Microsoft says Windows Server 2008 cuts Power Consumption by 10%, What happened to 20%?

InfoWorld writes that Microsoft released a study that Windows Server 2008 cuts power consumption by 10%.

With electricity prices continuing to skyrocket and processors getting ever hungrier for power, it was only a matter of time before Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chimed in with claims that its latest software can cut energy bills. A Microsoft white paper released this week asserts that Windows Server 2008 can cut power consumption by 10% compared with Windows Server 2003 out of the box, and much more if running virtualized.

Microsoft compared power consumption between two installations on the same server with two dual-core processors and 4 GB of RAM, one running Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition with SP2 plus hot fixes, and the other running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, with a hard drive formatting in between.

The company found that Windows Server 2003 used as much as 10% more power despite only being able to deliver 80% of the maximum throughput as its successor. Microsoft attributes these improvements partially to power management features that Windows Server 2008 has enabled by default, like the automatic adjustment of processor performance based on workload.

But, what happened to the 20% Bill Laing discussed with Mary Jo Foley

We've done power management by default in Longhorn Server. And we think average machines will see maybe 20 percent reduction in power use. You kind of slow the clock down when it's not busy. And it's dynamic enough that you can literally slow the clock down across a disk I/O. If you've got nothing to do while you're doing a disk I/O, it actually drops the power use for that short period of time. It's not like sleeping [for] the laptop; this is really short, what they call P-state for processor state.

This continues to support one of my beliefs that power management needs to exist in a bigger picture than the server itself. What is needed is power management to be designed across systems. This part of what the guys at Cassatt Software have done.

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Usage-based Power Pricing, enables Green Behaviors in CRG West Colo DCs

Data Center Knowledge has a post on CRG's press announcement for Usage-Based Power Pricing.

CRG West is implementing usage-based power pricing at its new data centers in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Northern Virginia and the San Francisco Bay Area. The power pricing model, based on actual utilization, will benefit colocation customers by offering savings to those who reduce their IT electrical loads.

With the installation of Branch Circuit Monitoring (BCM) technology at seven of its 10 data centers, CRG West can provide usage-based pricing for AC power to even single-cabinet colocation customers. In addition, the BCM technology improves upon CRG West’s ability to manage and monitor power consumption at the data center, enabling customers to pay only for the power they consume and providing the visibility into load management that helps customers increase their uptime.

CRG West previously charged a flat monthly fee per circuit for breakered power capacity, which meant that customers would often pay for capacity they aren't using. Under the new model, customers can reduce their bills by turning off hardware that isn’t in use during off-hours or by purchasing hardware that is more efficient. Coming soon, CRG West will also offer customers the ability to monitor their power draws by circuit.

The CRG press announcement is here with a few points on energy efficiency.

With the installation of Branch Circuit Monitoring (BCM) technology at seven of its ten data centers, CRG West can provide usage-based pricing for AC power to even single cabinet colocation customers. In addition, the BCM technology improves upon CRG West’s ability to manage and monitor power consumption at the data center, enabling customers to pay only for the power they consume and providing the visibility into load management that helps customers increase their uptime.

Customers can reap the benefits of this technology by turning off hardware that isn’t in use during off-hours or by purchasing hardware that is more efficient; thereby significantly reducing their electricity expenses. Coming soon, CRG West will also offer customers the ability to monitor their power draws by circuit.

Already an industry leader in green data center design and construction, CRG West also focuses upon providing the information and tools our customers can use to enable them to manage energy consumption and costs more efficiently. Following the deployment of our award-winning, energy-efficient closed-loop cooling design, CRG West’s BCM technology is another example of innovative leadership in the industry. CRG West expects the colocation industry to adopt usage-based pricing and visibility as its standard within the coming years.

We should be a standard practice at many colo facilities. The enterprise data centers in general will move slower.  At an Uptime Institute presentation, there was actually a company which removed their metering system, because they didn't want to deal with the support issues when users challenged the power charges.

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Centralized vs. Decentralized Green Initiatives

Centralized vs. Decentralized is a debate that has the pendulum swing from side to side. With Green's increased focus, the pendulum swings towards centralized and top down initiatives.  In Uptime Institute this was advocated as "Energy Czar" position.

Here is an example of something which may have seemed obvious on the surface, but ran into problems. University of Washington in Seattle has their #2 administrator, Provost Phyllis Wise, driving the creation of the College of Environment at UW.

To many people, the idea that the University of Washington would create a new College of the Environment seems a no-brainer: Some of the biggest issues facing humanity would get greater academic scrutiny in a city where people seem to care deeply about nature.

But within the UW, details of the plan are sparking intense debate. Many faculty who are in thriving programs have shown little interest in joining a new college. The vision publicly unveiled by Provost Phyllis Wise just three weeks ago — to create the world's largest environment college — appears to be running into serious problems.

Thanks to the college's democratic process, something most corporations do not have, the departments/colleges which would be centralized under the new school have rejected the idea.

Vote against college

In an advisory poll, the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences voted by an overwhelming 27-1 against joining the college. In another of the units — the Department of Earth and Space Sciences — the results were even more definitive: 29-0 against.

"Our mandate is to study things from the center of the Earth to the rim of the solar system," said Robert Winglee, who chairs Earth and Space Sciences. "The environment is that thin layer in which we live."

Winglee said faculty were concerned that elements of their study wouldn't fit in with the mandate of a new college. He informed Wise of the vote a month before she released her plan.

Was Winglee surprised, then, to see his department listed on the plan? "Yes," he replied simply, adding that he doesn't want to comment further for fear of becoming embroiled in academic politics.

One of the biggest problems with Green Initiatives and the people behind them is they get so passionate about their cause, they can't see the impact on others or understand why there would be opposition.  Sounds Ironic that a Green Initiative is not aware of the impact to others.

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Two Different opinions, Why Amazon Went Down

You all know amazon.com suffered a 2 hour outage on Friday, suffering a 4.59% stock drop, lost sales, and damage to its reputation. I found 2 different opinions which give you some ideas on what happened.

GigaOm has a factual analysis looking for cause and effect.

So what happened? Let’s look at the facts.

• Traffic to https://www.amazon.com was getting there. So DNS was configured properly to send traffic to Amazon’s data centers. Global server load balancing (GSLB) is the first line of defense when a data center goes off the air. Either GSLB didn’t detect that the main data center was down, or there was no spare to which it could send visitors.
• When traffic hit the data center, the load balancer wasn’t redirecting it. This is the second line of defense, designed to catch visitors who weren’t sent elsewhere by GSLB.
• If some of the servers died, the load balancer should have taken them out of rotation. Either it didn’t detect the error, or all the servers were out. This is the third line of defense.
• Most companies have an “apology page” that the load balancer serves when all servers are down. This is the fourth line of defense, and it didn’t work either.
• The HTTP 1.1 message users saw shows something that “speaks” HTTP was on the other end. So this probably wasn’t a router or firewall.

This sort of thing is usually caused by a misconfigured HTTP service on the load balancer. But that would happen late at night, be detected, and rolled back. It could also happen from a content delivery network (CDN) not retrieving the home page properly.

So my money’s on an AFE or CDN problem. But as Berman notes, Amazon’s store is a complex application and much of their infrastructure doesn’t follow “normal” data center design. So only time (and hopefully Amazon) will tell.

Site operators can learn from this: Look into GSLB, and make sure you have geographically distributed data centers (possibly through AWS Availability Zones.) It’s another sign we can’t take operations for granted, even in the cloud.

and WSJ blogger has a more entertaining version.

“The Amazon retail site was down for approximately 2 hours earlier today (beginning around 10:25) - and we’re bringing the site back up.

Amazon’s systems are very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems. We work to minimize any disruption and to get the site back as quickly as possible.

Amazon’s web services were not affected nor were our international sites.”

The statement doesn’t explain what went wrong, however. Here are some possibilities the Business Technology Blog has come up with and — in honor of tomorrow’s Belmont Stakes — our carefully-calculated odds that it’s what caused the problem.

* An explosion, fire or some other mishap at one of Amazon’s data centers: 5 to 1
* A faulty software upgrade: 7 to 1
* A so-called denial-of-service attack that tries to overwhelm the site with traffic: 10 to 1
* The site was broken into the by same guys who “RoXed Comcast”: 100 to 1
* A rush on Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader: 1,000 to 1
* Sharks with laser beams on their heads: 1,000,000 to 1

Most people will focus on what needs to happen to prevent this from happening again. Or you can accept the fact that no matter what you do, outages will happen, and it is part of an online business. So, the challenge is how you handle the customer relations of an outage. The smart companies address both issues with a good analysis of the long term effects.  This coincidentally aligns with companies who think about green/sustainability action in the long term.  The last thing you want to do in going green is be reactive. 

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Green Email Solution, suppresses use of Paper in Compliance Scenarios

GoodMail has a certified email paper suppression solution.

CertifiedEmail Paper Suppression (CertifiedEmail PS) is the first application designed to provide legal proof that a specific email message was sent and received at the server-level email inbox. Built on the CertifiedEmail platform, CertifiedEmail PS enables a business to prove that a given message was sent and delivered on a specified day, to a specific recipient. A digital signature technology validates the exact contents of the message. This nonrepudiation capability provides a means for companies to meet regulatory compliance while doing so with electronic means instead of paper notifications, saving money while compressing the consumer notice period.

CertifiedEmail PS may meet regulatory compliance obligations, including Regulation Z, Sarbanes-Oxley and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

The product has the following green benefits.

Cut costs of paper processing & postal delivery of certain customer communications with regulatory compliance or other special needs

Paper based notices cost between $0.35 and $1.50 to process, vs. $0.03 for CertifiedEmail PS

Consumer notifications arrive faster, contracting the timeline for regulated consumer processes such as collections, service actions, etc.

Reduce waste.  1 ream of paper (500 sheets) costs $0.80, 5 lbs. of CO2 and 6% of a tree.  (Source: www.whatsyourwedge.com)

I am going to spend more time thinking about this product and researching the issues.

The company just got a new CEO hire, Peter Horan from InterActive Media who is going to address advertising scenarios.

Media and Advertising Veteran Peter Horan Joins Goodmail as Chief Executive Officer

New CEO Will Spearhead First Advertising Platform for the Inbox

• For Marketers: What is CertifiedEmail?
• Who accepts CertifiedEmail?
• CertifiedEmail service providers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 19, 2008 - Goodmail Systems, creator of CertifiedEmail™, the industry’s standard for trusted email, today announced Peter Horan as its new chief executive officer.  With over two decades of media and advertising industry leadership, Horan comes to Goodmail from IAC Media and Advertising, where as CEO he oversaw more than $250 million in advertising and commerce revenue from Evite, Pronto, IAC Mobile and Ask Sponsored Listings.  He will bring to the company a level of unmatched experience and vision as Goodmail extends the CertifiedEmail platform for trusted consumer email to offer true “Email 2.0” advertising solutions for top brands and direct marketers.

“CertifiedEmail is quickly becoming a best practice for top email marketers. Goodmail sent more than 1.6 billion CertifiedEmail messages in the month of April alone,” said Horan. “The ability to deliver safe and legitimate email messages to consumers not only provides immediate return for senders today, it creates a platform upon which exciting new inbox-based advertising products can be introduced. Most importantly, CertifiedEmail actually improves consumers’ trust in email right now and makes it easier for them to spot messages they want.”

Horan has experience in both startups and large companies. He served as the CEO of Allbusiness.com (now part of Dun & Bradstreet), About.com (now part of the New York Times) and DevX.com (now part of Jupitermedia).  Previously he spent 10 years in publishing at International Data Group, serving as SVP and Publisher of Computerworld, and also worked for 15 years in senior account management roles at Ogilvy & Mather and BBDO.

“Peter has a proven track record pioneering new advertising platforms and creating innovative ways of driving online consumer engagement,” said Daniel Dreymann, president and co-founder of Goodmail. “His leadership, ambition and creative instincts make him the perfect person to lead Goodmail’s management team and build out the capabilities of the CertifiedEmail platform.”   

Horan will lead the introduction of Goodmail’s new advertising platform for the inbox, leveraging the company’s unique CertifiedEmail service, which has been adopted by seven of the nation’s top 10 email mailbox providers, and is in use by over 500 commercial brands and 200 government agencies and nonprofits.  He will work closely with Dreymann who had previously served as CEO.

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