Energy conservation and reducing our carbon footprint, whilst a moral responsibility of every human being, has now become table stakes for every business.
This is a welcome change as running a sustainable practice not only enables organizations to be energy conscious but also keeps costs under control. Some enterprises have proactively taken the UN’s climate pledge, which targets a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Additionally, the US government incentivizes organizations and helps fund GHG (greenhouse gas) emission reduction initiatives. Beyond that, countries in Europe – both EU and UK – have been actively enforcing policies to ensure businesses drive towards net zero emissions to accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral, resource-efficient and regenerative economy.
Organizations have these targets, and Citrix can help in this journey with our products and solutions. Citrix can specifically help with indirect emissions around Scope 2 and 3. But how? Let’s take a closer look at Citrix’s capabilities that help with your sustainability initiatives.
Citrix features that admins can leverage to make IT more sustainable
Firstly, Citrix cloud services leverage renewable energy, which helps with Scope 2 emissions. However, in this blog we would like to focus on Scope 3 aspects. Citrix as a value chain partner can help in sustainability and help identify GHG reduction opportunities. Citrix has enabled and released features which allow both admins and end users to be part of the sustainability initiatives of your organizations.
At the end of last year, Citrix introduced even more autoscale capabilities that provide IT administrators the ability to put measures in place to control power consumption for GHG reduction opportunities and reduce cost leveraging features like:
- Schedule based and load based settings for power managed machines
- Scheduling dynamic session time out based on user’s idle time or disconnected session, forcing users to log-off
With features like vertical load balancing, drain mode, and triggering user logoff based on inactivity, administrators can dynamically manage their environments and only run the number of VMs needed at any given moment. Leading to more effective power usage! This is great for both organization and the environment.
In addition to our enhancements in Citrix autoscale, we have now introduced capabilities to engage and enable your employees to be part of the energy conservation pledge using Activity Manager.
Citrix Activity Manager is a new feature that has been introduced as part of the Citrix client app empowering end users to manage their own session – both persistent and non-persistent sessions – more effectively from any device. This also helps end users be mindful of sessions which are disconnected and still running.
The image below showcases the Activity Manager on the top right of the screen. The user can simply click on the Activity Manager icon to see the list of sessions running across all the devices the user has logged in to.
You may be asking, “How can I enable users to leverage this to contribute to GHG reductions?” There are actually a couple of ways you can achieve this.
- When users have access to non-persistent and pooled sessions.
Most of the time users tend to close their session or get off simply leaving the session disconnected. This essentially means that the session is running in the background utilizing resources in your VM. When machines are left running, think of it like leaving the lights on with no one home. It’s consuming power for no reason.
With Activity Manager, users can now log out or sign out from the session from anywhere and any device. They also get clear visibility into sessions which are disconnected, but still running. In the scenario where the user left the office and forgot to log off or log out, they can log in to the mobile and remotely log out from the session.
At any point in time, your user has complete visibility into all sessions, apps and desktops, running across all their devices. This is shown in the image clearly showcasing what is running ‘on this device’ and what is ‘running remotely’ at any given time.
In a capability coming soon, disconnected sessions will be highlighted to ensure end users have visibility into the fact that sessions are still running with apps and further action can be taken.
2. End users with persistent VMs or dedicated sessions (Tech Preview)
These users will have more control and power to manage these dedicated sessions with additional actions based on what the virtual machine supports. In addition to log out, the user can choose to:
- Shut down: This is a graceful shutdown option where the OS and session is shutdown. Conserving energy and the best option to end the week.
- Force Quit or Power Off: This option is like pulling the plug and often used in scenarios where the session is non responsive.
- Hibernate (upcoming): When the user hibernates, OS and Machine are shutdown. While the running apps are closed, the status is saved. When the user Resumes the session, the apps are launched making it the most energy efficient and end user efficient option available.
Leverage these features today to drive a more sustainable business
Your organization can start leveraging Citrix Autoscale and the tech preview of Citrix Activity Manager today to meet your sustainability initiatives. With these user centric options now available to your organization and employees through the client app, I urge you to enable and educate your users to use Citrix Activity Manager to take the necessary actions to conserve energy. Further, also encourage them to use Activity Manager over mobile to be more proactive and energy aware. For more information on getting started with Activity Manager, check out our product docs.
Disclaimer: The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and are subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.
