If you linked here directly, feel free to go back and read part 1 for background on this project, located here.  If you’re still with us from Part 1, Thanks!

Recently, I filled a 4 foot rolling rack with equipment.  A 4 core IBM eSeries server with 2 TB of SCSI storage running ESXi is one of the main components.  I always like to keep the server online for various sundry items, but it usually sits largely idle, even with two Red Hat Linux instances running on it while I am studying.  This is somewhat of a waste in my opinion because the server is sitting idle with spinning fans while not doing much of anything.  A wonderful solution to this is have ESXi run a guest, specifically for the folding application.  If set up correctly, you can even have ESXi dedicate as much of the machine’s resources for CPU and memory as possible during downtime, and have it throttle it back when other applications are working on mission critical things.  I’m looking at you, small business and enterprise owners.

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Around this time last year, I made a post about helping the environment through a service called “Earth911″ (See that post here).  This post isn’t about the environment, nor is it about woodworking, electronics, weather, or any of the other weird stuff you’ve come to expect from my writings.  This is about helping the thing we all hold most dear in this life: ourselves.  Readers in my audience who are on the techie side of things will likely have already known about this for years, but I also know I have others in my audience who are not.

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