Top Data Center Mistake, Not Asking Why, Then Track the Accuracy of the Answer

August 24, 2009 Dave Ohara

It is popular to share the Top Best Practices in Data Centers. Google, Microsoft, eBay, and Sun have done this as many others have. But, what is interesting is how little time is spent on capturing the top data center mistakes. There are lots of experts discussing details that feed into a better PUE, and their experiences. New technology is promoted as being greener and energy efficient than other systems.

The latest term I’ve heard quite a bit is “holistic” approach in presentations at events like Data Center Dynamics. OK, I want a holistic solution where people are looking in the big picture. This fits with someone saying we are going to lower your TCO. Sounds good, I don’t want to buy from someone who is going to increase my TCO and create silo’d thinking.

If you don’t build data centers often you are at the mercy of the design and build data center construction trade. Mike Manos touched on the issues.

First a simple observation – the Data Center Industry as it stands today is in actuality an industry of cottage industries. Its an industry dominated by boutique firms in specialized niches all in support of the building out of these large technically complex facilities. For the initiated its a world full of religious arguments like battery versus rotary, air-side economization versus water-side economization, raised floor versus no raised floor. To the uninitiated its an industry categorized by mysterious wizards of calculus and fluid dynamics and magical electrical energies. Its an illusion the wizards of the collective cottage industries are well paid and incented to keep up. They ply their trade in ensuring that each facility’s creation is a one-off event, and likewise, so is the next one. Its a world of competing General Contractors, architecture firms, competing electrical and mechanical firms, of specialists in all sizes, shapes and colors. Ultimately – in my mind there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Everyone has the right to earn a buck no matter how inefficient the process.

WSJ has an article on the mistakes of investing that can shed some light on how people think about their decisions and mistakes.

The Mistakes We Make—and Why We Make Them

How investors think often gets in the way of their results. Meir Statman looks into our heads and tells us what we're doing wrong.

By MEIR STATMAN

What was I thinking?

If there's one question that investors have asked themselves over the past year and a half, it's that one. If only I had acted differently, they say. If only, if only, if only.

Yet here's the problem: While we know that we made investment mistakes, and vow not to repeat them, most people have only the vaguest sense of what those mistakes were, or, more important, why they made them. Why did we think and feel and behave as we did? Why did we act in a way that today, in hindsight, seems so obviously stupid? Only by understanding the answer to these questions can we begin to improve our financial future.

The author throws out a simple idea of behavior.

This is where behavioral finance comes in. Most investors are intelligent people, neither irrational nor insane. But behavioral finance tells us we are also normal, with brains that are often full and emotions that are often overflowing. And that means we are normal smart at times, and normal stupid at others.

The trick, therefore, is to learn to increase our ratio of smart behavior to stupid. And since we cannot (thank goodness) turn ourselves into computer-like people, we need to find tools to help us act smart even when our thinking and feelings tempt us to be stupid.

The problem with the data center mistakes is it is an emotional event that you want to hide and go away. But, if you had tools/software to help you act smarter as your thinking and feelings tempt you to do stupid things. Bad decisions are swept under the rug, fixed behind the scenes, costs transferred, excuses made, and as long as you are on schedule and budget, then most don’t care.

The tool can be simple, an excel spreadsheet tracking the decisions and SLAs of various technology used in a data center. What people made the decisions, what problem was it addressing, what are the expected results, costs, and ROI. You can treat these as stocks in a portfolio of investments in your data center.

Your perspective changes when you think of a portfolio of data center technology investments that have expected returns. Some will work, some will not. If you don’t list them. How will your learn from your mistakes?

Throw your data center construction team a “whack on the side of head.” Ask them, how are we going to track the mistakes we make in the data center construction?

I am waiting for the when someone adds this to their top data center practices. “We track our mistakes.”

#1 Challenge to Green The Data Center, Resistance to Change

August 16, 2009 Dave Ohara

I’ve been slow blogging this week as I have been making some changes in my business relationships and it has required a lot of my time. I guess I was in a mood for change as Olivier Sanche announced his big change going to Apple. My change isn’t even close to being newsworthy, but it effects who I work with, and it was time to change.

I just read a blogger Hugh MacLeod post and have his book.

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the cartoon-on-back-of-bizcard format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?
You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us.
And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It's not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It's just they don't know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.

Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don't want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that's how they love you- the way you are, not the way you may become.

Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That's human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.

With business colleagues it's even worse. They're used to dealing with you in a certain way. They're used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that's not their top priority.

If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less, or God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they're going to resist your idea every chance they can.

Again, that's human nature.

GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.

This post resonated with where I am at.

The good thing is now that I have removed the controlling business relationships, I can go back to my vision of how to green the data center.

The #1 Challenge to Green The Data Center is the Resistance to change.

The title of Hugh MacLeod’s book is motivating.

What Could Data Center Regulation Look Like?

July 23, 2009 Dave Ohara

Mike Manos discussed data center regulation in this post.

Coming Soon to a Data Center near you, Regulation.

June 19, 2009 by mmanos

As an industry, we have been talking about it for some time. Some claimed it would never come and it was just a bunch of fear mongering. Others like me said it was the inevitable outcome of the intensifying focus on energy consumption. Whether you view this to be a good thing or bad thing its something that you and your company are going to have to start planning for very shortly. This is no longer a drill.

CRC – its not just a cycle redundancy check

I have been tracking the energy efficiency work being done in the United Kingdom for quite some time and developments in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). My recent trip to London afforded me the opportunity to drive significantly harder into the draft and discuss it with a user community (at the Digital Realty Round table event) who will likely be the first impacted by such legislation. For those of you unfamiliar with the initiative let me give a quick overview of the CRC and how it will work.

The main purpose of the CRC is a mandatory carbon reduction and energy efficiency scheme aimed at changing energy use behaviors and further incent the adoption of technology and infrastructure. While not specifically aimed at Data Centers (its aimed at everyone) you can see that by its definition Data Centers will be significantly affected. It was introduced as part of the Climate Change Act 2008.

Here are a list of some ways data centers could be regulated.

What is your PUE. A number too high may be penalized for inefficiency.
Do you purchase carbon credits? Report the specifics
How do you calculate your carbon footprint? Submit your calculations. Has reporting been audited?
What % of your servers are ENERGY STAR? Tell us a number and how many more.
What % of your servers are running virtualization? How many virtualized server images do you run?
What is the water use of your data center? What is quality of your waste water?
What is average inlet temperature of your servers? Are you overcooling your equipment?
What is your eWaste policy for IT equipment?
What is your long term commitment to carbon reduction? What is your current status? What are penalties for non-compliance?
What investments are being made in carbon neutral power?

These are just some ideas quickly jotted down, but i am sure the government organizations can come up with a lot more as a new revenue stream to tax the rich. Yes, the large data centers are in general run by rich organizations. You could exempt the poor and middle class corporations by defining a number like any corporation using more than 2mW of data center power.

Learning from Google and Microsoft, First Ask the Question “Are you at war?”

July 22, 2009 Dave Ohara

Google and Microsoft are at war in many ways, and part of it is in data centers. We all pay attention to what they are doing, competing in PUE and energy efficiency. But, you need to understand their views as they are at war with each other. There are those of you love or hate each of these companies, but it doesn’t mean you are at war with them. So, ask yourself are you at war with Google and Microsoft? If not, maybe what they are doing is not appropriate for you.

WSJ has an opinion article about Google and Micorsoft.

Techdom’s Two Cold Wars

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

Why didn’t the U.S. and the USSR just ignore each other and save themselves the cost of an arms race? Answer: Each had the potential to do such serious damage to the other, they dared not risk it.

Microsoft and Google also have the power to damage each other, and are better off if they don’t. They too spend a lot of money on deterrence—a puzzle since both are inevitably owned by many of the same shareholders, including large mutual and pension funds. Even more than the Cold War superpowers, they have every incentive quietly to agree to be deterred without investing quite so much on an arms race.

These are thoughts designed to trouble the naïve delight of many who heard Google’s announcement last week that it intends to roll out an operating system to compete with Windows. Partisan Google fans imagine Google finally is preparing to go toe-to-toe with its nemesis. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Google might do so if Microsoft were unilaterally to disarm in some way. That’s not going to happen. Microsoft merely is being reminded that its fat Windows margins are vulnerable to attack.

Microsoft sent the parallel message to Google when it spent millions to launch Bing, a new search engine that’s receiving good reviews even from Microsoft haters. Bing, Microsoft hopes, will finally prove a weapon that can seriously threaten Google’s margins, though only to keep Google from raiding Microsoft’s.

Sticking with the war metaphor, another perspective on ways to manage data centers is comparing Churchill vs. Hitler two people who were at war. Here is a BBC article on their Secrets of Leadership. First the similarities in approach which both Google and Microsoft have.

Fundamental similarities and differences

What both Hitler and Churchill did have in common, however, was a terrific tenacity of purpose. This was forged in their 'wilderness' years - Hitler's in the 1920s, Churchill's in the 1930s - when they were out of office and generally derided by the political classes.

By not altering their message to suit their audience, but by carrying on insisting that they were right, they both garnered huge support when events finally seemed to confirm their view of the political situation. Thus, once economic circumstances changed in Germany in the depression years of the 1930s, and after the British view of appeasement changed when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, both men were in a position to capitalise on that most satisfying phrase in politics: 'I told you so.'

But, they had different management styles.

Of the two men, Hitler was actually kinder to his immediate staff than Churchill was to his. In terms of man-management, Hitler was - astonishingly enough - the more considerate boss. Churchill's secretaries often became exasperated by his rudeness and lack of indulgence, whereas the Führer was adored by those who worked closest with him. He remembered their names and birthdays, visited them when they were ill, and they repaid him with lifetime devotion, even after his crimes became generally known. Churchill was loved by his staff because he was 'saving civilisation', not because of his off-hand way of treating them (in 1940 things got so bad, his wife had to remonstrate with him about his manner).

Although Hitler might have been a better people-manager in some ways, his tendency to attempt to micro-manage the Third Reich once the war broke out led directly to his downfall. Whereas in the years leading up to the outbreak of war Hitler took a back seat in terms of administration, after 1939 he insisted on taking decisions that ought to have been left to far more junior officers. At one point during the war in the east he wound up ordering small-scale maps and directing Wehrmacht troop movements all the way down to battalion level.

Churchill did the absolute opposite, although as First Lord of the Admiralty he did get too involved in detail - he enquired into the number of duffel-coats issued to individual ships by their commanders, and gave orders that backgammon rather than cards should be played on Royal Navy vessels. But once the war was underway he managed to concentrate on the bigger picture, concerning himself with the broad strategic sweep of the war rather than the minutiae.

In this, Churchill was greatly helped by the fact that he was not a totalitarian dictator. The British chiefs of staff could stand up to Churchill - and under their chairman Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke they frequently did - in a way that would have been inconceivable with the Führer. As a result of Churchill's never once overruling the service chiefs, the grand strategy of the war was run in a rational and logical way that was simply impossible in Nazi Germany.

Now you can argue which is better Churchill or Hitler, but consider they were at war.

Are you at war in your data center efforts?

If not, maybe you need to learn from someone who isn’t fighting a battle, planning a strategy for sustainable data center operations, someone who thinks about green data centers.

Environmental Impact, FedEx comments on Laundry Detergent

July 9, 2009 Dave Ohara

OK I admit to being a logistics guy and wrote about UPS’s sustainability report. I spent some of my early career working on Apple’s and HP’s distribution systems building new distribution capabilities, and found some of the biggest potential improvements in software systems.

FedEx has a historical perspective post regarding sustainability efforts.

History’s Lesson: Sustainability Requires Everyone in the Trenches

By Mitch Jackson on April 21, 2009

“Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity. We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed.” - Benjamin Rush -

Before making any judgments about this quote, let me reassure you that it has a positive aspect. Before I get to that, however, some might be asking who Benjamin Rush was. He was one of America’s lesser known Founding Fathers. He was an associate of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and a prominent physician in his day. And, the context of the quote, from a letter to John Adams, was in reference to some of the darkest days of the American Revolution.

What’s the relevance of the quote? As the historian David Hackett Fischer wrote in Washington’s Crossing, “He (Rush) thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible.” But, the positive aspect of this is that we do rise up and deal with problems, and eventually solve them.

That’s what is needed for the current vexing problems of the economy, energy security and the environment. Just as the nascent nation relied upon state militias to supplement those Continental soldiers in the field month after month during the Revolutionary War (sometimes to the Glorious Cause’s detriment), so, too, this nation requires everyone in the trenches to fight this action in transforming and sustaining our economy.

One of the more interesting points is FedEX discussing P&G Laundry Detergent.

I spoke at a summit some weeks back for The Economist magazine, titled The 2009 Sustainability Summit – The New Climate: Global Warming and Its Implications for Corporate Strategy. This is a big title for a big societal challenge. I was particularly struck by an innovation that could result in big environmental benefits. Procter & Gamble has done much in their sustainability efforts, even conducting life cycle analyses on their products. They found that their biggest environmental impact from energy usage was not their product manufacturing; it was not their materials, not their transportation of materials or products, not even material disposal; none of these were even close. No, it was the use of their laundry products in homes that was their biggest impact, primarily from the energy used to heat water. So, they developed Tide Cold Water. Procter & Gamble has calculated that washing laundry in cold water in every U.S. household would save 70 to 90 billion kilowatt-hours of energy every year – they say this is 3% of the nation’s total household energy consumption, equating to a reduction of 34 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Oh, yes, another interesting fact is that they calculate that the average consumer would save $63 annually on their utility bills. All of these numbers are large in total. And, importantly, they’re all trending the right way – reduced energy usage and environmental impact, reduced costs for consumers, and increased product sales potential for Procter & Gamble. A “win-win-win”, which is invariably better than “win-lose” scenarios – always the result of “us versus them” strategies.

Makes you think how many of you know what are the effects of users using your data center services.

What is the environmental impact of your data center services?