I was recently asked about building a power efficient server, and it seemed like a good idea to share my advice with a wider audience.

Anyone who has to deal with a hosting facility very likely knows the crunch that they’re running into with power. A standard rack may only have 42 rack units in it, but you’ll be lucky to be able to fit and power 15 servers in that rack, on a standard 30 amp circuit. If you’re careful in planning, I can help you get squeeze a bit more into that rack. I won’t advocate any particular server vendor, but I do believe that you’ll have more flexibility with a custom white-box builder, instead of going with one of the (often pricier) big name vendors.

Overall, you want to lower your power draw per server. With some careful planning, you can lower your power consumption by a fair bit, and still get the same power per machine. Here are a few things to consider:

I mentioned earlier that I use the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology for organizing parts of my life. A lot of this is managed on my iMac. I have been using iGTD for a lot of it, but I’ve recently started looking at other GTD software. One tool in particular, is Things. It looks interesting, and a lot more straightforward than iGTD. I haven’t converted to it completely yet, but if you’re considering trying out GTD on the mac, you might want to give Things a look. I’ll report back more when I have a bit more substance (and perhaps screenshots) to add.

Another interesting tool that I looked at was Goal Enforcer , which approaches GTD mind-map style. When all was said and done, that approach didn’t work for me, though I can easily see it working for many people. The walkthrough and tutorial was a great introduction to GTD though, and presented it in a fairly straightforward way. The product is well worth considering, but the tutorial is definitely worth it.

There are a few other packages that I’ve looked at, and I’ll through some more information up here. GTD is big in the geek community, so there are lots of people taking a geek approach to implementing it. I find that for the moment, the tools that I like the best are the ones that I install on my mac, and can sync to my smartphone. There are a large number of web-based tools that I’ve peeked at, but none of them have grabbed me yet, so I haven’t gotten excited about them. If I could have a desktop tool that could publish to the web and sync to my smartphone, I’d get excited.

I’d be delighted to take a look at other GTD packages out there if people have suggestions.

In retrospect, it seems important to note that on the airline trip back, I was wearing airline-issued Bose Quietcomfort 1s, the original model.   The QC1s were the first generation, originally released back in 2000 or so.   On one hand, they’re a bit bulkier, with the electronics contained/powered by an external box that is inline with the wiring to the audio jack.   On the other hand, the headset itself folds up neatly, and the headphones can be somewhat portable.   I used to use a pair of Sony MDR-NC5 foldable noise canceling headphones.   The Sony’s definitely folded better, but the Bose sounded better, and were much better at noise reduction.

With the QC2, the noise canceling is noticeably improved, but the headphones themselves are a bit bullkier to go with it.  Fortunately, the headphones are much more comfortable, and they do not have an external box like the QC1.   The headset sits nicely on the head, with very comfortable earpad, which surround the ear and help to isolate the ear from external noise.

There is also a Quietcomfort 3, which apparently has noise canceling hardware similar to the QC2, but the headset is lighter, and is designed for a more “on the ear” setup.   This is nice, but I didn’t feel like it got quite the same feel as the Quietcomfort 2s.   For short flights, I may not care.  For longer flights, I’d prefer the QC2s to keep my ears from being squashed.   The QC3s are also about $50 more expensive than the QC2.

My take on it is that if space is a problem, I’ll probably use QC1s.  If I’ve got that can be more flexible to deal with it, I’m happier with the QC2s.

Seems to me that I should lay down some thoughts as to what I look for when I think of thing things that I write about.   Quality can mean different things to different people, so it seems like I good idea to spell out what I think of when I think of quality.   This will mostly apply to physical objects, but could, in many cases, apply to a service, or a feature.   I may like part of something, but dislike the product on the whole.

There are a few important criteria that makes something stand out:

1. reliability
2. durability
3. flexibility
4. dependability
5. cost
6. utility.

Not every criteria fits every item I talk about.   My iMac has been reliable, flexible, and dependable.  It is probably not the most durable computer out there though, and it’s certainly not the cheapest.   Still, my utility value on it is pretty high.   Perhaps I should start giving “quality ratings” for the things I talk about.