Microsoft Ups the Sharing – Posts Vision for Modular Data Centers, Generation 4

December 2, 2008 Dave Ohara

Mike Manos, Dan Costello, and Christian Belady have a new post uping the ante on sharing Data Center Design.

What is Generation 4?

Generation 4 design has been under heavy engineering for viability and cost for over a year. While the demand of our commercial growth required us to make investments as we grew, we treated each step in the learning as a process for further innovation in data centers. The design for our future Gen 4 facilities enabled us to make visionary advances that addressed the challenges of building, running, and operating facilities all in one concerted effort.

To summarize, the key characteristics of our Generation 4 data centers are:

Scalable

Plug-and-play spine infrastructure

Factory pre-assembled: Pre-Assembled Containers (PACs) & Pre-Manufactured Buildings (PMBs)

Rapid deployment

De-mountable

Reduce TTM

Reduced construction

Sustainable measures

Map applications to DC Class

The article is quite long with lots of details.

Bottom line: Microsoft is building a modular data center where all parts of the data center are containerized/modularized into building blocks.

Think of it like “building blocks”, where the data center will be composed of modular units of prefabricated mechanical, electrical, security components, etc., in addition to containerized servers.

Their vision

“A highly modular, scalable, efficient, just-in-time data center capacity program that can be delivered anywhere in the world very quickly and cheaply, while allowing for continued growth as required.”

Another Green Data Center Article, Wells Fargo Shares

November 20, 2008 Dave Ohara

If a year ago you tried to get a company to discuss its data center operations, you would have found few willing to talk. But, Green momentum has more and more companies talking.

Is this due to the data center operations team realizing it is good share or the company’s PR teams looking for green news on how the company is being a better citizen? It’s probably a little of both. Here is Wells Fargo sharing some of their details, including what states they are in.

Wells Fargo team shares green tech tips for the data center

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 1:15 pm

In my quest to uncover practical information about what real data center managers are doing to decrease their energy consumption, for real, I recently spoke with two executives from Wells Fargo’s Technology Information Group (TIG).

Scott Dillon, executive vice president and CTO for Enterprise Hosting Services, and Bob Culver, vice president of TIG, are both responsible for enhancing the financial services company’s green technology profile. Here are some of the specific actions they’ve taken for their data centers in Minnesota, Arizona, California and Iowa.

I think a contributing factor is Microsoft’s data center group and Mike Manos & Christian Belady specifically being out there sharing information.

Now, that data centers are starting to open up, it is becoming easier to go deeper extracting best practices. Thanks to some networking I am getting in roads to others who want to talk more.

As Mike Manos has said, the biggest obstacle for data center efficiency is information hoarding.

Thanks Mike & Christian for taking the lead in sharing.

HyperMiling, HyperPUE, and now Hyper-Green

November 19, 2008 Dave Ohara

HyperMiling was selected the 2008 word of the year by New Oxford American Dictionary.

Making jest I wrote about HyperPUE.

But then I found Hyper-Green, Microsoft’s effort with virtualization.

One nice thing Microsoft did was add a link to donate to a NPO

Do something for the environment
Microsoft has donated $20,000 to TechSoup - a nonprofit organization dedicated to refurbishing computers for use by underprivileged communities. This donation will help meet technology needs and reduce e-waste. You can support the movement for cleaner, more accessible technologies by donating to TechSoup as well.

Donate to TechSoup

I wonder if HyperGreen will be a new term as well for the fanatical green efforts and to the extremes of Ed Begley, and Bill Nye the science guy.

Eco-Friendly Competition: Who Can Go Greener?

Actor Ed Begley and 'Science Guy' Bill Nye Vie for Lowest Carbon Footprint

By DAVID KERLEY
July 25, 2007

In Hollywood, where the streets are supposedly paved with gold, actor Ed Begley is all about green. His passion about energy use and the environment serves as the plotline for his new reality show, "Living With Ed," videotaped at his California home.

(abc news)

But something is happening in his little corner of the Hollywood Hills, and Begley is feeling the heat. And it's not from his thermostat.

Microsoft’s Mike Manos Throws Olive Branch to Uptime, will Ken Brill Accept Peace or Keep up his Insanity & Propaganda?

November 3, 2008 Dave Ohara

OK, I was a skeptic of Ken Brill’s craziness accusing Microsoft and Google of being the data center enemy, but Mike Manos has a post referencing one of his staff was at the event where Ken spoke.

In disappointment, there is opportunity. . .

November 3, 2008 by mmanos

I was personally greatly disappointed with the news coming out of last week that the Uptime Institute had branded Microsoft and Google as the enemy to traditional data center operators. To be truthful, I did not give the reports much credit especially given our long and successful relationship with that organization. However, when our representatives to the event returned and corroborated the story, I have to admit that I felt more than a bit let down.

I am in the process of writing an interview of Sun’s Dean Nelson, and Dean specifically credits Microsoft and Google’s data center openness as being one of the best things for the industry. I bet most of you agree with Dean.

Does anyone agree with Ken Brill?

Mike took the high road and offered an Olive Branch of Peace.

Lets not Overreact, There is yet hope

While many people (external and internal) approached me about pulling out of the Uptime organization entirely or even suggesting that we create a true non-for-profit end user forum, motivated by technology and operations issues alone, I think its more important to stay the course. As an industry we have so much yet to accomplish. We are at the beginning of some pretty radical changes in both technology, operations, and software that will define our industry in the coming decades. Now is not the time to splinter but instead redouble our efforts to work together in the best interests of all involved.

Others are curious what is motivating Ken. Is he on drugs? Has he gone crazy? Accusing Microsoft and Google as being the enemy?

1: one that is antagonistic to another ; especially : one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent

2: something harmful or deadly <alcohol was his greatest enemy>

3 a: a military adversary b: a hostile unit or force

If Microsoft and Google are the enemy, if you believe in what Microsoft and Google’s methods of focusing on PUE are you too an enemy of Uptime Institute?

Is The Green Grid an enemy?

Is the EPA an enemy given their efforts to work with Microsoft and Google?

Uptime’s next Symposium is about Lean, Clean and Green.

SYMPOSIUM 2009: LEAN, CLEAN & GREEN

Grapple with the challenges of enterprise IT in the era of power grid shortages, escalating consumption, cost increases, and carbon footprint growth at the 4th Annual Institute Research Symposium: LEAN, CLEAN, and GREEN (April 13-16, 2009, Hilton New York Hotel).

Share knowledge on innovation in alternative energy, efficiency transformation, non-toxic recyclable electronics, and truly green data center operations.

Help the industry develop approaches to high-density data center computing that are more economically, operationally, and environmentally sustainable.

To be Lean, Clean & Green you think Microsoft and Google are your enemies. So, Microsoft and Google believe in fat, dirty, and brown?

All this illogical.

Sounds like Uptimes is practicing propaganda.

Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of thecognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.

Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.

—Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion

It is sad, but I don’t think Ken will accept the Olive Branch and set a path of peace with Microsoft and Google.

NOTE: I used the war/energy analogy to show how silly this is to call Microsoft and Google an enemy.

Data Center Best Practices – Microsoft, Google, or Uptime Institute, Don’t Forget Sun, HP, Dell, and IBM

October 31, 2008 Dave Ohara

TechHermit has a post base on Uptime’s latest conference.

Uptime Institute to IT, Microsoft and Google are your enemy
October 31, 2008
At the Uptime conference this last week in Dallas, Ken Brill shocked many of the attendees by throwing out some amazing statements that can only be classified as fear mongering. Perhaps the rhetoric was a first salvo in an inflammatory exchange between industry giants.

The comments in question came up in a meeting of Uptime members assembled for the event. His comments to the audience centered around how Microsoft and Google were a direct threat to everyone in attendance. Perhaps this was a result of the Microsoft Azure release last week and the existence of Google Apps. In addition many of the comments were directed towards the PUE metric. Specifically that Microsoft and Google were highlighting low PUE results of 1.2x which were unrealistic and flawed.

Now I admit to being biased as I have many more conversations with Microsoft and Google Engineers than Uptime Institute Engineers. Oh wait, I’ve talked to Uptime Sales people though.

Microsoft has its Power of Software blog, the Microsoft data center team presenting at conferences and even Microsoft Research giving away data center knowledge for no charge.

Google has its data center site.

Sun has both a Blog and data center site.

HP, Dell, and IBM all have data center offerings as well.

The one guy who doesn’t say anything about its data centers is Amazon, but they have a huge presence with Amazon Web Services. So, don’t expect Ken Brill/Uptime throwing any criticism at Amazon.

Unfortunately, for Ken Brill and Uptime Institute they are making enemies faster than friends.

How long can Uptime Institute survive?

I know most of your out there don’t care, but a few of you do, and this is an interesting study of sharing information vs. charging for information to improve the efficiency of your data center.

Right now market perception is Microsoft and Google are the leaders in data center innovation and all of these companies are battling to be at the top which is good for the whole industry.