Supposing you were the sort of person who would consider shaking a stick at offerings of "educational" information on green IT, you might find, right now, that there is a bit more work than you can handle.

It seems like everybody's doing an informational webcast on green IT at the moment - and more often than not they're sponsored by one of the big technology companies with a vested interest in the decision-making of the people looking for information on "green IT," like HP, Sun or IBM.

The notice I got today from Internet.com was on an upcoming webcast called "Governing IT in a Green World." And it's sponsored by IBM. The upside of the sponsorship being the "FREE" price tag for attendance (to "qualified attendees.")

As far as I can tell, that "qualified attendees" bit refers to registered Internet.com users, a status that is not difficult to achieve. I signed up just a moment ago at the registration page that came up when I tried to follow the link to the webinar signup page.

The session is scheduled for December 2, 2008 and will be presented by George Spafford, principal consultant at Pepperweed Consulting.

According to the registration page, the key points of focus for the webinar will include

- Understanding the risks facing IT, such as skyrocketing energy costs, Global warming and the potential for new regulations

- Developing and implementing "green" strategies in IT, including how IT can help the organization and what approaches are relevant to IT

I get the feeling from the material I've seen that the presentation might include a rehashing of some of the more regularly-repeated "green IT" mantras. Particularly in the "understanding the risks facing IT, such as skyrocketing energy costs etc." portion of the show. But I doubt at this point that a webinar would be targeting the imaginary demographic of "IT people who have no understanding at all of the energy-related issues facing businesses today."

Besides, the presentation is "45-60 minutes" and it's very possible that there will be something worth seeing during the "developing and implementing 'green' strategies in IT" part.

IBM makes a lot of offers and announcements related to "green" data centers and IT. By now, we've all seen plenty.

But more often than not, they're worth looking into. In general, I've found that, as information issued by companies in the interest of self-promotion goes, most of the "green IT" info that has been issued in the last few months has been quite interesting.

Last week, as part of its sponsorship of ITWorldCanada's excellent "Green IT Playbook," IBM offered up a consultation on data center energy efficiency.

With a sort of cute little interface navigated by dragging a cartoon bee (because they're from the environment, I suppose?) and presented by a smooth-talking cartoon owl (from the environment and wise, I'd imagine) IBM invites visitors to submit their information by filling out a form promising "an IBM representative will be in touch."

Be forewarned: if you ask to be contacted, you're asking to "learn how IBM systems, software and services for a greener world can help." That is, don't be surprised when the IBM representative who gets in touch comes carrying a very IBM-centered sales pitch.

As I said earlier, however, I'm of the opinion that some of the most interesting information on green IT has come from vendors' efforts to promote their services.

It can't hurt to listen, right?

I don't have a Second Life account. I've never been completely clear on the merits of the program, though I wouldn't argue necessarily that they don't exist. For me, it wasn't so much a question of whether it was a good virtual world as it was a question of whether I needed to experience a virtual world at all. I don't, I think. Not just now, anyway.

So when IBM announced earlier this year that it was launching a virtual green data center in Second Life, it made for an interesting story, but didn't immediately strike me as something to check out. As I said, I don't have a Second Life account.

And I'll admit that, not having the perspective of a user, the concept of a data center in Second Life puzzles me somewhat - it's sort of the opposite of a data center in the sense that it actually takes up space in one.

Of course, I understand the demonstration aspect of the thing. And the fact that it's showing off the company's green technologies is cool. I just wasn't going to go visit it.

Fortunately, somebody else did.

On the Enterprise IT Planet blog, Pedro Hernandez, apparently more intrepid than I, ventured into Second Life, and posted a travelogue of his visit to IBM's green data center, complete with screencaps.

Rather than repeat too much of the review, I'm just going to recommend that you go read it.

Some of the highlights of the tour: hot and cold air design demos, data center case studies, an actual server room (which I imagine would be particularly interesting to someone who hadn't been in a server room), the NOC and a variety of multi-media presentations.

All told, it looks like a pretty interesting means of presenting these ideas, and I'm sure it would be even more exciting if I had a relationship with Second Life. If using the program to build demonstrations like this becomes more of a common project, I suppose I'll have to acquaint myself with it.

Hey. This probably shouldn't come as a surprise either, but while doing a bit of poking around in Google for notes on IBM's virtual data center, I came across a couple of YouTube clips.

This one even has a fairly informative "Project Big Green" voiceover:

We received a very long press release this week from TrendPoint Systems, a company that produces a "turn-key data center energy management solution."

It's not a company we're especially familiar with at the WHIR, but with TrendPoint's fairly singular focus on data center energy efficiency and carbon monitoring, it's an organization that ought to be thoroughly on the radar of the hosting business.

Along with its TrendOne, EnerSure and EnviroCube products, which are generally hardware offerings designed to monitor environmental conditions and energy efficiency in enterprise data centers, the company appears to be actively publishing white papers on the general subject of data center efficiency, which makes it especially relevant to just about anyone operating a data center.

I know at the WHIR, we've got a pretty heavy appetite for published "green data center" information at the moment.

The TrendPoint data sheet can be downloaded in PDF form from the company's website, so I won't go into exacting detail about the plan itself.

In introducing the four-point plan, the press releases on several of the more important widely held truths regarding data center efficiency. Namely, that data centers are well on their way to becoming one of the world's largest consumers of energy (and subsequently producers of carbon emissions), and that as a result of that, we're not far from seeing some tough regulatory attention to carbon emissions worldwide.

The release includes a quote from TrendPoint CEO Bob Hunter, who offers an in-a-nutshell view of the current energy near-crisis facing data center operators.

"Data centers will soon be hit with a 'perfect storm' in terms of coal and natural gas driven utility cost increases coupled with the new carbon caps. These sites already have energy densities that are ten times greater than that of commercial office buildings, and their energy use is doubling every four years. The combination of rising energy usage coupled with significant electricity price increases and carbon caps creates a very troubling picture for data centers."

Before we get too far along, here, I'll warn you that there most likely isn't going to be a "eureka!" moment for any of you in reading the four-point plan. It's a pretty straightforward list of common-sense tactics responsible data center operators (especially in the service provider business) will most likely already have investigated, if they're not already implementing them to some significant degree.

Unsurprisingly, and understandably, the four-point plan is liberally populated with TrendPoint sales pitches. This ought not stun anyone who has ever read any white paper ever produced by any company.

Set an energy budget

Companies, says TrendPoint, should have an energy and carbon budget that can be broken down among users, departments and sites. "Colocation facilities, in particular, need to be able to provide each customer with the ability to manage their own energy and carbon usage and to provide a system to bill back customers appropriately."

Virtualize servers

The oft-repeated point - consolidating your physical resources and trimming away unused capacity is a data center energy saving tactic of the "do it right now" variety. TrendPoint's interesting add-on: "TrendPoint has seen that virtualized servers generate significantly more heat visa-vis the under-utilized machines and, therefore, need careful attention with their cooling management. Without proper cooling, virtualized servers, like all highly utilized systems, can develop 'server thermal inversions' within a data cabinet"

Equalize heat and cooling balance

TrendPoint says matching cooling resources to the needs of each individual cabinet can save 25 percent or more on their cooling energy use. And you can conserve more by balancing heat loads through grouping servers into zones within cabinets and working toward equalized heat loads.

Manage to the metrics

One of the more overt TrendPoint pitches in this section, but an interesting point - as data center equipment changes, managers need to continually monitor and manage heat and cooling. The company makes solutions that manage energy use according to The Green Grid's PUE standard.

In the press release, TrendPoint describes how a couple of its customers are seeing fast ROI from using the company's products.

The PDF is worth going through. It includes a lot of study-supplied supplemental information. And the great thing about energy efficiency is it has that potential to impact the bottom line of your data center operations. If the ideas (or even the products) discussed in the document have the potential to do that for your data center, you can definitely afford the 15-or-so minutes it will take to read.

One more note - there's a link at the end of the press release to a site with more information about some of the proposed energy regulations.