Red Hat is 'greenest' operating system

BANGALORE, INDIA: Red Hat is working hard to deliver greener products and solutions. A recent Network World test examining power consumption to determine the ‘greener’ operating system validates Red Hat’s efforts to move toward green computing.

Network World ran multiple power consumption tests using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition on servers from Dell, IBM and HP.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux ranked at the top in keeping the power draw in check, pulling as much as 12 per cent less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware.

This reduced power draw was evident across testing in both performance and power saving modes and transcended all server models used in the test bed.

Red Hat is significantly involved in the development of projects focused on saving power. Many provide benefits for customers today, as shown by the Network World report, while others aim to provide even greater benefits in the future.

Efforts include, contributing member to www.LessWatts.org, an Intel-sponsored project bringing together developers, users and sysadmins—all in the effort to create a community around saving power on Linux.

Another interesting area of development concerns support for CPU clock frequency scaling. Clock scaling allows changing the clock speed of a running CPU on the fly.

Red Hat worked close with AMD to prove support for PowerNow, a technology for power management.