit.edu>, John T Guy <jtguy@mit.edu>,
Thomas Smith <tjsmith@mit.edu>, Joyce Gomes <jogomes@mit.edu>, owls@mit.edu,
release-team@mit.edu, "Michael R. Gettes" <gettes@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <833CC23B-2BCD-42B9-A2D7-4E4C29D00A96@MIT.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: 0.00
Hi Bill-
Just to clarify, Chuck is the primary decision maker for that team since
he is the Interim Team Lead while Brian Murphy is away. I will defer
the final decision to him, but I do support this. Anything we can do to
help the team increase the remote monitoring and support of the clusters
would be good in my opinion. That would decrease the amount of time
they need to spend traveling to every cluster every day by doing much of
it remotely.
If Chuck agrees to this, then I will let him work out the details with
you and John.
--Chris
--------------
Chris Lavallee
Manager, Departmental Information Technology Resource (DITR)
Information Services and Technology, MIT
Office: (617) 253-0195
lavallch@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/ist/teams/ditr
____________________
Important: IS&T IT staff will *NEVER* ask you for your password, nor will MIT send you email requesting your password information. Please continue to ignore any email messages that claim to require you to provide such information.
William Cattey wrote:
> Summary:
>
> Chris, John:
>
> Presuming that we are agreed to refine the existing twice-daily
> reporting and to get Hotline going with athinfo for remote diagnosing
> of Athena systems, how about IAP of this year for switching over to
> power-saving monitors Athena-wide?
>
> Detail:
>
> The question keeps coming up, "Why does Athena keep its monitors
> powered up? Wouldn't it be significant energy savings?"
>
> The Athena Release team did a back of the envelope calculation and
> looked up LCD monitor power consumption. Assuming 1000 machines, 10
> hours of idle time per machine, and 25 w saved by powering them off,
> that adds up to about 100 MegaWattHours per year. Actual monitors in
> the field actually consume more than 25 watts, but the ones we've
> started buying consume about 20 watts.
>
> The normal way the X server runs with Linux powers off video monitors
> when they've been idle for about half an hour. Athena hacked the
> configuration to disable that. We disabled it for two reasons:
>
> 1. We were afraid users would think the computer was broken. This
> is no longer
> an issue. People are used to power-saving monitors.
>
> 2. It was easy to stand at the doorway of an Athena General Use
> Cluster, and
> determine at a glance which systems were offline. This is the
> remaining reason
> why we keep the monitors powered up.
>
> I discussed this situation with John Guy. He expressed the concern
> that, as we continue
> doing more work with fewer resources, an easy way to identify
> sick/healthy systems
> is important.
>
> The Athena release team discussed the principle of making it easy to
> identify sick and
> healthy systems that still allows powering off of monitors. There is
> a twice-daily report that provides a variety status information (up,
> down, hacked, hung, etc.) status on the Athena systems we take care of.
>
> There is also the athinfo program that enables remote query of Athena
> systems for additional information. I confirmed with John Guy that
> the twice-daily report is used by Hotline to identify troubled
> systems. I have recently learned that the Hotline team hasn't been
> trained in making good use of athinfo.
>
> Bottom Line proposal:
>
> 1. We agree to lean more heavily on the twice-daily report, and to
> refine it so it really meets the needs of Hotline.
> 2. We train Hotline in use of athinfo, and refine it if necessary to
> offer additional queries of importance to most effectively remote
> diagnosing systems.
> 3. We set a date for removing the hack to keep Athena monitors powered
> up when idle.
>
> I believe John Guy is the primary stakeholder and his opinion going
> forward should be most heavily weighted.
>
> I believe Chris Lavallee is the decision maker here.
>
> Chris, John: How about IAP of this year for switching over to
> power-saving monitors
> Athena-wide?
>
> -Bill
>
> ----
> Important: IS&T IT staff will *NEVER* ask you for your password, nor
> will MIT send you email requesting your password information. Please
> continue to ignore any email messages that claim to require you to
> provide such information.
> ----
>
> William Cattey
> Linux Platform Coordinator
> MIT Information Services & Technology
>
> N42-040M, 617-253-0140, wdc@mit.edu
> http://web.mit.edu/wdc/www/
>
>
>
