Can you Green the Data Center? Maybe if you think in terms of an Information Factory

November 4, 2009 Dave Ohara

I have been writing on the Green Data Center topic for over 2 years with 1,000 blog posts. And, one of the things I have found is the name “data center” is not an accurate description to the layman of what data centers do. Are data centers the “center of data”? In the past there was one corporate building that was the place where data was housed for the corporation. The standard for Fortune 500 companies now is to have multiple data centers around the world to provide information availability, disaster recovery, and reliability. How can there be multiple centers of data? If you green the data center what am I supposed to green? These multiple centers? How?

What I propose is a more accurate description of what data centers are in this economy. The Data Center is an information factory, a building that makes information suitable for use with information machinery – servers, storage, and networking hardware. Information is the raw material input into the factory. Software running on the hardware processes information increasing the value. Like any other manufacturing process electricity is used to power and cool the machinery. How much power is used to run these information factories, in 2006 1.5% of the US electricity production was in data centers, doubling 2000 consumption, growing at a 12% annual rate.

The above is an image Google uses to illustrate its green Information Factory (aka data center).

So the choices to green the data center are now how do you green your information factory. Making factories energy efficient is a concept many are familiar with. Applied to the information factory how do you consume less energy and/or greener energy while increasing the value of information? Making power delivery more efficient applies to all parts of the data center. Cooling systems is a whole topic specialists who can figure out the most efficient way to remove the heat from the IT equipment. More efficient servers are another choice. And of course there is virtualization. Not too long ago, for every watt of power supplied to a server, there was another watt used by the power and cooling systems. Now companies like Google consume only 0.21 watts for power and cooling for every watt used by their information factory hardware which by the way consume less power than what is commonly used by the industry.

Where do you start? Most companies start where they have budget to spend. Huh? Sound silly. Well that is what happens in most companies as the IT organizations within a company are in silos of separation. Imagine if you wanted improve a car’s MPG and approached the problem based on which department had the budget available to make changes to the car.What is needed is an information engineer whose job it is to figure out how to improve the performance per watt in the whole system and prioritize the areas to address.

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay have addressed this problem by creating groups who have responsibilities to engineer their information factories.

Is your company running centers of data or information factories? The ones who think like information factories are driving to new levels of performance per watt. Breaking down silos, to get groups to work together. You can Green the data center by looking at how much energy gets consumed by your information factories to create higher value information. Another choice is where data centers get their power from and the carbon impact. Using 1.5% of the US electricity consumption data centers have the opportunity to locate near places with renewable energy and is commonly discussed by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

Simplicity and the Data Center, a path to a Happier Data Center?

October 25, 2009 Dave Ohara

One area I use to gauge how good a data center designer is whether they talk about simplicity in the data center. I can think of people at Google and Microsoft who regularly use simplicity as a design goal. And, there are many others. Why simplicity is important is articulated well in this post by Matthieu Ricard who discusses simplicity as applied to an approach to life, and for many companies data centers are their life. If data centers suffer, then the company suffers.

In praise of simplicity

Friday 27 March 2009

« Simplify, simplify, simplify… » These refreshing words written by Henry Thoreau remind us that much of our suffering comes from adding unnecessary and disturbing complications in our lives. We seem to be continually weaving elaborate conceptual webs around even straightforward events. We distort reality and shroud it with complications by superimposing fabricated mental constructs. This distortion invariably leads to mental states and behaviors that undermine our inner peace and that of others.

How many human enterprises and noble causes have failed due to such unnecessary complications! We need to simplify our thoughts, simplify our words, and simplify our actions. We need to avoid falling into circular mental rumination, pointless chatter, and vain activities that waste our precious time and engender all kinds of dysfunctional situations.

Having a simple mind is not the same as being simple-minded. Simplicity of mind is reflected in lucidity, inner strength, buoyancy, and a healthy contentment that withstands the tribulations of life with a light heart. Simplicity reveals the nature of the mind behind the veil of restless thoughts. It reduces the exacerbated feeling of self-importance and opens our heart to genuine altruism.

Who is Matthieu Ricard? A really smart guy who got his Ph.D. degree in cell genetics at the renowned Institut Pasteur under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob, but figured out he wanted to do more with his life and decided to be a buddhist monk, so he spends a lot of time thinking about ways to live a happier life. And, maybe there are things to learn from him on how there could be better data centers.

Since 1989, Matthieu has served as the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama. He is a board member of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization dedicated to collaborative research between scientists and Buddhist scholars and meditators. He is engaged in the research on the effect of mind training and meditation on the brain at various universities in the USA (Madison, Princeton, and Berkeley), Europe (Zurich) and Hong Kong.

For an entertaining talk watch this video. One of the funny parts is when he makes fun of fellow French and intellectuals at time mark 1:40.

He has figured out how to be the happiest person in the world.

He has been dubbed the "happiest person in the world" by scientists.^[2] Matthieu Ricard was a volunteer subject in the University of Wisconsin–Madison's testing of happiness, scoring -0.45 which was off the scale compared to hundreds of other volunteers, where scores ranged between +0.3 indicating depression and -0.3 denoting great happiness.^[3]

Another way to interpret the need for simplicity is the desire for cloud computing. This post by Joe McKendrick on ZDNET references material written for Database Trends and Applications.

Paradox 5: Complexity Increases Simplicity. “There is pressure on data centers to provide more services, scalability and availability than ever before. That’s why cloud computing approaches are gaining in popularity—companies can ramp up capabilities by hiding away the complexity. “We do not see the concept of the data center disappearing, instead, we see the concept of data centers becoming more amorphous,” says Martin Schneider, director of product marketing at SugarCRM. “The emerging trend of cloud computing kind of ties all of the major trends around data centers, in that it enables companies to run far simpler data centers, if not obviating the need for them in some instances.”

Do you think of simplicity in your data center design? Or are you one of those who believes adding another feature will solve your data center problems?

Maybe we need a happiness metric for data centers? I bet there are plenty of data centers we could add to the list of suffering data centers. How many are happy?

Gartner says companies must implement a Pattern-Based Strategy

October 20, 2009 Dave Ohara

In my day job, I help clients be innovative leaders, constantly looking for what it takes to be better than the rest. Gartner recently has announced a new initiative called Pattern-Based Strategy.

It is a pleasant surprise to have Gartner’s nine analysts come to a recommendation I’ve been using for over five years in IT infrastructure.

Introducing Pattern-Based Strategy

7 August 2009

Yvonne Genovese Valentin T. Sribar Stephen Prentice Betsy Burton Tom Austin Nigel Rayner Jamie Popkin Michael Smith David Newman

The environment after the recession means business leaders must be more proactive in seeking patterns from conventional and unconventional sources that can positively or negatively impact strategy or operations, and set up a consistent and repeatable response by adjusting business patterns.

One of the best groups I worked with at Microsoft and still have many friends in is the Patterns & Practices group, and I still have regular discussions of how Data Centers and IT could/should be using a patterns-based approach.

You’ve probably guessed from the first half our name that we’re rather enthusiastic about design patterns. Design patterns describe solutions to common issues that occur in application design and development. A large part of what we do involves identifying these common issues and figuring out solutions to them that can be used across different applications or scenarios. Once we have the patterns, we typically package them up in what we call an application block.

Software people have been some of the early adopters of patterns, but the history of patterns comes from Christopher Alexander, a building architect.

A pattern must explain why a particular situation causes problems, and why the proposed solution is considered a good one. Christopher Alexander describes common design problems as arising from "conflicting forces" -- such as the conflict between wanting a room to be sunny and wanting it not to overheat on summer afternoons. A pattern would not tell the designer how many windows to put in the room; instead, it would propose a set of values to guide the designer toward a decision that is best for their particular application. Alexander, for example, suggests that enough windows should be included to direct light all around the room. He considers this a good solution because he believes it increases the enjoyment of the room by its occupants. Other authors might come to different conclusions, if they place higher value on heating costs, or material costs. These values, used by the pattern's author to determine which solution is "best", must also be documented within the pattern.

A pattern must also explain when it is applicable. Since two houses may be very different from one another, a design pattern for houses must be broad enough to apply to both of them, but not so vague that it doesn't help the designer make decisions. The range of situations in which a pattern can be used is called its context. Some examples might be "all houses", "all two-story houses", or "all places where people spend time." The context must be documented within the pattern.

For instance, in Christopher Alexander's work, bus stops and waiting rooms in a surgery center are both part of the context for the pattern "A PLACE TO WAIT."

I’ve spent most of my career working on the Mac OS/hardware and Windows OS/hardware The use of patterns seemed like a natural thing to do, but not intuitive for the people who deploy IT infrastructure. With Gartner’s Pattern-Based Strategy, my persuasion challenge is dramatically decreased.

So, what is good about Gartner’s Pattern-Based announcement? Their first 2 paragraphs are well written to identify the need.

Gartner Says Companies Must Implement a Pattern-Based Strategy™ to Increase Their Competitive Advantage

Analysts Discuss the Framework for Implementing a Pattern-Based Strategy During Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 18-22, in Orlando

STAMFORD, Conn., October 8, 2009 —

The economic environment rapidly emerging from the recession will force business leaders to look at their opportunities for growth, competitive differentiation, and cost controls in a new way. A Pattern-Based Strategy will help leaders harness and drive change, rather than simply react to it, according to Gartner, Inc.

A Pattern-Based Strategy provides a framework to proactively seek, model and adapt to leading indicators, often-termed "weak" signals that form patterns in the marketplace. Not only will leading organizations excel at identifying new patterns and exploiting them for competitive advantage, but their own innovation will create new patterns of change within the marketplace that will force others to react.

They identify the need for closed loop feedback systems to measure the effectiveness of change.

A CONTINUOUS CYCLE: SEEK, MODEL AND ADAPT

Most business strategy approaches have long emphasized the need to seek better information and insights to inform strategic decisions and the need for scenario planning and robust organizational change management. Few have connected this activity directly to the execution of successful business outcomes. According to Gartner, successful organizations can achieve this by establishing the following disciplines and proactively using technology to enable each of these activities:

For the same reason I added modeling and social networking to the list of things I discuss and blog about, Gartner explains.

Modeling for pattern analysis — Once new patterns are detected or created, business and IT leaders must use collaborative processes, such as scenario planning, to discuss the potential significance, impact and timing of them on the organization's strategy and business operations. The purpose of modeling is to determine which patterns represent great potential or risk to the organization by qualifying and quantifying the impact.

"Successful organizations will focus their pattern-seeking activities on areas that are most important to their organization," said Ms. Genovese. "Using models to do scenario planning will be critical to fact-based decisions and the transparency of the result."

I have my black belt in Aikido, and one of the most important skills I figured out to be better is you must develop the skills to change. Gartner adds this as well.

Adapting to capture the benefits — Identifying a pattern of change and qualifying the potential impact are meaningless without the ability to adapt and execute to a successful business outcome. Business and IT leaders must adapt strategy, operations and their people's behaviors decisively to capture the benefits of new patterns with a consistent and repeatable response that is focused on results.

Clients – I told you taking a modeling based approach to discover patterns with real-time monitoring systems will allow you to be ahead of the competition. And, what better proof than Gartner now promoting the same ideas. :-)

Media’s Creative Destruction – competition benefitting consumers

October 12, 2009 Dave Ohara

WSJ has an opinion article on media’s challenge to adapting to the forces putting more power in the hands of consumers.

Media Moguls and Creative Destruction

Competition works to the benefit of consumers, not producers.

By L. GORDON CROVITZ

For media, this is the best of times and the worst. The best because the cost to publish news, make a video or distribute a song has never been lower. But also the worst because it's hard to find a company, new or old media, that has emerged with a sustainable business model. Consumers are left wondering how much longer their favorite sources of news and entertainment will be around.

The most recent stark contrast was between the $1 billion valuation for pre-revenue startup Twitter and the shutdown of the iconic Gourmet magazine. A new book provocatively entitled "The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies" explains how digital technology has undermined almost all media and why this creative destruction is set to continue.

The book, by investment banker Jonathan Knee and business strategists Bruce Greenwald and Ava Seave, details the dismal performance of almost all large media companies going back to the 1990s. It documents how and why the Internet wasn't the hoped-for savior of newspapers, magazines or broadcasters, and why almost all digital media executives have also found it hard to build companies that last.

The benefactors of this competition has been the data center market.

We should keep in mind that people are consuming more media than ever, all day and in real time through many new outlets. Content creators from musicians to authors can sidestep the middlemen who were once required to package and deliver the content. This means that as consumers, we have unprecedented choice in many areas.

Media companies also have options. They can become more efficient, find new revenue streams from their most engaged consumers, and add new services.

Still, no one knows which brands will survive in a world where the traditional advantages are the new disadvantages and where so many new-media companies don't survive the pace of change they helped accelerate. The challenge for all media—old and new—is the same, even if the difficulty level is higher than ever before: Focus on what makes each brand different and more valuable than the ever-increasing number of alternatives that technology makes inevitable.

How many media companies own big rooms with printing presses that dwarf their data centers?

The media have gone through periods of disruption before—from the development of the telegraph, telephone, radio and then television, but never at this pace. "Sometimes differences in degree become differences in kind," Mr. Knee says. "Never has there been this much fundamental change across so many sectors in such a short period of time." Moreover, the former competitive advantages of printing presses and unique access to large audiences have become costly liabilities.

1	United States	54.89%
2	United Kingdom	6.41%
3	Canada	4.09%
4	India	3.59%
5	France	2.53%
6	Japan	2.06%
7	Australia	2.02%
8	Germany	1.86%
9	Netherlands	1.75%
10	Singapore	1.18%
11	Hong Kong	0.95%
12	Spain	0.85%
13	Switzerland	0.80%
14	Philippines	0.79%
15	Brazil	0.77%
16	Italy	0.72%
17	Ireland	0.71%
18	Taiwan	0.67%
19	Sweden	0.67%
20	Malaysia	0.66%
21	South Korea	0.63%
22	Belgium	0.55%
23	Denmark	0.55%
24	Indonesia	0.51%
25	Finland	0.49%
26	Thailand	0.44%
27	Poland	0.44%
28	Iran	0.41%
29	Portugal	0.40%
30	South Africa	0.39%
31	Mexico	0.35%
32	Romania	0.34%
33	Turkey	0.32%
34	New Zealand	0.32%
35	Norway	0.31%
36	Russia	0.29%
37	Greece	0.27%
38	(not set)	0.27%
39	Austria	0.25%
40	Hungary	0.25%
41	Israel	0.25%
42	Pakistan	0.23%
43	Vietnam	0.22%
44	Czech Republic	0.17%
45	Saudi Arabia	0.16%
46	Argentina	0.15%
47	Egypt	0.15%
48	Colombia	0.14%
49	Slovakia	0.14%
50	Chile	0.13%
51	Lithuania	0.12%
52	United Arab Emirates	0.12%
53	Peru	0.11%
54	Iceland	0.11%
55	Ukraine	0.11%
56	Croatia	0.10%
57	Bulgaria	0.09%
58	Jordan	0.09%
59	Serbia	0.08%
60	Estonia	0.08%
61	Venezuela	0.07%
62	Bangladesh	0.07%
63	Puerto Rico	0.07%
64	Costa Rica	0.07%
65	Slovenia	0.07%
66	Bahrain	0.05%
67	Armenia	0.05%
68	Luxembourg	0.05%
69	Kuwait	0.05%
70	Sri Lanka	0.05%
71	Dominican Republic	0.05%
72	Yemen	0.04%
73	Latvia	0.04%
74	Brunei	0.04%
75	Morocco	0.04%
76	Lebanon	0.04%
77	Tunisia	0.04%
78	Kenya	0.04%
79	Uruguay	0.03%
80	Algeria	0.03%
81	Malta	0.03%
82	Nepal	0.03%
83	China	0.03%
84	Macau	0.03%
85	Trinidad and Tobago	0.03%
86	Cayman Islands	0.02%
87	Mauritius	0.02%
88	Oman	0.02%
89	Ghana	0.02%
90	Ivory Coast	0.02%
91	Belarus	0.02%
92	Faroe Islands	0.02%
93	Qatar	0.02%
94	Guatemala	0.02%
95	Kazakhstan	0.02%
96	Iraq	0.02%
97	Jamaica	0.02%
98	Ecuador	0.02%
99	Macedonia [FYROM]	0.02%
100	Nigeria	0.02%