Green Notes

When we think of vibrant open source software communities, we think of active collaboration, open and free exchange of latest practices and enhancements and a collective, unified approach to innovation.  A new group announced this week called Open Source Data Centre Initiative is working on applying these open source principles to data center design. It will act as a “repository and test bed for mechanical and engineering advances in data-center design” and will play an educational role for customers.  The knowledge base is expected to be enriched by small engineering firms, graduate students doing research with federal grant money, and others who will contribute by sharing their projects and publishing real-world statistics on design and construction specifics and testing. Manufacturers could submit their technology solutions that could be put together in different ways as a part of the user’s unique end design. In return the contributors would benefit from access to resources that would make them more competitive in the market place especially as compared to bigger players. Special attention would be given to green and sustainable designs from the end-user perspective as opposed to merely the manufacturing side. Latest advances in data center engineering related to energy efficient cooling practices and power conservation will be made accessible allowing customers to customize their own design. The venture also hopes to increase awareness and participation among construction companies so that they would be educated on what they are getting involved with instead of merely implementing the designs handed out to them from the engineering firms at the last minute.

The founder of the group, Dave Ohara who also writes the Green Data Center Blog has partnered up with University of Missouri and ARG Investments on this initiative .The alliance says it does not intend to compete with groups like the Green Grid Forum and the Uptime Institute, but would like to accelerate the rate of progress. 

For a professional consultation on cutting edge breakthroughs in energy efficient data center practices, contact us at Green Rack Systems/ 408-213-8144.

The AFCOM association, whose members include 4,500 administrators from 3,900 data centers around the world surveyed  436 data center sites last year. Some of the findings of the survey indicated that cyberterrorism is an increasing concern, mainframe deployment is on the decline, storage deployment is on the rise, and “green” technologies are definitely happening.

It was found that there is a shift in data centers away from mainframe computers and toward other types of servers.Just less than 40 percent of data centers run two or more mainframes, with 45.7 percent of such data centers planning to replace at least one of their mainframes in the next year. However 33 percent of those replacing mainframes plan to replace them with other types of servers.

The market is flooded with energy efficient products and services that claim to optimize data centers and save on power. Data center power consumption has become out of control the past few years and companies have been clamoring to offer solutions for addressing not only the problem of green house gas emissions but also to make business sense by saving up some green.

Some of these tools are free such as American Power Consumption APC’s Efficiency Quotient online tool (http://www.apc.com/tools/calculator/efficiencyQuotient/) which helps IT managers determine the efficiency levels of their data center. It provides a fact-based rating of a data center’s current efficiency levels; recommends steps for improvement; gives access to related white papers, tools and information. More recently it has released another tool that will help managers make decisions regarding the physical requirements of a data centre after a virtualisation project. The Virtualisation Energy Cost Calculator can be downloaded from the APC site.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has also developed a data center efficiency tool, DC Pro that analyzes 12 months’ worth of a data center’s utility bills to answer specific questions about electricity distribution, airflow management and data center cooling. The tool provides suggestions for improving efficiency.

The Green Grid,  a global consortium of IT professionals dedicated to improve energy efficiency in data centers, has launched several new tools and reports to promote the cause of data center efficiency including a new power usage effectiveness (PUE) reporting tool and regional tools for calculating free cooling. It’s free online tool for data center managers records their power usage effectiveness (PUE) scores that will establish global consistency in reporting the split between energy flowing to IT equipment and facility operations.In addition to free cooling from outside air, the tool provides information about savings that could be obtained using water-side economizers.

Software firm CA  has introduced a program called ecoMeter in its new ecoSoftware products, which helps companies manage energy use from data centers, as well as other facilities. The program allows a company to know, at any given time, how much energy is being used by each element in the data center – be it a server, generator, cooling unit or backup power supply, reports Earth2Tech . Another new tool launched by Arch Rock Inc., called Energy Optimizer – Data Center Edition is a wireless monitoring system that allows IT managers to make knowledgeable decisions about their data center efficiency in real-time. It  judges a system’s efficiency against standards from the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers, estimating the actual dollars the data center is spending on electricity and its carbon footprint. It also identifies hot spots, such as short-cycling, missing blanking panels and sub-floor obstructions that cause energy waste. Others approach the problem from a completely different angle. For example, Milford, N.H.-based Degree Controls Inc., has developed active airflow management products that include airflow monitoring tools to control cooling. Then there is a new chip by Teridian Semiconductor  that does accurate energy measurement as a way of addressing this growing enterprise data center power consumption. Teridian’s chip enables manufacturers to integrate smart energy measurement tools into data center equipment including power supplies, and communications equipment, as well as servers.

We have barely scratched the surface in this blog of the zillions of options available with respect to freebies and other efficiency tools for sale. Free tools can be handy to give you a broad perspective of where you need to be looking at to solve the issue. A professional consultation service like Green Rack Systems would help you sort through the plethora of choices in the market today to identify the right suite of products to invest in tha meet your data center’s unique challenges.

Once we have proper systems in place at our data centers, it becomes equally important to maintain the infrastructure to ensure seamless delivery without any bottlenecks that might hinder the services provided to clients. The advanced nature of computing which our data centers currently provide us with further complicates not only mere maintenance but also quality assurance. Depending on functionality and targeted usage, the priorities of a co-location facility change. For example an IT data center servicing the needs of bank or governmental agency would have to mitigate constant security risks in terms of confidentiality of data processed. A data center catering to a high energy social networking site would want to maintain the constant fluidity of the site. How many of us get fed up of waiting endlessly for our updates to show up or photos to be uploaded on some of our popular networks. Apart from the main concerns in a set segment for upkeep, there are other related risks to be managed and avoided. Once you take all precautions to reduce the risk, data centers usually conduct regression tests to recreate threat scenarios with realistic data feeds and test environment. Disaster recovery plans once in place should be tested and updated constantly. A full scale testing environment with all the hardware, networking equipment etc can be hard to re-create for smaller data centers. Also there is additional risk of leaking of sensitive information during these tests and current budget cuts due to macro-economic conditions might not provide the resources to design elaborate testing scenarios. Our complete data center services at Green Rack Systems can assist you in quality assurance, security and testing by creating application relevant production environments outside of your facility for reliable performance testing to pinpoint areas that need improvements. Our professional testers skilled in this specific arena can take the pressure off you for not only investing in a test lab but also training and breeding a test team. In this way your data center will be able to run smoothly without running into routine errors, crashes, inefficient downtimes, security threats etc that could be damaging to your reputation vis-à-vis clients.

Please contact us at Green Rack for a one time inspection or ongoing quality assurance and risk mitigation services for your data center.

At Green Rack Systems, we have been saying for a long time how this emphatic shift towards clean energy is inescapable. A November study by AFCOM finds that “greening of the data center is no longer just a concept – it is actually taking place”, and on a large scale, with 71.3% of all survey respondents indicating that they are actively engaged in Greening. Now, thanks to Executive Order 13514 requiring rigid energy efficiency targets, even Federal agencies have to follow what they preach by taking the lead on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Further, they will have to divert 50% of their waste by 2015 and arrive at a net-zero energy building requirements by 2030 for all of its 500,000 buildings. This will be made possible by key changes made in their massive IT departments, servers and data centers. The laudable target of net-zero for their buildings would be impossible to achieve without adopting efficiency strategies that we have been discussing about in our previous blogs, such as virtualization, renewable energy, alternative cooling methods, energy tracking technology etc. The new initiative also dictates that 95% of new acquisitions must be Energy Star or Federal Energy Management Program compliant, be EPEAT certified, contain recycled content, or otherwise be more sustainable than other products

  Some specifics of the order include:

Procurement preference for EPEAT- registered electronic products;

Policy implementation to enable power management, duplex printing, and other energy-efficient or environmentally preferable features on all eligible agency electronic products;

Environmentally sound practices in case of agency excess or surplus electronic products;

Procurement of Energy Star and FEMP designated electronic equipment;

Best management practices for energy-efficient management of servers and Federal data centers.

Cost-effective, innovative strategies, such as highly reflective and vegetated roofs, to minimize consumption of energy, water, and materials;

Reduction in the the consumption of energy, water, and materials, and identifying alternatives to renovation that reduce existing assets’ deferred maintenance costs.

Find opportunities while procuring real estate to consolidate and dispose of existing assets, optimize the performance of the agency’s real- property portfolio, and reduce associated environmental impacts

Rehabilitation of federally owned historic buildings utilizes best practices and technologies in retrofitting to promote long- term viability of the buildings.

In addition to the above, the directive advices employees to consider alternatives to traditional commuting and business travel such as telecommuting, web meet technologies etc.

The above practices are implementable for any office or data center outside of the governmental offices that it meant for. Now with Washington setting definite, targeted goals for itself in the green department, commercial enterprises who have lagged behind would very soon have no choice but to follow the lead.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, data centers across the United States accounted for 1.5 percent of total US electricity demand in 2006 — equivalent to the annual electric consumption of the state of Florida — and have become one of the fastest growing users of energy. While the power consumed at these individual data centers may be small, the consumption in totality at EPA and other large organizations is significantly enormous. Even as much is written about greening data centers and as non-profit organizations like the Green Grid are striving to bring about a new improved way of approaching this data center energy crisis, there is not much initiative on the part of the data centers themselves. They are often found to be slack on basic essentials in measurement and tracking equipment.

A recent study by Gartner released in September found that as many as 48% of data centre managers have still not even considered the issue of energy management metrics. “Without metrics it is impossible to get accurate data, which is essential to evaluating basic costs, proportioning these costs to different users and setting policies for improvement.” , Gartner remarked of its findings. Gartner said that energy management both in terms of capacity and cost can only be effective through advanced monitoring, modeling and measuring techniques and processes. Further, it encouraged organizations not to rely on internal metrics, saying that evaluating server energy needs to be done in an open and transparent manner. Gartner went so on to note that in many companies the IT department neither sees nor pays the electric bill, and thereby lacks the incentive to save energy. The research firm recommends that data centre managers use sensors to monitor potential hotspots, develop a dashboard of data centre energy-efficient metrics, and improve the use of the existing infrastructure through consolidation and virtualization before building out or buying new/additional data centre floor space.

Gartner’s study is further substantiated by a report released by Aperture Research Institute in 2008 that states “that organizations are unable or unwilling to meet the expectations set by the introduction of green initiatives.74% refused to activate power saving features on devices if it would require a drop in performance. When it comes to procurement, energy efficiency and ease of disposal are the lowest priorities. 37% of data centers have no plans to measure energy efficiency, and 76% do not charge the business for the power used by the IT commissions. One reason is a lack of infrastructure for measuring power consumption.We concludes that data centers lack the tools and processes they need if the organization is to effectively balance its environmental impact and its business priorities.”

Redundant methods of monitoring power efficiency, lack of digital tracking capabilities and reluctance to open up to external consultation could be major impediments in the road to energy optimization. Please contact us at Green Rack Systems for discussing your current IT situation and a detailed analysis of how we could bring more productivity and value to your energy consumption.

It seems like the most simple logical solution to energy conservation-powering down servers not in use. After all not all servers are used all the time. For example servers that perform only a single predictable function such as for calculating the employee pay are used only on certain days in a month. Or those used for special testing or running backups and so on. It makes sense that they power themselves down when not in use just like in commonplace electronic gadgets.

The Alliance to Save Energy, Kelton Research and 1E, a software IT company, found through surveys of server managers and analysis of industry data that out of the world’s 44 million servers, roughly 4.7 million of them are idle and not doing necessary work.

“Contrary to popular belief, one of the largest causes of energy and IT operational waste in data centers are servers that are simply not being used. The savings from decommissioning non-productive servers cannot be ignored. Organisations need better information on server efficiency and more effective ongoing server energy management,” comments Sumir Karayi, CEO, 1E.

The key problem highlighted in the study is that over eight in ten (83%) of IT managers admit that they do not have an adequate grasp of server utilization . That is they have no idea which of the servers are actually in use and which are not at a given point of time. So to be on the safe side and avoid any unwanted interruptions while running applications, they supply power to all servers uniformly even those that are not working.

But not all IT managers approve of powering down servers. The old school of thought seems to be that servers should run 24/7 for fear of ruining the hardware and also of getting a bad rap sheet from clients. Others dread the difficulty of getting a server back to an operational state once it’s turned back on after powering down.

Ted Samson in infoworld interviewed several experts on this issue:

Infrastructure technologist at HP, said powering down servers is completely safe. “It’s not at all bad for the server. It’s something we do to electronic devices all the time. It can handle it from a hardware perspective,” said Baker.

But Brad McCredie, an IBM fellow for the Systems and Technology Group, wasn’t quite so sanguine. He explained that, technically speaking, powering off and on any kind of computer can have a detrimental effect over time.

“[Temperature cycling] is a well-established failure mechanism and a stress on components,” McCredie pointed out. “What it really comes down to is all these things — chips soldered on modules, soldered on boards and connectors — that expand and contract when they heat and cool…. When they all contract and expand at different rates, they can fail. That’s ultimately the bad thing with power cycling,” he said.

Mark Monroe, director of sustainable computing at Sun, suggested that machines can handle being shut down a finite number of times. Arguably, the number is large enough for regular power cycling over an extended period of time. “Most server vendors today say they’ll support a certain number of cycles of powering things on and off,” Monroe said. “I believe most of the server vendors would say [the number] is in the hundreds as opposed to the thousands.”

From the above survey it is safe to assume that for the most part , datacenters armed with the burden of reducing power costs are willing to at least take a look at this controversial method in moderation.

There have been a host of products in the market recently to tackle efficient power downs without mess-ups. IE launched its power management software for servers that use smart algorithms to figure out which servers are doing work and the energy they are using. According to IE its “NightWatchman Server Edition” can power down servers into a drowsy state, cutting their energy use by 12 percent. IBM has a product called Active Energy Manager that features advanced energy control options designed to boost performance per watt by slowing processor clock speed or even putting processors in “nap” mode when not in use. There are numerous others following the same trend including VMware that offers a functionality in VMware Infrastructure 3.5 called Distributed Power Management that powers servers on and off according to demand level.

Not all servers are automatic candidates for shutdowns however. Servers dedicated to specific scheduled computing that occurs only at certain times of the month or wanes at certain pinpointed times during the day are ideal targets for powering down. For more expert consultation on powering down processes and other methods of energy saves for your data center, contact us at GreenRack Sysems/408-2138144.

While the high tech world buzzes with non stop talk about virtualization and other power monitoring technologies to increase data center efficiency, improvement in basic storage can go a long way to green up your facility. On an average 10 to 40 percent of energy cost in data centers is used to run storage. Yes, managing storage can be expensive especially in a situation like data centers which struggles to cope with excess of data resulting from global initiatives, web commerce, rapidly enhanced computing expectations and security pressures. If businesses do not address their storage budget issues and reduce their data footprint, the problem is likely to blow out of proportion in this era of faster, more ever increasing computing. To keep up with this massive growth, organizations must look at smart storage capacity solutions.

SNIA, Storage Networking Industry Association is a non profit association made up of about 400 companies dedicated to knowledge exchange of end-to-end storage solutions and development of standards in information management products. Some of the energy efficient storage solutions that it recommends are thin provisioning, multi-use backup, virtual clones, de-duplication, compression, using RAID 5 or RAID 6 disk arrays instead of the higher-level standards and smarter coupling of technology and the actual needs.

Most industry experts recommend against indulging in highest grade equipment and to stick to what is actually required instead. Multi purpose, elaborate storage solutions not only cost more but most of the times you may not even be in need of them. So you might be powering them for doing things that you may not even need. So stick with RAID 5 if that’s all you will be using. While Solid State Disk translates to an enhanced performance level, it also costs an arm and a leg. So data that is not critical can be allocated to lower cost tiers and primary storage. Sometimes storage solutions come with automated management software to give information on how much of solid state disk you need to optimize your application. Virtualization of your storage also can go a long way in helping with storage consolidation by providing better storage distribution among servers and reducing hardware requirements. Vendors that provide server virtualization often offer tools to improve the management of storage as well.

The latest buzz in the storage world is data de-duplication also called single instance storage. It significantly reduces the amount of physical disk space needed for backup and other archival functions by configuring data processing and storage functions in a way that removes redundant files, bytes, or blocks of data. It thereby makes sure that only unique data is stored on disks and eliminates redundant files.

The other popular storage solution is thin provisioning which doles out on-demand shared storage to servers instead of allocating tens or hundreds of gigabytes in advance based on anticipated demand which may go unused while consuming a lot of energy. Provisioning helps in cost reduction as it costs less to provide power to one drive loaded to capacity than a number of them each storing a fraction of their capacity.

Please contact us at Green Rack Systems for updating your storage solutions and to reduce your energy bills in the bargain.

There is a huge initiative among companies like Google, IBM, Cisco and so many other smaller smart grid players to make the grid more modernized using cutting edge digital technology and tackle environmental issues, cost reduction and energy conservation. We employ integrated communications, sensing and measurement technologies, enhanced interfaces and control methods to optimize our electricity transmission.The common smart grid components incorporating network, wireless and IT technology consist of smart meters, data concentrators, system monitoring software, increase in transmission lines etc. They help oversee the precise location of electricity consumption and predict potential blackout areas. Consumers can also monitor more clearly where and how the electricity is being absorbed which will provide them with more leverage to effectively save on energy.

When President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill on Feb. 17 , 2009 , a large part of his strategy focuses on renewable alternative energy to gain energy independence but one of he largest investments, about $11 billion dollars has been dedicated to in smart grids.So it is no surprise that smart grids are being touted left, right and center by VCs and technocrats alike and promises to have a huge impact in the immediate direction of high tech and energy industry.

What does all this mean to data centers? Well according to CNetnews, this data overload due to smartgrid implementation will lead to increased demands on data center . The article cites the case of Duke Energy which has contracted with Cisco to build an “information architecture” to handle an anticipated flood of data from its smart-grid programs where it will be installing hundreds of thousands of smart meters in the next two years. Duke Chief Technology Officer anticipates that gathering data from sensors on cables, people’s appliances, and substations could add up to a millions of nodes on the network.

“Once utilities put in smart meters, their data processing and storage needs explode. Instead of sending a person to read meters once a month, information for billing or other applications can be sent back once a day, once an hour, or even every few minutes. If utilities are regulated to reduce peak time usage, their IT needs shoot up even higher. Demand response where a utility can turn down energy use at participating customer sites, requires utilities to poll information regularly from a potential large number of locations. “

Mark Weiner director of Data Center Solutions and a member of a Cisco smart-grid team is quoted in CNet news article:

“The requirements are for huge amounts of data to be involved when you have these more advanced pricing models where the goal is to mitigate power generation,” said Weiner. “The catcher’s mitt for that data is the data center.”

It is logical to conclude from the above that now more than ever there is an even more increased pressure to make your data center technology as energy efficient and cost effective as possible in anticipation of future requirements. For specialized software and hardware deployments that would help you in this effort, contact us at GreenRack Systems.

In datacenters, there is a tendency to overexert and do too much if that makes sense. After all we want to make sure that everything is working well and beyond to avoid problems during uptime. Over provisioning and over allocation often lead to overspending in terms of indulgence in excess power and hardware. Apart from virtualization, increasing storage efficiency and equipment efficiency, Power capping is a new technology that datacenters are looking into right now to address this issue. The concept is logical enough as the name suggests. Power capping sets a cap on the power a server can consume at a given time without always leaving allowances for “in case of maximum load or maximum utilization” and is uniformly applicable for all servers.

Servers come in all shapes, sizes and uses. There are many scenarios that determine their usage like customer requirements and nature of work. So they do not all run to full capacity at all times and some maybe even never as many datacenters choose to not deploy their entire arsenal at the same time. So why do we allocate all this power to them without discerning? Why do we set a standard uniform allocation irrespective of functionality? Also more times than not, the suggested power allocation referred to on hardware pieces are much more than is actually needed. Again everyone is trying to be on the safe side and being careful about not interfering with the performance level, but unwittingly wasting more resources in the bargain. That is why power capping makes a whole lot of sense. Without overstepping the power limit, it allows us to save on space and increase your server density by ascertaining that your servers do not use more than their allocated power at once.

Even though many IT managers are hesitant to experiment lest important applications get interrupted, power has proven to be such an expensive and environmentally unfriendly commodity that many datacenters have decided to take their chances on it .Companies like Intel, IBM, Dell and AMD have released power capping management software to facilitate the process. For example Intel’s Dynamic Power Node Manager Technology along with ancillary management software helps servers running on Xeon 5500 chips to vary platform power on a case by case basis without reducing the performance level through monitoring and assessing real-time data of a server platform. The ceiling on the platform power is thus adjusted to your optimal individual power budget . In case it figures that the budget cannot be met with without interfering with the performance, it will alert you on your choices. Intel also has developed a software addition to the Node Manager called Intel Datacenter Manager, designed to monitor and control power for a group of servers.

Baidu, China’s largest search company has reported success recently using Intel’s power-capping technology. In fact the companies released a study that stated that a datacenter using this technology could save up to 40 watts per system without performance impact translating into as much as 20 percent additional datacenter capacity within the same rack-level power envelope, and a potential rack-density improvement of 20 to 40 percent. Prior to investing in power capping technology, Baidu was leasing racks at a datacenter where the company sought to save money by cramming as many machines as possible into the fewest number of racks. Post Intel’s power capping tools, they were able to establish an optimal workload corresponding to maximum power reduction with least performance loss. Then they determined the approximate amount of power the servers needed to just idle. After narrowing down on the precise number of servers per rack , they successfully established a cap at the rack level bringing down the power consumption from 900W to 750W.

It is always better to understand the full implications of power capping before deciding if power capping technologies in full blast would be a viable option for your data center. A trial run before full scale operation is recommended to protect important applications. Please contact us at Green Rack Systems for further consultation.