Green Data Center Blog

Salmon Habitat Threatens Dam Survival

Part of a sustainable and green data center is thinking long term and looking at the social impacts that can effect a data center operation. Seattle Times has an article about a US district judge telling federal agencies their salmon-recovery plans need work.

Salmon-recovery plan needs work, judge says

A judge is telling federal agencies they need to do more to help Columbia Basin salmon survive, or he will find the latest restoration plan in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

By Seattle Times staff and news services

PORTLAND — A judge is telling federal agencies they need to do more to help Columbia Basin salmon survive, or he will find the latest restoration plan in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

A Monday letter from U.S. District Judge James Redden to lawyers for all sides in a long-running court battle says he continues to have "serious reservations" because the standard for success is not strong enough.

Redden also wants a contingency plan that would include funding, congressional approvals and other steps needed to breach the lower Snake Rivers dams in the event other measures fail to restore salmon runs.

The letter sets the stage for a new round of out-of-court negotiations between plaintiffs — environmental groups and others — and the federal government over the program to revive endangered and threatened salmon runs in the Columbia River basin amid the operations of federal hydropower dams.

What is the probability of the federal gov’t breaching a hydroelectric dam to restore the salmon habitat?

Todd True, a plaintiff's attorney with Earthjustice, said he hopes breaching the dams can become an important component of the final plan.

"We hope that it will rise to the top of any objective evaluation," True said.

In years past, Redden has twice rejected federal plans for restoring the Columbia-basin salmon runs protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

And judge is losing his patience.

Redden said "aggressive actions are necessary to save this vital [salmon] resource." He said that the litigants are finally starting to work together, and he is optimistic for the prospects of a new agreement.

He warned that the government has spent the past decade "treading water" and "we cannot afford to waste another decade."

Here are the dams in the snake river area.

Dams of the Columbia Basin & Their Effects on the Native Fishery

Bonneville * The Dalles * John Day & McNary * Priest Rapids & Wanapum * Rock Island, Rocky Reach, Wells & Chief Joseph * Grand Coulee * Hells Canyon, Oxbow, Brownlee & Dworshak * Revelstoke, Keenleyside, Mica & Duncan

Ice Harbor Dam. Courtesy of Corps of Engineers

Ice Harbor Dam: Snake River, near the confluence with the Columbia River at mile marker 9.7, completed in 1961, federally owned , concrete gravity hydroelectric, 1 lock, 2 fish ladders, 2822 feet long, 100 feet high, spillway 590 feet, 10 gates with an earth fill embankment. The dam creates Lake Sacajawea, which extends 32 miles upstream to the Lower Monumental Dam.

Lower Monumental Dam. Courtesy of Bonneville Power Administration

Lower Monumental Dam: Snake River at mile marker 41.6, completed in 1969, federally owned, concrete gravity with a short earth fill abutment, spillway 572 feet, 8 gates, 3791 feet long ,height 100 feet, 2 fish ladders, 1 lock, creates Lake Herbert G. West, 28.1 miles to the Little Goose Dam, hydroelectric.

Little Goose Dam. Courtesy of Army Corps of Engineers

Little Goose Dam: Snake River at mile marker 70.3, completed in 1970, additional units completed in 1978, federally owned, concrete gravity type hydroelectric, spillway 512 feet, 8 gates, 2665 feet long, 98 feet high. Creates Lake Bryan which extends 37.2 miles upriver to the Lower Granite Dam.

Lower Granite Dam. Courtesy of Army Corps of Engineers

Lower Granite Dam: Snake River at mile marker 107.5, completed in 1975, federally owned, concrete gravity, hydroelectric, spillway 512 feet, 8 gates with an earth fill abutment. The dam is 3200 feet long with a height of 100 feet, and employs 2 fish ladders. Lower Granite dam was the first dam on the Snake River to use screens that protected the juvenile fish from the turbines (River of Life, Channel of Death by Keith C. Peterson, Confluence Press, 1995, p.184).

Environmentalists, the four treaty tribes (Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, Nez Perce), scientists, and non-native fishermen have all called for the breaching of these four lower Snake River dams to facilitate salmon habitat restoration. Doing so would leave Lewiston, Idaho without its seaport. While many have considered drawdowns a radical solution to the region's salmon crisis, recently, the idea has gained credence. The issue is a contentious one with emotions high on both sides.

XS11-VX8, Dell’s Via Nano Server, Anti-VMware and Intel

Dell and Via are teaming up to provide low power servers.  Computerworld writes.

Dell uses Via Nano laptop chips in servers

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Dell's new ultra-light server will use low-power processors designed for use in cheap laptops. The XS11-VX8 servers will use Nano netbook processors from Via Technologies to run light server workloads such as Web hosting. Dell's move to use the Nano chips is part of a growing trend to use low-power chips in servers to reduce energy and cooling costs in data-centers. The Dell servers will be priced at around 400 dollars and will bundle 12 server boards with Nano chips in one chassis. Each server board will include Via's Nano U2250 processor, which runs at 1.3GHz, and a storage module.

interesting that Dell has 12 server boards per chassis.  Given the competition for market share i wonder if Dell will count a  XS11-VX8 as one or twelve servers?

 

Why would Dell create these low power, low performance servers?

The Register gives a reason.

In the Web hosting world, you can charge a premium for customers who have dedicated servers. But Moore's Law and every-more powerful processors combined with server virtualization puts pressure on Web hosting companies to do shared servers for their clients because no modest Web customer can use a whole one-socket or two-socket server today. What's a Web hosting company trying to make profit to do?

Buy servers using physically smaller and less powerful servers, of course.

And that is just what Dell's Data Center Solutions unit, which creates and sells custom-designed server platforms for hyperscale clients, wants to sell to hosting companies. According to Drew Schulke, product marketing manager for the DCS unit, five hosting providers approached Dell because they wanted the option of providing customers with smaller physical servers, perfectly capable of handling Web hosting workloads and not depending on virtualization. Schulke says that the number of machines that these companies have already deployed and their plans to offer dedicated hosting were sufficient to justify investing in custom server designs.

This is exactly the opposite (anti) of what Intel and VMware want the industry to go.

Dell looked around at Intel's Atom processor as well as a few others, but VIA Technologies' Nano processor is the only one of the low-power x64 chips that has the option of supporting virtualization through its VMX virtualization extensions. It isn't so much that these hosting companies want to be able to use virtualization to carve up these servers as it is they want to use virtualization to be able to manage the server image on a dedicated machine. You can't use Xen or KVM - as two early customers for the VIA boxes plan to - to package up a server image on an Atom processor because it does not support Intel's VT instructions.

The Dell DCS VIA server versus a disk
drive (Click to Enlarge)

Dell took the Nano chip and chipset and worked with VIA and an unnamed original design manufacturer to create what it calls a "hot plug server" based on a modified version of VIA's Nano processor and its similarly named motherboard. Using a 1.6 GHz Nano processor and the Dell XS11-VX8 server module, which is slightly longer than a 3.5-inch disk storage bay, Dell can give hosting companies a 64-bit Nano server that has from 1 GB to 3 GB of main memory and that has an idle power draw of around 15 watts and that draws somewhere between 20 and 29 watts under peak loads. That is about one-tenth the power used by a standard two-socket 1U box that is not running at a particularly high utilization.

and this continues down the idea  I had on “little green servers”

Ever so slowly, the idea of modest computing - using Moore's Law to make smaller and more energy efficient computers, not boosting component counts - seems to be starting to cache on. Just last week, motherboard and whitebox server maker Super Micro announced a server based on the Atom chip. And back in January, Rackable Systems adopted Mini-ITX boards from VIA for use in its MicroSlice rack servers, and Microsoft has been tooling around with the concept too. ®

Increase efficiency with Models, Applied in online advertising scenario

WSJ has an article about Chrysler’s use of www.organic.com

Modeling Tools Stretch Ad Dollars

Chrysler Uses Digital-Response Data to Adjust Commercials, Drive Web Visits

By EMILY STEEL

With a reduced advertising budget and a desperate need to increase sales, Chrysler is relying more heavily on new technologies to predict how ad purchases will translate into sales.

A team of statisticians, economists, software engineers and media planners at Chrysler's digital marketing agency, Organic, has designed a "media modeling" system that helps the company calculate the best ways to allocate its marketing dollars. The system calculates how much ad spending is needed to meet certain sales targets and then analyzes how both online and offline ads affect Web activity and, ultimately, sales.

Car makers and other companies have used forecasting tools for years, but digital ads have ramped up the systems' sophistication and accelerated reaction time to the data gathered.

Chrysler is using digital-ad agency Organic to try to make the most of its marketing. Organic's technology was used in Chrysler's campaign to promote the new Dodge Ram truck, shown above in a video.

"As a marketer, it helps me be smarter about the dollars I need to reach the sales goals we are responsible for," says Susan Thomson, Chrysler's director of media and events. "It gives you some science."

What does this have to do about data centers is the economic use of dollars to get value. Organic is creating models of how people will  interact with media.

In refining its model, Organic learned how certain ads spur people to visit the Web. It then figured out which Web activities translate into actual auto sales. Some actions, such as scheduling a test drive online or entering a ZIP code to locate a dealer, are a good predictor of sales. Other actions, such as pricing a vehicle or playing with the colorizing features on the site, occur earlier in the shopping process and aren't a direct indicator of serious buyer interest.

The result was a system that predicted 2008 sales within one percentage point of actual sales figures for its Jeep brands, Chrysler says.

And, these ideas are good to think about how models can be created for how users interact with data centers.

Organic modeled the allocation of money

vs. the old way

More Energy Government Regulation Coming

MSNBC sites Reuters in on energy used by devices.

Cell phones, TVs undo efficiency gains

Study: Energy used by household electronic devices could triple by 2030

By Gerard Wynn

updated 1 hour, 9 minutes ago

LONDON - Demand for energy-thirsty gadgets such as cell phones, iPods, PCs and plasma TVs is undoing efficiency gains elsewhere, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.

The Paris-based energy adviser to 28 developed countries urged governments in a report to keep pace with the invention of new consumer devices when crafting efficiency standards, and implored people to make thriftier choices.

The IEA warned that otherwise energy used by household electronic devices could triple by 2030.

Digging into the IEA site found this presentation with this conclusion that was part of the release above.

Note the last statement.

We need strong, robust government policies that ensure greater energy efficiency.

Mike Manos Announces Chiller-Side Chats, Raises Good Questions – Answers?

Mike Manos kicked off his “chiller-side chats” concept on his blog.  And, this is good to see someone bringing up the conflicts in data center design and operations.

With this post, I am kicking off a series of posts in which my sincerest wish is to help all three groups during these stressful times.   Having spent significant time in all three camps I will offer up my own personal take on the issues at hand.  I am calling them Chiller-Side Chats.   From time to time I will post my thoughts on various issues aimed at bridging the communication between these organizations.  I strongly encourage anyone reading these posts to drop comments or offer up suggestions so we can have a lively discussion on these topics.

The three groups Mike refers to is real estate, business users, and data center eng/ops. Mike goes on highlights an issue.

Three worlds have collided and its never pretty.   In my experience and in conversations with many customers in all three categories its a time that fosters frustration, mistrust, and stress.  Its also a wonderful time for less than scrupulous vendors, contractors, and consultants to take advantage of the situation and cause poor decisions to be made.   I am not saying that all consultants are bad or ill intentioned, in fact, there are some phenomenal organizations and products out there.   Its just that you need to be aware of the biases and “religious” debates in this space. 

…

Different firms have different biases and religious affiliations. 

Sometimes the firm that wins the deal is the one who has the best sales team.

Mike is helping to create awareness for a problem I’ve seen for many years in the data center industry. 

And, the good thing I’ve already thought of an answer/method to address this issue.

Modeling.

Modeling enables Trust of a technical solution.

For a trustful and friendly use of technology, the user must be able to have a clear mental model of its use and functioning (way of working), being it partial, superficial and even wrong, but at the same time sufficient for having precise expectations and for knowing how and what to do, i.e. sufficient for reducing uncertainty and perceiving safety and reliability.

So, why model the data center? It increases trust in the data center system including its users. Higher trusts promotes knowledge sharing.

It is clear how trust is a precondition for knowledge sharing and a result of it or, more precisely, that trust is a mediator, a catalyst of the process: it is a mental and interpersonal (cognitive, dispositional, and relational) precise condition for the two crucial steps in the organisational flow of knowledge.

The relationship between trust and knowledge sharing is circular: in order to trust Y, X must either have information about Y, helping him to evaluate Y's trustworthiness, or having knowledge in common with him that encourages the establishment of a trust relationship so as values sharing; on the other hand, in order to share knowledge, it is necessary to have a trust relation or atmosphere.

While caring of making knowledge capital explicit and circulating, an organisation should care of what are the beliefs of the actors about the knowledge itself, about the organisation values, authority, infrastructure, and about each-others, and what they expect and feel on the basis of such beliefs. In knowledge management organisations should monitor and build the right expectations in their members. Knowledge management entails a cognitive, affective, and structural "trust management" in organisations.

The trick is to get the right modeling tools, and this has been a difficult search.  The good thing is I’ve found a partner on this topic, and we’re working on data center modeling solutions.

Regulation Compliance is Next Step in Green Data Centers

DataCenterKnowledge has a post on Digital Realty Trust’s survey on concerns about regulation coming.

The changes in Washington are being felt in the data center. The changed political and regulatory climate is clearly seen in survey data released today by Digital Realty Trust, the largest wholesale data center developer. The company’s annual study of green data center trends in the U.S. found that 69 percent of data center executives said they were “extremely or very concerned” about government regulation, and a huge surge in interest in using carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

“What dominated last year’s study was the need for clearer standards and best practices for green data centers,” said Jim Smith, CTO of Digital Realty Trust. “By contrast, what dominates this year’s study is companies’ concerns about potential government regulation and how that would impact data center operations.”

…

“Concerns about potential regulations are driving companies to look closely at their data centers and accelerate the process of implementing green initiatives to increase energy efficiency,” said Smith, who said concerns about government regulation are somewhat offset by good faith efforts by the Department of Energy and  Environmental Protection Agency to work with the industry and groups like The Green Grid. “We believe that collaboration between the government and data center professionals is the most effective approach to addressing data center energy efficiency.”

What most people don’t understand what comes with being green claims is an opportunity for gov’t officials to measure your compliance.  Regulations and compliance are ways opportunities to tax.

Should you be concerned?

What are the carbon impact of your data centers?  All the top data center operators know theirs.

Do you know yours?

Why are data centers vulnerable?  They are owned by rich companies which can afford to pay carbon impact taxes.

PUE applied to PCs,

Ade Miller has a post on the idea of applying PUE to PCs.  What is the total power used by a PC divided by power used by the PC motherboard and peripherals?

How Green is Your PC? Estimating Power Usage Effectiveness

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 – 3:00 am

How efficient is your PC? Here’s a thought… How about taking some ideas from the people who run data centers? Turns out data centers use a measure called Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) to assess how energy efficient they are:

Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. PUE is determined by dividing the amount of power entering a data center by the power used to run the computer infrastructure within it. PUE is therefore expressed as a ratio, with overall efficiency improving as the quotient decreases toward 1.
- SearchDataCenter.com

Err… So what does that mean for your PC? What if you think about the PC on your desk as a mini data center. How would you work out it’s PUE?

This brings up an interesting concept of publishing a PUE for IT equipment.  Where is the power overhead going?

Unfortunately not all of the power drawn by your PC makes it to the parts that matter. Power supplies aren’t perfectly efficient. So the next thing to do is factor in the computer’s power supply (PSU) efficiency. You can probably get this from the manufacturers web site. If you’re lucky they’ll give you a graph showing the efficiency under different loads like the one on the right for my Corsair TX650W. If not pretty much all manufacturers will give you an average number, especially if its 80 Plus rated. If not you can take the average number quoted.

What’s interesting about the graph is it shows how it’s possible to use an efficient PSU inefficiently by mismatching it to the rest of the PC. The efficiency peaks and drops off for very low and very high power consumptions.

For example for my my developer/gaming machine the power reading under load is 240W, this is 240/650 = 37% of the PSUs maximum load. From the graph above this gives an efficiency of 83% for a 110V circuit so 240W * 83% = 199W is actually delivered by the PSU to the rest of the computer. Now you know the amount of power actually being delivered by the PSU.

Unfortunately some of the components inside your computer aren’t actually contributing to the bottom line, they’re just there to cool the bits that are. Namely… the fans.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are PUE numbers for Ade’s equipment.

I found this article on eweek on server fan efficiency.

Server fans: How to optimize the power used

Second only to the power supply, server fans have become a large user of power (other than the actual computing-related components themselves). As servers have become smaller and smaller—and now commonly pack several multi-core CPUs in a 1U-high server—the challenge of moving a sufficient amount of air through the server requires multiple small, high-velocity fans. They need to push air through very small restrictive airflow areas within the server and the very small intake and exhaust areas at the front and rear of the server chassis. 

These fans can consume 10 to 15 percent or more of the total power drawn by the server. And since the fans are DC, they draw power from the power supply, thus increasing the input power to the server, again multiplied by the inefficiency of the power supply. In addition, in 1U servers, most or all of the airflow is routed through the power supply fans since there is virtually little or no free area on the rear panel to exhaust the hot air.

To improve efficiency, many new servers have thermostatically-controlled fans which raise the fan speed as more airflow is needed to cool the server. This is an improvement over the old method of fixed-speed server fans that run maximum speed all the time. However, these variable speed fans still require a lot of energy as internal heat loads rise and/or input air temperature rises.

For example, if the server's internal CPUs and other computing-related components draw 250 to 350 watts from the power supply, the fans may require 30 to 75 watts to keep enough air moving through the server. This results in the overall increase in server power draw as heat density and air temperature rises in the data center. In fact, studies that have measured and plotted fan energy usage versus server power and inlet air temperatures show some very steep, fan-related power curves in temperature-controlled fans of small servers.

Stop the Uptime Spam Machine!

For those of you who attend Uptime Events, you’ve been a victim of Uptime’s Spam Machine.  I am sitting with 4 other data center professionals who all have been victims of the Uptime Spam.  Before the conference I was receiving 3 – 6 pieces of e-mail a day.

Unfortunately, all this spam is leaving a bad taste regarding Uptime.  Uptime is my leading spam sender.

Here is the latest spam email from Bruce Taylor advertising Tile Flow.

Making Green Data Centers

Dear Data Center Professional:
The energy consumed by the cooling infrastructure in a data center can be significantly reduced by optimizing the cooling performance, which involves achieving an airflow pattern that minimizes the mixing of hot and cold air. This optimization also reduces the operating cost and the emission of greenhouse gases.
The optimization of cooling performance requires a good understanding of airflow and temperature distribution in the data center. This understanding is best achieved via computational modeling based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique.
To learn more about the benefits of airflow and temperature modeling, please visit www.tileflow.com
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Amir Radmehr
Director, Sales and Marketing
Innovative Research, Inc.
3025 Harbor Lane N., Suite 300
Plymouth, MN 55447
Tel: (763) 519-0105, Ext. 209
E-mail: amir@inres.com
www.inres.com

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Is this the future of Uptime being hawkers of data center vendors.

www.greenm3.com at a Data Center Construction “topping-out”

I am writing this blog entry from a data center site where they just had the “topping-out” ceremony.

"Topping out" is the term used by ironworkers to indicate that the final piece of steel is being hoisted into place on a building, bridge, or other large structure.1 The project is not completed, but it has reached its maximum height. To commemorate this first milestone the final piece of iron is usually hoisted into place with a small evergreen tree (called a Christmas tree in the trade) and an American flag attached.2 The piece is usually painted white and signed by the ironworkers and visiting dignitaries (figure 1). If the project is important enough (and the largesse of the contractor great enough) the ceremony may culminate in a celebration known as a "topping out party" in which the construction crews are treated to food and drink.

I  signed my name and www.greenm3.com on the topping-out steel beam.

After all the signatures.

And ceremony pictures. (Below are the iron workers)

One reason the ironworkers observe the topping out custom is the simple fact that they are the first workers to reach the top of the structure. I guess the impulse to commemorate the achievement is similar to that of mountain climbers-or astronauts landing on the moon for that matter.3 Topping out the structure means the end is in sight for the "raising-gang"-the men who actually set the iron in place. There is more work to be done, and ironworkers will be involved in some aspects of it, but the heavy work is done and the raising gang is almost out of a job. While no two topping out ceremonies are the same, they usually have some combination of a tree, a flag, the ritual signing of the final beam, and a party.

 

The beam is put in place.

An interesting piece of trivia is the symbolism for the Christmas tree.

The custom of decorating the uppermost point of the structure with an evergreen tree is a tradition that predates the structural-steel industry in America by hundreds of years and has old Northern European roots. Although the topping out tree has ancient roots there is no consensus among modern ironworkers as to what exactly the tree symbolizes, or when and how it came to be used by the ironworkers. According to The Ironworker, the union's official publication, "for some the evergreen tree symbolizes that the job went up without a loss of life, while for others it's a good luck charm for the future occupants"(1984:11). Other accounts attribute the tree as signifying simply that "we [ironworkers] did it" (Kodish, 1989:2).

Little scholarship has been published on this custom. Most of what has been published has appeared in newspapers, popular magazines and engineering trade journals. One can get a feel for the age and scope of such tree rituals from James Frazer who discusses tree worship extensively in The Golden Bough. (Indeed, the title of the book itself is an allusion to tree worship.) For example, in Chapter Ten, "Relics of Tree-Worship in Modern Europe," Frazer reports that it was common practice in spring or early summer for the people to go into the woods and cut branches and fasten them to every house (1922:139). Frazer further remarks, "The intention of these customs is to bring home to the village, and to each house, the blessings which the tree-spirit has in its power to bestow" (1922: 139). The evergreen tree's ability to survive the harsh Northern European winter must have made it a powerful life-affirming symbol.

Problem: Carbon Neutral Marketing Paints an Environmental Target on Companies, Google’s Latest Pains

News.com has a post on Google’s Carbon Neutral marketing.

May 7, 2009 2:42 PM PDT

Do Google's carbon offsets add up to much?

by Martin LaMonica

Google, a company that runs power-hungry data centers, employs thousands of people, and operates a corporate jet, said on Wednesday that it was carbon neutral for the past two years. How so? Offsets.

The idea of a carbon offset is to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions of a company or person by investing in a project that reduces emissions from the atmosphere.

Google sees offsets as an imperfect method for lowering their total carbon footprint, among other efforts. To detractors, offsets are essentially greenwashing when companies do little more than buy offsets to meet their environmental sustainability goals.

There are many routes an offset purchase can go: wind energy farms, siphoning off methane from landfills, or making buildings more energy efficient. There's an entire industry around offsets, which can be voluntary--as Google has purchased--or regulated in countries that have climate change regulations.

Without offsets, a company--no matter green--would have a hard time claiming to be carbon neutral simply because energy consumption means pollution. Achieving carbon neutrality is complicated by the fact that there isn't universal agreement on how to account for a company's carbon emissions: should it include just a company's operations or also its supply chain and end use of its products?

But, here is part of the problem. This article was posted on May 7, 2:42p. Three days later, May 10, this article is still at the top of the home page on news.com.  This means news.com is getting lots of traffic on this article as it is a combination of google, environmental, and questioning google’s action.

I had a nice conversation with Bill Weihl at Uptime’s conference, and he is a technology geek like many of us, and not a marketing guy. What seemed like a simple thing to do to discuss 2 years of carbon neutrality actually made Google a target for many environmental groups.

Even hard-core climate activists see offsets as problematic. Climate advocate Joseph Romm, who writes for the Climate Progress blog, calls them "rip-offsets."

The problem ultimately comes down to how effective offsets are in actually reducing emissions, he says. Offset claims are very difficult to verify, and doing a lifeycle analysis of an offset project--what is the exact net reduction of a landfill methane project?--are very easy to fudge, according to Romm.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office last August published a report saying it's particularly difficult to ensure "additionality." In other words: does a purchased offset truly represent an greenhouse gas reduction above and beyond business as usual. For example, some offsets were tied to a company that was already forced to capture methane to meet existing environmental rules.

Some may see this coverage as bad PR, limiting what can be discussed on this topic and controlling the sharing of information. 

But, I think Google will roll with the coverage, and keep up their efforts with more information. Because, now millions of people have heard Google is carbon neutral.  Yahoo, Dell, and ebay are all carbon neutral as well, but none of them get the coverage Google does.