Google follows Microsoft's Lead, Hired a Power and Cooling Expert from HP

Christian Belady has been widely covered in in the industry and was a big hire for Microsoft. Google followed Microsoft's lead and hired his successor at HP, Christopher Malone.  Christian and Chris's names are listed on many HP papers.

1  HP, Christopher Malone, PhD, Christian Belady, P.E., “Metrics to Characterize Data Center & IT Equipment Energy Use”, Digital Power Forum, Richardson, TX (September 2006).  Energy-to-Acquisition Cost Ratio (EAC) is defined as the ratio of the 3 year cost of power and cooling for IT equipment to the acquisition cost of the IT equipment. For instance, the EAC for blades, 1U, and 2U servers may be greater than 100%. This indicates that the 3 year cost of power and cooling exceeds the cost of the hardware.
3  HP, Christopher Malone, PhD, Christian Belady, P.E., “Metrics to Characterize Data Center & IT Equipment Energy Use”, Digital Power Forum, Richardson, TX (September 2006) & “How to Minimize Data Center Utility Bills”, HP C. Belady, P.E., Sept 2006, https://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7881&pg=1&topicID=0
4  HP, Christopher Malone, PhD, Christian Belady, P.E., “Metrics to Characterize Data Center & IT Equipment Energy Use”, Digital Power Forum, Richardson, TX (September 2006) & “How to Minimize Data Center Utility Bills”, HP C. Belady, P.E., Sept 2006, https://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7881&pg=1&topicID=0

I would say Microsoft got the best guy picking first. Also, it will be interesting if Google & Microsoft go down the path of water cooled servers as both Christopher and Christian were believers of water cooling while at HP.

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Novell Executive Gets Green Data Center

Part of what I do is look for those executive who gets Green Data Center.  In this article Joe Wagner from Novell explains the issues of using virtualization in manufacturing data center operations.  From reading his article, and looking at his background Joe understands the issues to go Green.  This is refreshing from a software company.  Part of why Joe got my attention is his Chemical Engineering background.  Many people I run into the green data center area are chemical engineers.  Another company who totally gets the green area is OSIsoft executives.

Virtualization is coming to the forefront none too soon for the manufacturing industry. While virtualization can be a tremendous boost to an enterprise's productivity and environmental policy, without the proper automated management tools in place, you will threaten the very benefits you sought in the first place.

Virtualization's promises of reducing sever sprawl, heating and cooling costs, and power consumption are enticing, but they cannot be attained without effective management in place. With orchestrated management tools that automate critical data center processes, organizations can make virtualization a central component in their green IT strategy.

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Green Tech Advisors for V2Green

In the Seattle Times was an article for Seattle's GreenTech companies.

David Kaplan, who developed software and managed projects at Microsoft for a dozen years, now thinks full time about how to deal with the oncoming wave of plug-in electric vehicles. His self-funded company, V2Green, designs software and hardware to enable communication between cars and the utility grid, helping utilities schedule charging times in a way that won't overwhelm the system.

One of the interesting companies, V2Green, is a bunch of ex-Microsoft people running an intelligient charging system for electrical vehicles.  What I found most interesting though is the list of people who are the advisors to the company.

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Microsoft Blog - 2008 Green IT Predictions

Lewis Curtis at Microsoft has thrown out his 2008 predictions and below I have highlights. Many of these same ideas have been discussed by Christian Belady, Microsoft's new Power and Cooling architect who was hired from HP.  I'll see if we can get Christian to make his own 2008 predictions.

Prediction one:

2008 is the year that more realize Green IT is not a passing fad in the industry,  More will realize that Green IT is a permanent regulatory and operational reality in IT Architecture and Operations and it cannot be ignored.   Regulations and oversight as well as public scrutiny will increase in 2008 (as well as poor metrics in power consumption and carbon footprint).  We will see more laws and regulations, more audits, around the world.   

Prediction Two:

Companies who only rely on performance per watt (ppw) justifications for capital expenditures will see their power consumption increase (you read it right).

ppw has been a mainstay for vendors to justify new hardware and software it sells to IT organizations for the last thirty years.   

The logic goes like this:

"your (server/SAN/network/database/operating system) can do more work with the same amount of power,  therefore, you will need fewer of them,  hence you can reduce your power bill"

Most Vendors are still parading the ppw marketing plan as their green answer today.   

So why doesn’t this argument work in the real world?    Answer: because it never factors in its impact on the velocity of demand as well as the impact of the environment which must now support it.

As technology capability increases, the velocity of people's demands of that technology will increase more.   Therefore the demand for more servers, storage and network capability will increase. This, in turn, will increase the demand for power.   This does not mention the cooling efficiency challenges of power dense racks (accounting for a substantial percentage of datacenter's power budget).

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Cisco Appoints Green Guru

Cisco is the latest IT vendor to add a Green Guru.  Jetsongreen.com posted this information.

Cisco_logo There's major action in the data center world, with all sorts of facilities aiming for energy-efficient centers and LEED buildings.  Cisco, led by the undeniably approachable CEO John Chambers, is embarking on a plan to green their business.  It kind of feels like a revival of the old Japanese, waste-elimination era, but there's progress in areas other than efficiency.  Here's what they're doing:

  • 17,400 sf office in Chesterfield Ridge Center (St. Louis Regional Sales HQ) received LEED certification;
  • Their Carbon to Collaboration Initiative aims to reduce company GHG emissions from air travel by 10 %;
  • They hired Paul Marcoux, one of the founders of The Green Grid, to drive green initiatives inside and outside the company - he's become known as the company "Green Guru." 
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