Green Data Center Blog

Microsoft rides Bing success, maybe they should rename the company - BingSoft

Microsoft is riding a wave of excitement as bing.com makes progress.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24TH, 2009 BY JORDAN MCCOLLUM

0

Bing’s Paid Clicks Still Up

Bing’s flash in the pan—supposed to burn out a while ago—is extending every day, at least in one important area: paid clicks. So far this month, we’ve seen that

• Bing might be making more per query than Google
• Bing saw an 8% increase in paid clicks and a 20% query volume lift
• Bing is taking a hardline on click fraud
• Bing is increasing its searcher penetration and overall share of SERPs (in the post with the best Bing title ever: Pre Bing Sting With a Post Bing Bang?)

Efficient Frontier is back again this week with more good news: Bing continues to see increases in their paid clicks:

According to our data analysis, Bing expanded its share of paid clicks for the two weeks post launch. Bing’s share of paid clicks is up 13% for the second week post launch as compared to pre-launch. And, it represents an incremental 5% lift over the first week.

 

Maybe Microsoft should rename the company to BingSoft.

What do you think?  It could be part of the plan now that Bill Gates has left.  Rebrand the company.The stock has performed as well.

I would like to see the utilization of those Microsoft Search servers now that they have something to do.

Microsoft Hires Yahoo Data Center Executive, Nine Articles So Far

Who would have thought there would would nine articles regarding Microsoft hiring the replacement for Mike Manos.  Must be a combination of Microsoft hiring another Yahoo executive.

Microsoft plucks Yahoo! data center efficiency expert

Register - ‎8 hours ago‎

Microsoft has hired a Yahoo! data center veteran to help build an energy efficient infrastructure beneath its planned cloud and online services. ...

Microsoft hires Yahoo data center exec Silicon Valley / San Jose ...

Bizjournals.com - ‎8 hours ago‎

Microsoft Corp. on Monday said it poached a top data center executive from rival Yahoo Inc. The Redmond-based software giant (NASDAQ:MSFT), in a blog post, ...

Microsoft nabs Yahoo data center executive

CNET News - Ina Fried - ‎11 hours ago‎

In his new role, Timmons will lead a data center services team, Microsoft infrastructure services general manager Arne Josefsberg said in a blog posting. ...

Microsoft Hires Key Yahoo Data Center Executive

ChannelWeb - Kevin McLaughlin - ‎7 hours ago‎

At Yahoo, Timmons led the buildout of Yahoo's data center strategy and has a reputation for placing great importance on the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) ...

Yahoo data center executive jumps to Microsoft

Ars Technica - ‎9 hours ago‎

Redmond has hired a former Yahoo Operations vice president to lead its Data Center Services team. Kevin Timmons today joined the Global Foundation Services ...

Microsoft Steals Away Another Top Yahoo

InternetNews.com - Stuart J. Johnston - ‎7 hours ago‎

In a posting on the MS Datacenters blog, the software giant announced it has hired Kevin Timmons, former Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) vice president of operations, ...

Former Yahoo Exec Joins Microsoft

Web Host Industry Review - Justin Lee - ‎7 hours ago‎

Most recently serving as vice president of operations at Yahoo, Timmons led the build-out of the company's data centers and infrastructure. ...

Microsoft Hires Its Sixth Yahoo Exec (In Just Over Six Months)

paidContent.org - ‎11 hours ago‎

Timmons was the vice president of operations at Yahoo, where he led the build-out of the company's data centers and infrastructure. He had previously served ...

Kevin Timmons: Microsoft hires yet another Yahoo executive

TechWhack - ‎13 hours ago‎

Microsoft has announced the appointment of Kevin Timmons as the new head of their Data Center Services. He takes over from Michael Manos who had left the ...

Google News didn’t have Rich Miller’s Data Center Knowledge.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/22/microsoft-hires-yahoo-data-center-chief/

NYTimes Data Center Story, Breaking The Rules

I had some friends check out DataCenterKnowledge’s post on a NYTimes feature article, “Data Center Overload” coming out this Sunday in the Magazine.  Rich Miller has a great quote from the article.

Trying to chart the cloud’s geography can be daunting, a task that is further complicated by security concerns. “It’s like ‘Fight Club,’ ” says Rich Miller, whose Web site, Data Center Knowledge, tracks the industry. “The first rule of data centers is: Don’t talk about data centers.”

The above is from a slide show.

This article must have been in the works for a while as Mike Manos is in the article as a Microsoft employee and “Manos” show up 9 times in the article.

As I pulled up to it in a Prius with Michael Manos, who was then Microsoft’s general manager of data-center services, he observed that while “most people wouldn’t be able to tell this wasn’t just a giant warehouse,” an experienced eye could discern revelatory details. “You would notice the plethora of cameras,” he said. “You could follow the power lines.” He gestured to a series of fluted silver pipes along one wall. “Those are chimney stacks, which probably tells you there’s generators behind each of those stacks.” The generators, like the huge banks of U.P.S. (uninterruptible power supply) batteries, ward against surges and power failures to ensure that the data center always runs smoothly.

Google is mentioned 12 times.

Microsoft is mentioned 22 times.

Yahoo  - 3

Amazon - 4

Facebook – 13

Microsoft wins with the positiong battle, and has the last 2 paragraphs.

“Our perspective long term is: It’s not a building, it’s a piece of equipment,” says Daniel Costello, Microsoft’s director of data-center research, “and the enclosure is not there to protect human occupancy; it’s there to protect the equipment.”

From here, it is easy to imagine gradually doing away with the building itself, and its cooling requirements, which is, in part, what Microsoft is doing next, with its Gen 4 data center in Dublin. One section of the facility consists of a series of containers, essentially parked and stacked amid other modular equipment — with no roof or walls. It will use outside air for cooling. On our drive to Tukwila, Manos gestured to an electrical substation, a collection of transformers grouped behind a chain-link fence. “We’re at the beginning of the information utility,” he said. “The past is big monolithic buildings. The future looks more like a substation — the data center represents the information substation of tomorrow.”

Articles like this are exposing data centers and making it hard to abide by the rule - “The first rule of data centers is: Don’t talk about data centers.”

This is just the beginning of breaking the rules in data centers.

Microsoft’s Daniel Costello, Engineering Approach to Solve Data Center Design

Microsoft’s Daniel Costello has a good post on an engineering approach to solve data center business problems.

Before I get into what Daniel wrote, let’s contrast what typically happens in a data center project.

1) Collect the stakeholder requirements for the data center.

2) Forecast capacity requirements to determine how big the data center needs to be to meet the requirements.

3) Sell the project internally. Data centers are mission critical and meeting the requirements is #1 priority.

4) Bid out the project to industry experts.

Now let’s look at  Daniel’s steps.

1) Time to Market

2) Cost

3) Efficiency

4) Flexibility and Density

And the goals of the Microsoft team.

The Goals our Engineering Team Set

· Reduce time-to-market and deliver the facility at the same time as the computing infrastructure

· Reduce capital cost per megawatt and reduce COGS per kilowatt per month by class

· Increase ROIC and minimize the up-front investment for data centers

· Differentiate reliability and redundancy by data center class and design the system to be flexible to accommodate any class of service in the same facility

· Drive data center efficiency up while lowering PUE, water usage, and overall TCOE

· Develop a solution to accept multiple levels of density and form factors, such as racks, skids, or containers

Why take this approach?

Perhaps most importantly, with Generation 4 we can quickly add capacity incrementally in response to demand. Gone are the days when we had to wait 12-18 months for a large data center to be built, only to use a small portion of its capacity while we waited for demand to catch up to capacity. In short, our Generation 4 design delivers a revolution in terms of time to market that the data center industry has never seen before.

Heaters in a Refrigerator, Describing a Typical Server in a Data Center to Layman

Found an interesting blog entry by Philip Evans.

Phil Evans is an Infrastructure Optimisation consultant with Microsoft Services in the UK. He is a passionate believer in right-size computing and helps organisations get the best out of their IT infrastructure spend.

Phil uses a simple concept of equating IT equipment to electric space heaters running 24 x 7 in a refrigerator.

It's that simple, but few organisations are prepared to tackle poor utilisation of their server infrastructure.  In the economic boom years, running an empty fridge was not a big deal.  Today, however, it's different.  Take Internet Service Providers - do they run servers that do little or nothing?  I think not - they will provision new hardware when they absolutely have to and not before.  Doing so is exactly how they steer a course between operating costs and profits.

The average server power supply runs at about 800 Watts peak capacity.  That's having a home electric heater or vacuum cleaner on 24/7, producing lots of carbon.  Now imagine the 300 vacuum cleaners being stored in a large fridge 24/7 and that's what you have in the average data center.  It just doesn't add up.

Storage Area Networks (SANS)are even worse.  These are intensively-packed units of hard disk drives that spin constantly, even when not in use.  SAN units (aggregated into large collections) typically use 1500-2000 Watts EACH, meaning that the average implementation could use up to 40 Kilowatts of power - that's 40 electric fires (in a large fridge, don't forget) running 24/7.

Then consider the fridge itself.  Would you put a heater in a fridge?  Of course not - but that is exactly what a data center is and the only means of cooling for most installations is to chill air and push that air in.  Doing so actually requires more energy than is actually being generated within the data center (simple laws of physics come into play here).  Wouldn't it be better to just regulate the temperature of the incoming air into a data center rather than trying to isolate it from an energy perspective?

We take it for granted PUE is important, but many users don’t get it that data centers are like refrigerators full of space heaters. You can continue the story by saying a typical refrigerator cycles on and off and has a life cycle of 14 years, but imagine the stress put on the refrigerator as it runs 24 x 7 cooling the space heaters.  The lifespan is now less than 5 years.  Then you need battery backup and generators to keep your space heaters and refrigerators running when the power goes out.

Others may understand how their servers impact the data center infrastructure using this story.  I am going to try this in a presentation. 

Thanks Philip for putting your idea out there.

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

There is a lot of news on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology focusing on Google and Microsoft.

CNET News

Obama enlists Microsoft, Google execs to help in push to boost R&D ...

Computerworld - ‎9 hours ago‎

... two of the people who will help him shape the government's science and technology policies are top executives from Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. Obama ...

Google, Microsoft Execs on Obama Science Panel PC Magazine

paidContent.org - Google's Schmidt, Microsoft's Mundie To Advise ... Washington Post

Google CEO, Microsoft exec on Obama tech board CNET News

Bizjournals.com

Full coverage – 23 sources »

GOOG – MSFT

Obama Unveils Science Panel; Includes Google, Microsoft Executives

CNNMoney.com - ‎13 hours ago‎

It includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt , who was an early backer of Obama's presidential campaign. In addition to Schmidt, the group will include Craig Mundie ...

GOOG – MSFT

TechCrunch

Google's Schmidt and Microsoft's Mundie Appointed As Obama Tech ...

TechCrunch - ‎11 hours ago‎

by Leena Rao on April 27, 2009 Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, and Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, have been named to President's ...

The official press announcement is here. Out of the 20 here are the ones who have an environmental background.

Rosina Bierbaum, a widely-recognized expert in climate-change science and ecology, is Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Her PhD is in evolutionary biology and ecology. She served as Associate Director for Environment in OSTP in the Clinton Administration, as well as Acting Director of OSTP in 2000-2001. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

John Holdren is serving as co-chair of PCAST in addition to his duties as Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. Prior to this appointment Dr. Holdren was a Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He also served concurrently as Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and as Director of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship.

Mario Molina is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth's ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases. The only Mexican-born Nobel laureate in science, he served on PCAST for both Clinton terms. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

Ernest J. Moniz is a Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, Director of the Energy Initiative, and Director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at MIT. His research centers on energy technology and policy, including the future of nuclear power, coal, natural gas, and solar energy in a low-carbon world. He served as Under Secretary of the Department of Energy (1997-2001) and Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1995-1997).

Maxine Savitz is retired general manager of Technology Partnerships at Honeywell, Inc and has more than 30 years of experience managing research, development and implementation programs for the public and private sectors, including in the aerospace, transportation, and industrial sectors. From 1979 to 1983 she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Conservation in the US Department of Energy. She currently serves as vice-president of the National Academy of Engineering.

Barbara Schaal is Professor of Biology at Washington University in St Louis. She is a renowned plant geneticist who has used molecular genetics to understand the evolution and ecology of plants, ranging from the US Midwest to the tropics. Dr Schaal serves as Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences, the first woman ever elected to that role.

Daniel Schrag is the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  He is also Director of the Harvard University-wide Center for Environment. He was trained as a marine geochemist and has employed a variety of methods to study the carbon cycle and climate over a wide range of Earth’s history. Awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 2000, he has recently been working on technological approaches to mitigating future climate change.

7 out of 20 have specific environmental background.  I think these 7 will have bigger impact than Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Craig Mundie.

Microsoft’s Farewell Blog Entry?

Mike Manos’s farewell blog entry is up on his site.

Farmers, so long

April 13, 2009 by mmanos

This post represents a bittersweet moment in my career. As you have no doubt heard I am moving on from Microsoft to take on an exciting senior role at Digital Realty Trust. I will save the specifics on my new role and its mission for a future post on my personal Loosebolts blog. But for now, I want to reflect a bit on my work here at Microsoft, our team, and a little bit on what it means to be a  farmer.

A farmer you say? What the heck is he talking about? As I sit here writing this post my thoughts go back to one of many memorable moments here at the company. It’s a rainy, windy and biting cold day in April and a crowd of around 150 people are milling about the recently completed Microsoft data center facility in Quincy, Washington. The crowd is an odd mixture of city and state officials, Microsoft executives and facilities personnel, and key vendors from construction firms to operational support teams. Everyone is anxious for the ribbon-cutting ceremony to begin and I am mingling my way to the front of the crowd. Despite the weather there is a warmth and a glow as we have just completed Microsoft’s first mega-scale facility and the team is full of pride at the accomplishment.

This post doesn’t have anything of real interest, and reminds me of a press release.  What I want to see is a post from Mike after he leaves Microsoft.

I did run into Mike’s new Digital Reality Trusts co-workers at Uptime’s conference, and they can’t wait for him to start.

Off to Uptime Institute IT Symposium

Next week is Uptime Symposium.  Rich Miller will be there as well for Data Center Knowledge, and we are both on the same panel.

The Uptime Institute’s four-day Symposium 2009 runs next Monday through Thursday (April 13-16) at the Hilton New York. Day passes are available. In a late addition, Google’s Chris Malone will be on hand to discuss the company’s data center innovation and energy efficiency. “Google is using industry-proven concepts in radically different ways, which has led to millions of dollars in savings for the company,” said Kenneth G. Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute. “By making appropriate business tradeoffs that optimize reliability, performance, and capital and operational expenditures, the Institute estimates that Google has saved at least $500 million in capital expenditures alone. The point here is that any company with a similar business case, application portfolio and appetite for risk can accomplish equally striking results.” Malone will present on Tuesday at noon. NOTE: I’ll be participating in a panel Tuesday at 3:30 pm on “Sustainable Computing in the News.” If you’re at the conference, stop by to say hello.

Last year, I blogged on Mike Manos’s opening keynote and it was a good one to set the tone for following year.

Microsoft's Mike Manos Opening Keynote Uptime Institute, Green Enterprise Computing

The opening of the Uptime Institute Symposium started with Pitt Turner, saying "what are we doing here?" Green Enterprise Computing is a timely topic for the industry event. I've seen Mike present before, and here is what I got out of Mike's latest presentation as new information to digest.

1. Mike's call to action for all was to stop being information hogs, and to share with the industry. He gave numerous example, and here are a few Mike shared.
2. Mike emphasized that in spite of a focus on technology. Microsoft has found having the right people and processes makes bigger impact than technology . Mike states over 50% of data center outages are caused by human error. This contrasts a common method to invest in multiple layers of infrastructure redundancy to achieve uptime.Mike was proud of Microsoft's ability to have a 100% facilities uptime over 7 years by implementing strong and disciplined maintenance programs. Also, redundant infrastructure creates more energy waste.
3. Technology is not the only answer to energy efficiency. People are the opportunity. Microsoft achieved a PUE improvement from 2.2 to 1.8 with no new technology just by people making changes to existing systems in one of their older facilities.
4. Mike didn't say this, but bottom line he emphasizes an Amazon.com approach in getting data on everything, and they'll figure out what to do with it after by giving people the information to do the right thing.

Official Google Blog Post, Efficient Data Center Summit

Google has their official web site on their Efficient Data Center up.

Efficient Data Center Summit
April 1st 2009

On April 1^st, we hosted leaders of the IT industry to discuss best practices for improving data center efficiency. The day was spent discussing how to make significant reductions in resource use while meeting service requirements. Saving electricity and water is not just good for the environment, it makes good business sense too. Being "green" reduces operating costs and can keep our industry competitive; it is the economic advantage that makes efficiency truly sustainable.

For those who could not attend in person, you can view the slide decks from the event below, or watch videos of the entire day here:

Part 1: Green Grid, Google's PUE, What's Next

Part 2: Best Practices, Data Center Tour, Panel Q & A

Part 3: Sustainable Data Centers, Water Management, Wrap Up

And, they have their blog post on it to spread the word.

Designing lean, green, energy-saving machines

4/09/2009 12:32:00 PM

Last week Google hosted a Data Center Efficiency Summit, bringing together approximately 160 industry leaders to share insights and best practices. Since it was April Fool's Day, we threw in a few jokes to keep the atmosphere fun (oil-cooled data center, anyone?), but the topic is serious: How can the IT industry keep growing while also exercising good environmental stewardship?
We disclosed for the first time details about the design of our ultra-efficient data centers. We also provided a first-ever video tour of a Google container data center as well as a water treatment facility. We detailed how we measure data center efficiency and discussed how we reduced our facility energy use by up to 85%. The engineers who developed our efficient battery backup solution even brought an actual Google server to the event.

Changing Data Center Construction – Mike Mano’s Impact

I”ve had the pleasure of having many conversations with Mike Manos at various data center events, and discussing how data centers need to be built.  The latest vision was explained in Mike’s post on generation 4 data centers.

Our Vision for Generation 4 Modular Data Centers - One way of Getting it just right . . .

December 2, 2008 by mmanos

Data Centers are a hot topic these days. No matter where you look, this once obscure aspect of infrastructure is getting a lot of attention. For years, there have been cost pressures on IT operations and this, when the need for modern capacity is greater than ever, has thrust data centers into the spotlight. Server and rack density continues to rise, placing DC professionals and businesses in tighter and tougher situations while they struggle to manage their IT environments. And now hyper-scale cloud infrastructure is taking traditional technologies to limits never explored before and focusing the imagination of the IT industry on new possibilities.

What led Mike to this vision was he had a complete team.  His team ran data centers, builds data centers, and designed them.

This holistic view allowed Mike’s team to think about the complete lifecycle of a data center, and question the existing standards.  As much as people think about changing data center construction, the secret to Mike Manos’s technique was how the team was organized.

Think about how your data center teams are organized and can they question the existing data center methods.

The data center industry is poised on a transition. What is the most efficient way to deliver information. The most efficient is going to have the lowest costs to provide information services.

The rapid growth of netbooks and mobile devices is make the data center’s role more important.

We can thank Mike for showing how data center organizations should be organized to be innovative.  Here is Mike’s role at Digital Realty Trust.

In his new position at Digital Realty Trust, Manos will oversee datacenter design and construction across the Company's global portfolio of properties as well as oversee Technical Operations for the organization.

Are you ready to change your data center organization?

Oh yeh.  This also means you need to question your whole data center supply chain as well.  Who are the right supplier/partners to build the efficient data centers?