AVM a broadband equipment producer has a press release touting the all-in-one approach to saving energy.

AVM FRITZ!Box Energy Efficiency

Europe Leads Drive for Greener IT Devices

Rising costs for energy and growing environmental sensitivity among consumers is making Green IT increasingly relevant for manufacturers of residential and SOHO appliances. As a result, new all-in-one communication equipment with advanced energy control, adopting the latest EU Code of Conduct, is preventing wasted energy, space and money.

According to the European Commission’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, the electricity consumption of broadband equipment in the European Community will rise to an estimated 50 TWh per year by 2015. A new generation of multi-function devices that apply to the EU Code of Conduct can lower energy consumption by at least 50% - saving an equivalent of 5,5 million tons of oil (TOE) and about 7,5 billion euros per year.
Matthew Tyler, country manager at AVM, conjectures: “People probably don’t even consider their broadband equipment when they’re thinking about energy savings – whether because of increasing energy costs or the environment – but, combined, the impact is huge.”

The All-in-one Approach: More than Just Energy Efficiency

As one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of Internet access hardware, AVM ensures that it’s FRITZ!Box series already complies with all standards of the EU Code of Conduct for broadband equipment. But the popularity of the FRITZ!Box products is based not only on energy efficiency only. In addition to the energy savings, users are also benefiting from the seamless integration of a ADSL modem, WLAN N router, print and file server, PBX for VoIP and landline. AVM’s FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270, soon to be available in the UK, includes a fax and answering machine as well as a base station for DECT cordless telephones in one device. The all-in-one approach has proven to be much easier for the user to operate than individual devices and saves valuable desk space. AVM has a track record of building multifunctional, user-friendly devices. All FRITZ!Box series products fully support the eco mode standards, and this latest generation can replace up to 8 individual communication devices. The fully featured FRITZ!Box needs an average of 6 to 8 watts per hour – compared with a combined energy consumption of around 50 watts for the separate devices it replaces, this is an estimated reduction of 85%.

They discuss the idea of turning off the network.  Shouldn't your home wireless and wired systems turn off?

Eco Mode: Only When You Need It

Most devices have a stand-by mode, but the Eco Mode function goes beyond a simple stand-by, reducing the CPU power and clearing unused connections such as LAN and WLAN ports as well as wireless phone connections (DECT) to minimize the power consumption of the FRITZ!Box. The comprehensive monitoring of current and average energy consumption and the individual configuration of all functions within the FRITZ!Box is eco mode at its best.

Talking to another Green Guy he mentioned James Hamilton's post. It is quite long, and I've heard many of these points already from others, like Christian Belady's presentation at Data Center Dynamics Seattle.

Why Blade Servers Aren't the Answer to All Questions

This note describes a conversation I’ve had multiple times with data center owners and concludes that blade servers frequently don’t help and they sometimes hurt, easy data center power utilization improvements are available independent of the blade server premium, and enterprise data center owners have a tendency to buy gadgets from the big suppliers rather than think through overall data center design. We’ll dig into each.

In talking to data center owners, I’ve learned a lot but every once in a while I come across a point that just doesn’t make sense. My favorite example is server density. I’ve talked to many DC owners (and I’ll bet I’ll hear from many after this note) that have just purchased blades servers. The direction of conversation is always the same. “We just went with blades and now have 25+kW racks”. I ask if their data center has open floor and it almost always does. We’ll come back to that. Hmmm, I’m thinking. They now have much higher power density racks at higher purchase cost in order to get more computing per square foot but the data center already has open floor space (since almost all well designed centers are power and cooling bound rather than floor space bound). Why?

So, where do blades work?  I've talked to numerous green/energy efficiency professionals and in general they favor Sun or HP blades. The one thing in common from my informal survey is they run fully populate blade enclosures.

How many blade enclosures out there are fully populated?  Not many, the vendors want  you to have an excess of blade enclosures so you'll buy their blades.

Blade Servers work most efficiently when fully populated.

Where the Blade Servers are effective is for HW vendors to lock in customers to purchase their HW.

Cisco has a press release for its Virtual Office virtual office. We take for granted the solution needs to perform and be secure.

The Cisco Virtual Office addresses the growing trend among mid-sized and large enterprises that have increasingly distributed workforces who need access to collaborative business applications and services outside of their corporate offices. The networking solution packages routing, switching, security, wireless, IP telephony, and policy control technology into a centrally managed office-caliber solution that provides highly secure video, voice, data and wireless service. (http://www.cisco.com/go/cvo) It is flexible, allowing employees to work in a variety of places with technology and services that are as advanced as if they were sitting at their desk in their office. This "extension" of an employee's collaborative office environment includes access to voice and video over IP communications, all protected within a highly secure networked environment.

What is different is they have included "zero-touch" setup/deployment, reducing the costs for supporting the remote workforce.

One of the solution's most valued features is its "zero-touch" setup. Automated, pre-configured setup offloads installation responsibilities from employees, most of whom are not qualified or knowledgeable enough to implement networking systems themselves. With the solution's zero-touch setup, businesses can extend their workforces to thousands of locations with the peace of mind that employee error and IT support will be minimal. As a whole, the Cisco Virtual Office consists of the following components:

Remote site

• Zero-touch setup of the new Cisco 881w Series Internet Services Router (ISR) and Cisco 7970G IP phone with color display. Once the Cisco 881w ISR is connected to the Internet, it "calls home" and automatically downloads a pre-defined configuration that syncs with headquarters. From there, employees can benefit from efficient, automated delivery of collaborative business applications and services. For example, wireless LAN connectivity is offered as an option to provide such features as mobile intelligent roaming.

Consider this capability as you green your data center as to how you support the remote work force as reducing travel many times will have a much larger carbon footprint impact than reducing electricity consumption.

One gallon of gas has 19 lbs of CO2. 10 kW-hr of electricity is 13.4 lbs.   You could easily save a gallon of gas in a commute, but saving 10 kW-hr is near impossible.

HP just announced their Blades for Virtualization, and I blogged about their announcement.

But, I noticed they focused on comparing to Dell and IBM.  Suspecting HP avoided a comparison to Sun, I asked some people at Sun how their products compare to HP's BL495c.

1. BL495c ships 16 DIMMS. Oh, Sun shipped this feature in the X6220 & X6250 July 2007.  Sun's memory is 64 GB vs. HP's max of 128 GB.
2. BL495c ships with 10GbE.  On Sun, 10 GbE is an option.
3. BL495c has SSD. Sun currently doesn't have SSD as an option. 

So, if you need 16 DIMMS for 128 GB of memory, 10 GbE, and SSD, the HP BL495c is the only blade out there.  If don't need that much memory, or SSD, then the Sun X6220\X6250 may be another alternative for your virtualization solution.

In less than 6 months, Dell and IBM will have their latest wares.  Good news for virtualization solutions there are more choices for addressing IO issues with more RAM, storage, and NIC capacity.

One alternative you may want to evaluate instead of SSD is Virident's flash memory solution given 16 DIMMs.

Virident Systems has developed the first data-centric technology platform to deliver a new class of green memory solutions for the data center. This low-energy, high-performance platform solution enables Internet data centers to cost-effectively keep pace with the rising performance and energy demands of Internet-Scale. Underlying this platform is the GreenGateway™ technology conceived and developed by Virident. Spansion® EcoRAM is the first memory product built on this platform.

Voltaire had a press announcement about how IT executives lack of the green (money) to go green.

Voltaire Survey Shows IT Executives See Greening of Data Center as Mission-Critical, But Lack “Green” To Go Green

Voltaire Develops “50-50-300” Pledge and Efficiency Calculator in Response to Findings

BILLERICA, Mass. and HERZLIYA, Israel – September 3, 2008 – A recent survey by Voltaire Ltd. (NASDAQ: VOLT) found that, although CIOs and senior IT executives overwhelmingly believe that a green data center will become mission-critical, many lack the “green” to go green.

Nearly 90 percent of executives surveyed said they believe that greening their data centers will be crucial to meeting their companies’ business objectives in 2009, and 57 percent said they believe going green gives them a competitive advantage. Yet, 76 percent do not have a committed budget for a greening policy. The survey queried CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT executives who attended the 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.

In response to these findings, Voltaire developed a “50-50-300 Pledge,” which states that IT executives, working with the company to deploy a Voltaire unified fabric, can save 50 percent on power/cooling related to server interconnections and 50 percent on hardware allocation/usage, while delivering up to a 300 percent increase in application performance. Voltaire has also developed an Efficiency Calculator (www.voltaire.com/calculator) to help IT executives estimate their network energy and cost savings and justify the investment.

“It appears from these findings that senior IT management is still in the planning phases, and they will need to prioritize funding for these important greening initiatives,” said Patrick Guay, Executive Vice President Global Sales and General Manager of Voltaire, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Voltaire Ltd. “We help them with the analysis and data collection in order to validate the savings they will achieve. Our numbers show that for enterprises, the return on a green data center fabric infrastructure using currently available technology is in the millions of dollars. For example, a Fortune 500 company with five data centers worldwide, and 3,000 servers per data center, can save approximately $7,400,000 per year.”

I was able to get time with Patrck Guay  on Sept 5 to discuss more about Voltaire's solution. What has me interested in Voltaire's is their strategy of going after the early adopter market of areas like supercomputing and high performance computing where performance per watt is becoming a standard practice. As users have needed faster IO, evaluating technologies like 10Gb Ethernet, Voltaire has been able to get Infiniband based solutions in as better performance per watt solution. I asked Patrick if he saw much interest in his products in the dev/test/quality server labs in enterprises, and he said this area is another early adopter of Voltaire's product with a 24 port switch including full Infiniband network support in an entry switch.

High Performance, Low Latency InfiniBand Switching for Small-to-Medium-Sized Clusters and Grids
Overview
The Voltaire Grid Switch 9024 is a high performance, low latency, fully non-blocking switch for high performance computing (HPC) clusters and grids. Offering available bandwidth of up to 960 Gbps, the Grid Switch 9024 is a cost-effective alternative to proprietary interconnect technologies. With twenty-four 20 or 10 Gbps ports in a 1U chassis, the standards-based Grid Switch 9024 delivers high bandwidth and low latency at affordable pricing. Using the Grid Switch 9024, you can build high performance clusters and grids that scale from several to tens of nodes.

Key Features
• 10-20 Gbps performance for clusters and grids
• Ultra-low latency: under 140 nanoseconds
• Available bandwidth of up to 960 Gbps
• Built-in high availability
• Ideal for scientific, commercial HPC and enterprise applications
• Architected to provide high MTBF
• Powerful CPU to allow management of fabrics, as well as device management capabilities

Here is Voltaire's 50-50-300 pledge.

Voltaire is the only company today that can deliver a unified fabric based on InfiniBand, which uses 10x less power per port than
10 Gig E. Unified fabrics provide seamless, high performance networking services between InfiniBand fabrics, Fibre Channel SANs and Ethernet LANs over a single high performance fabric with multiple virtual interfaces replacing actual physical adapters.

Most of the focus on Greening the data center is on the CPU, getting the most performance per watt out of each processor. The problem is this leads many to focus on a high CPU utilization as a measure of efficiency. You can imagine how some IT departments are showing off their CPU utilization numbers as proof they are more efficient.  But, as many of us have experienced in a bad application, driver, or technology like indexing that hogs the processor on your laptop - there is a flaw of a narrow-minded focus on CPU utilization.

Most server HW is IO bound, by memory, disk, network, and CPU IO to these devices.  As HP just announced its BL495C blade for virtualization, HP focused on 3 issues to tout its strengths - more DIMMs, SSD, and 10GbE - all IO issues. The blade itself is only 2 quadcore AMD processors with claims of supporting up to 32 VMs.

Which brings up an interesting side by side comparison.  HP compared itself vs. Dell and IBM. What I would like to see is a Sun based Infiniband (Voltaire) blade comparison vs. HP's BL495C & 10 GbE.

1. 10 GbE vs. Infiniband.
2. HP's AMD implementation vs. Sun's AMD implementation. 

What is more efficient? 

And that brings up the problem of how do you get numbers you believe and trust.

Which probably explains why Voltaire has seen the need to pledge its claims as we have all learned to filter the greenwashing.

Voltaire has a white paper here.

Reducing Data Center Energy Costs up to 50% By Consolidating and Virtualizing your Network

This white paper describes how combining data center networks into one "fabric" will have a significant impact on o