Green Data Center Blog

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope in Beta, Next is Environmental Observatory

BusinessWeek has an article about the WorldWide Telescope just released.

For people who have gazed up at the night sky in wonder and wished they had someone there to identify what they were looking at, Microsoft's (MSFT) WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is coming to the rescue.

The service, which opened to the public on May 13, lets people explore the cosmos through any computer with an Internet connection. It combines about 12 terabytes of data, including 50 surveys and 1,000 high-resolution studies, with links to astronomy research on sites around the Web. It blends the data with regularly updated photos captured by high-powered telescopes on and off the Earth, including the Hubble Space Telescope, circling the planet 353 miles up, and the Cerro Tololo Observatory, 312 miles north of Santiago, Chile, in the foothills of the Andes. Put it all together, and the WWT knits together a spellbinding panorama of the night sky.

There are some similar services available now, including Google (GOOG) Sky from the search kingpin. But what sets WWT apart is how easy it is to navigate the service and dig into more information about planets, stars, and galaxies. Sweep your mouse sideways, and you're spinning across the galaxy. Move the mouse forward, and you hurtle into the picture. You can close in on Sombrero Galaxy or a black hole in Galaxy NGC 4261 and find yourself immersed in startling details and whirling brilliant hues.

And, softpedia posts on a new Environmental Observatory.

Microsoft is building a pioneering environmental observatory together with the European Environment Agency, which will act as the foundation for the Global Observatory for Environmental Change, planned by the EEA. On May 14, 2008, Microsoft announced that it had inked a five-year alliance with EEA, destined to build what the Redmond company referred to as a world-leading online portal, with the initial focus placed on Europe. The partnership is essentially set up as a way to make environmental information available to the general public with the Global Observatory for Environmental Change online-portal acting as the main source.

Professor Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the EEA, revealed that the portal would enable people across the world, starting with 500 million Europeans in the initial stage, to take part in the process of improving the environment. For McGlade, the collaboration with the Redmond company is simply a guaranteed method to reach an audience as large as possible.

The WWT is a cool software + service application. Combine this possibility with a narrative capability to an Environmental Observatory and people will be able to learn more about environmental impact.

To turn WWT into even more of an educational tool, Microsoft built a feature that allows people to pull together different images and create narrated stories that they can share with others. "People have always looked up to the night sky and made up stories," Wong says. "This is a way for them to share those stories and that knowledge."

The service also allows you to look at different approaches to studying the universe, whether by studying cosmic dust or microwaves. That provides people with a broader understanding of astronomy research. And folks can even sign up to get feeds from specific telescopes around the world or in space.

WWT is expected to add more features that Google Sky has now. For instance, researchers can add their own data to Google Sky and use application programming interfaces (APIs) to put models of their data on their own sites. That competition, says Goodman, will be good for both as well as for researchers and amateurs alike.

The competition between Google and Microsoft is going to create some of the best environmental tools, and Data Centers are probably going to be one of those things that are studied for their environmental impact, given their use of power and water.

A little bit of irony that Google and Microsoft will create the tools that allow others to measure the environmental impact of the data centers that host the applications.

Christian Belady's Bottom Line Opinion 10 years ago, We Need A Better System

Microsoft's Christian Belady was going through his old presentations and found a public presentation on The Big Picture, A Philosophical Discussion to Make US Think. Download Cbelady.pdf The presentation is an accumulation of predictions he was making in the late '90s as part of making a case for more efficient computing while at HP.

This topic seemed appropriate as Christian and I sat in a Green IT presentation today from a major IT corporation, and were discussing afterwards with an ex-semiconductor engineer on what has caused companies to make the change to energy efficiency.  Coincidentally, we all had made the realization 10 years ago, and compared how long it took for executives to accept that energy efficiency is an important feature. Even though we had all figure it out, Christian is the one who can point to a specific presentation and putting his predictions out there.

Jumping to the bottom line, here is Christian's call to action:

Summary
Power is not just a….
•component problem
•System problem
•Data center problem
•Utility Infrastructure problem
We have a huge opportunity to solve these problems as one system and optimize the solution.
WE NEED A BETTER SYSTEM!

Big Picture
Bottom Line
We need to cooperate to solve these problems on a much larger scale.
Develop consortiums to address these global issues and influence the industry, government and culture proactively.
We need to ensure that we have a better world.

Here are some additional notes Christian provided for his presentation.

This public presentation (first time I talked about all of this externally) was where I talked about the following:

1) 100MW data center was and their water needs - Slide 30

2) How the government is going to care about us  - Slide 32 (data is wrong though) and Slide 34

3) How when China standard of living will increase and really squeeze our energy costs

4) The hypocrisy of how we get all mad that people are burning down the rain forests to live and the US lights up the globe Slide 36

5) My Quote on how data centers will need your own power generation Slide 37

6) How we need to solve as a system Slide 40

7) My bottom line “My Plea for Industry Cooperation and Consortiums” Slide 41

10 Emerging Technologies 2008, reports Technology Review

Technology Review has an interesting list of their 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008 that are most likely to change way we live.

Here are some possible Green ones for the data center.

Probabilistic Chips

Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.

Offline Web Applications

Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.

And one I was surprised (no pun intended) to see

Modeling Surprise

Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.

A video of Eric Horvitz explains his ideas.  I've known Eric since he joined Microsoft and have had numerous meetings on enterprise applications for Modeling Surprise. In going through his recent research he is another Microsoft Researcher who has used Microsoft's Data Center information to test some of his theories. His current public demonstration is surprise modeling system for Seattle traffic.

What would be awesome is to see Eric apply his ideas to detect the surprises in data center operations. You know those surprises that get people fired or at minimum dragged in front of the executives to explain why something broke in IT. Hopefully I can get his interest on this idea given there is tons of data, lots of opportunity, and the impact is substantial.

Whale-Inspired Hydrodynamic Edge, doubles performance of Wind Turbines - Are fans in the data center another application?

Technology Review has a article about Harvard Universities Research on the Hydrodynamic edge on the humpback whale

Marine scientists have long suspected that humpback whales' incredible agility comes from the bumps on the leading edges of their flippers. Now Harvard University researchers have come up with a mathematical model that helps explain this hydrodynamic edge. The work gives theoretical weight to a growing body of empirical evidence that similar bumps could lead to more-stable airplane designs, submarines with greater agility, and turbine blades that can capture more energy from the wind and water.

Already, attempts are being made to incorporate the tubercle design into commercial products. Fish is president of a venture based in Toronto, Ontario, called WhalePower, which has begun demonstrating the advantages of tubercles when they're integrated into the leading edges of wind-turbine and fan blades.

Prototypes of wind-turbine blades (see image below) have shown that the delayed stall doubles the performance of the turbines at wind speeds of about 17 miles per hour and allows the turbine to capture more energy out of lower-speed winds. For example, the turbines generate the same amount of power at 10 miles per hour that conventional turbines generate at 17 miles per hour. The tubercles effectively channel the air flow across the blades and create swirling vortices that enhance lift.

There is a company who is using this technology called Whale Power. Let's hope these guys are successful and can apply their ideas to the data center's cooling systems.

Whalepower Tubercle Technology

A FUNDAMENTAL ADVANCE

Inspired by the flippers of Humpback Whales,  WhalePower has developed something truly remarkable – Tubercle Technology – which takes its name from the bumps on the leading edge of the whale’s flippers.

THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY   … AND RIGHT ON TIME

Tubercle Technology is more than just another blade design: It is a fundamental advance in fluid dynamics which will transform a host of machines built on that challenging science. Just when the world needs it most, Tubercle Technology offers new options. Turbines, compressors, pumps and fans will never be the same again.

Standby! The Whale is about to break through conventional limitations.

Green IT spend to Outstrip Y2K within 2 years, reports S2 Intelligence

Computerworld Australia reports on research from S2 Intelligence.

Within two years, most big businesses will be on their way to spending three times as much on systems for carbon accounting and sustainability reporting compared to what they spent on Y2K, according to analyst and research firm, S2 Intelligence.

Businesses will collectively spend at least US$595 billion on systems to support green accounting.

Releasing forecasts on what businesses will spend on systems to support green accounting through to 2015, S2 Intelligience estimates Australian business will spend at least US$6.5 billion.

The research firm's managing director, Dr Bruce McCabe, said to reduce the carbon footprint of businesses we first need to measure it, but green accounting today is shallow, with lots of window dressing and little actual measurement.

"By 2010 all types of businesses will be investing in systems that support detailed and continuous information collection."

It's interesting that they think Carbon Labelling will drive purchasing behavior.

"Carbon labelling in supermarkets is a good example. Led by chains such as Tesco in the UK, this will soon impact what makes it into the shopping basket.

"Even schemes that follow a simple star rating will cascade into new accounting requirements for every business in the supply chain," he said.

" The primary producer, manufacturer, wholesaler and transport provider will all need to be able to report their contribution--or lose business to someone that does."

Green IT hype causes confusion for data centre

ITPro summarizes research by Aperture Research Institute (ARI) on how customers are wary of vendor's Green IT marketing messages.

Green IT causing data centre confusion

Posted by Miya Knights at 4:01PM, Tuesday 11th March 2008

Organisations are adopting green initiatives but they're unsure how it will impact data centre efficiency and are wary of vendor hype.

The majority of organisations (70 per cent) are adopting green initiatives, but almost a third are unsure how their actions will impact data centre efficiency and are wary of vendor marketing messages, according to new research published today.

The Aperture Research Institute (ARI) study of more than 100 data centre professionals found 19 per cent of those with a green initiative admitted it did not include the data centre, while 13 per cent did not know whether it did or not.

Steve Yellen, ARI's principal, said: "Our study found that many organisations are adopting a green initiative, but some have left alarming gaps as far as the data centre is concerned."

Of those that did have a clear on the impact of green IT in the data centre, the most popular initiatives were cooling (named by 44 per cent), server virtualisation or consolidation (27 per cent) and the use of more power-efficient equipment (24 per cent). Only one respondent suggested powering off unused CPUs.

This isn't necessarily surprising research.  In their research they mention.

The data center deserves to be a focal point for any green initiative: two-thirds of those surveyed reported that power consumption was rising, and 22% of those said it was rising rapidly. The chief cause is an increase in demand from the business for IT services. It is essential, then, that business departments are accountable for the energy their IT consumes. In the second paper in this series, we will investigate whether organizations are charging the cost of power back to business departments effectively.

This would be interesting to see the #'s from their 2nd research.

BusinessWeek Summarizes Green IT Corporate Strategies

Business week summarizes recent reports from Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey in one article. It starts with an attention getting paragraph.

At the recent World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, 20 sessions focused on environmental issues. On Jan. 24 a group of top guns at leading technology companies, including Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, Dell (DELL) founder and CEO Michael Dell, Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, and Intel (INTC) Chairman Craig Barrett, met to talk about the possibility of coordinating their efforts to pursue more sustainable practices. Then, on Feb. 5, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) announced it had surpassed its goals for recycling e-waste: Globally, it recycled nearly 250 million pounds of hardware and print cartridges in 2007—a 50% increase over the previous year. And it announced a new goal: to reuse 2 billion pounds of products by the end of 2010.

And summarizes the reports as follows:

Whereas Forrester and Gartner's reports concentrated on green IT, the McKinsey report focuses on a broader sense of energy efficiency, to include office buildings as well as devices and products. The authors argue that implementing such energy efficiencies could offset 85% of projected energy demands by 2030. That's considerably more impact than increasing fuel efficiency in vehicles, replacing industrial equipment and industrial processes that are not energy efficient, planting forests and improving soil, or shifting toward renewable energy sources. Citing projections from the Energy Dept., the report's authors state that overall energy use in commercial environments is predicted to rise at 1.6% each year for the next 22 years. The energy used in offices full of PCs and power-guzzling devices is expected to grow at twice that rate.

What each of the three reports share is statistics that make it clear reducing expenses is the leading reason corporations are seeking more eco-friendly practices. Forrester's report, for instance, states that 55% of those surveyed see reducing their energy-related operating expenses as the main reason for pursuing more sustainable IT operations—above "doing the right thing for the environment," the top motivator for 50% of those polled. In the Gartner report the authors estimate that "potential power cost and CO2 emission reductions of 50% are available" by better managing the power usage of PCs, monitors, and printers—for instance, simply encouraging employees to turn them off.

North America behind Europe and Asia in Green IT, says Info-Tech Research Group

Here is a press release by Info-Tech Research with specifics how North America lags Europe and Asia in Green IT.

When it comes to taking action on green IT initiatives, a new study by Info-Tech Research Group finds that enterprises in North America lag behind those in Asia and Europe. Respondents from North America are also less concerned with their carbon footprints than those from the rest of the world, with nearly one-fifth reporting low to minimal levels of concern about climate change.

"People in North America tend to believe that newly industrialized countries like India and China wouldn’t have the means or interest to support green technologies," said Aaron Hay, research consultant with Info-Tech Research Group. "In reality, the study paints a very different picture as North America is failing to keep pace with the adoption rates of green IT techniques in emerging economies."

In addition to the implementation of quick win policies, the study revealed that almost double the amount of respondents from Asia reported the adoption of major initiatives such as "green RFPs" favoring acquisition of energy-efficient solutions and technologies.

Next Green Data Center component - Network Infrastructures

Cisco has added their Green Guru.

Next ITWeek writes about the need for Network Infrastructures to go Green.

But even as IT managers contemplate the case for energy-efficient data centres, some analysts believe that a similar green revolution is about to hit firms’ network infrastructures. Jon Collins, service director at analyst firm Freeform Dynamics, is one of them.

“The network doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to being green. This is ironic, given that it is an area of great potential, particularly considering the efficiency gains that could be achieved if, for example, the data was in the right place at the right time,” he says. “Network efficiency reduces risk and lowers the requirement to store multiple copies of data.”

A branch office, for example, might previously have stored all of its files locally. But using Wafs, the files can all be maintained centrally at headquarters. Utilising a mixture of traffic compression and byte-level mirroring of local data, files can be quickly mirrored between the two sites. This approach reduces not only the capital expenditure on branch office storage systems and the energy needed to run them, but also the operational expenditure and carbon emissions involved in sending out staff for local maintenance and support.

This last point on the branch office is well made.  Just 3 years ago when I was working on Microsoft's Branch Office Infrastructure Solution, we never heard about power costs in any of the considerations, and I would place bets that the Windows Server 2008 doesn't think about power costs and carbon emissions as part of their marketing material, even though Windows Server 2008 has the right features.

Branch Office Requirement
Windows Server 2008 Feature(s)

Cost Control

Reduce cost of managing and supporting remote offices

• Windows Server Core
• Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC)
• Server Message Block (SMB) 2.0

Security

Improve security of data and access

• Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption
• Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC)
• Server Message Block (SMB) 2.0

Agility

Provide an agile and flexible infrastructure that maximizes IT investments

• Next Generation TCP/IP

IBM's latest Strategic Green Initiative - Eco-Patents World Business Council for Business Development

Watching various IBM executives present on their Green Initiatives, they have done a good job on identifying Electricity and Water as areas they will focus on selling products like WebSphere.  IBM's latest move creating the eco-patents section of the World Business Council for Business Development makes it appear as an industry effort.  But, when you dig into areas like their overview. You can see IBM and Weyerhaeuser are the main companies behind the eco-patents.

 

   

Next steps

   

If you are interested in helping benefit the world through the Eco-Patent Commons:

   

    
1. Contact any of the representatives listed below to express your interest and discuss joining the Eco-Patent Commons.
      
2. Contact your Intellectual Property (IP) function and examine your business's patent portfolio. Identify patents your business may want to contribute to the Eco-Patent Commons. Many businesses do not routinely patent innovations that benefit the environment, so some participants will have only a small number of patents to pledge. Contributing even one patent is sufficient for participation and can make a significant difference in helping to further sustainable development.
   

   

Contact

   

Wayne Balta      
Vice President, Corporate Environmental Affairs & Product Safety      
IBM Corporation      
balta@us.ibm.com

   

Marc A. (Sandy) Block      
Counsel,      
Intellectual Property      
IBM Corporation      
msb@us.ibm.com

   

George Weyerhaeuser       
Senior Fellow      
President's Office      
WBCSD      
weyerhaeuser@wbcsd.org