The Linux kernel itself used to be a restless critter than never truly rested, but had timer interrupt rates of 100 to 1000 Hz. This meant that 100 to 1000 times per second the kernel would look around for something to do. Lower Hz means less overhead, higher Hz means less latency. This changed with the release of the 2.6.21 kernel, also called the tickless kernel. When the tickless kernel is in idle mode, it's really being idle and therefore not twitching in a bored fashion, uselessly consuming power and generating heat.

"It's all about energy, power and pooling resources," SW Worth, senior standards program manager at Microsoft, told his session audience. It's not about focusing on the environmental aspect of green IT, but the financial and operational aspects, he said.

While storage gurus highlighted how specific tools, such as virtualization, can help drive efficiency and save storage costs, they also stressed that going 'green' means working with business leaders outside of the IT realm.

Isenberg likes the people who make up the technology industry and knows most of the important ones, but at the conference, he pointed out that an epic global disaster is a possible outcome, and asked us all to work together to avoid it.

One overlooked item is the well-established raised floor that serves as the base of many datacenter operations. "It turns out these are very expensive, costing several millions of dollars and people don't keep track of what's happening underneath," said Bapat.

He's looked himself and it's often not pretty. In addition to fast food boxes and other trash, Bapat said the jumble of cables and conduits are often laid out at different angles that can impede airflow. "It's very inefficient," he said.

"Last year I was the only one talking on SSD, this year there were three presentations," Hutsell told InternetNews.com. "And given this is the last day of the conference the attendance was amazing."