InfomIT has an interview with Cisco’s Douglas Alger on his new book Grow a Green Data Center.

Paint Your Data Center Green: An Interview with Douglas Alger

• By Linda Leung and Douglas Alger
• Jul 1, 2009
• Article is provided courtesy of Cisco Press

From the author of
Grow a Greener Data Center, Rough Cuts

In an interview with Linda Leung, Douglas Alger explains what it takes for businesses to green their data centers, how Cisco is eating its own green dog food, and how his former career as a journalist has helped him in his career at Cisco.

It's easy to do your bit to green up your life. From taking public transportation to work, to switching off your computer every night, to recycling and composting, every little counts. And every little bit counts a lot more when you're involved in greening data centers. By being smart with data center equipment layout and design and using energy-efficient devices, green data centers can save hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars depending on the size of the facilities. Douglas Alger, author of Grow a Greener Data Center, and Build the Best Data Center Facility for Your Business says Cisco's savings due to its green initiatives could be in the millions of dollars.

I haven’t read the book, but took a look at the Table of Contents.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Going Green in the Data Center
Chapter 2  Greener Construction Strategies
Chapter 3  Powering Your Way to a Greener Data Center
Chapter 4 Cooling Your Way to a Greener Data Center
Chapter 5 Cabling Your Way to a Greener Data Center
Chapter 6  Refrigerants and Fire Suppressants
Chapter 7 Choosing Greener Gear
Chapter 8 Saving Energy Through Consolidation and Virtualization  [Contributing Chapter 9 Greening Other Business Practices
Chapter 10 Measuring and Managing Green
Appendix - Sources of Data Center Green Information
Glossary

Douglas’s background is interesting in that he is a journalist and learned his trade in Cisco’s data center group.

Linda Leung: You have a bachelor's degree in journalism, and you had stints as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Syracuse University. Why did you change careers? Are there elements of journalism that have helped you in your career as an IT professional?

Douglas Alger: My career change was actually put into motion by a desire to relocate to San Jose, where I had gone to college years before and where several friends still lived. One of them worked at Cisco, so I called him and asked if he knew whether the company had any openings for technical writers. It did, but my friend also mentioned that his manager was looking to hire someone to do support work for their data centers and ideally create a website to document their data center-related operational policies and procedures, many of which were still taking shape. The position sounded like a new way for me to apply my writing background, and Cisco seemed like a good company to work for, so I decided to apply.

Being able to communicate clearly in writing and produce work while up against daily deadlines are certainly useful skills that can be applied to any field. Probably most helpful from my days as a newspaper reporter, though, has been the ability to investigate unfamiliar subject matter, figure out what are the key elements and then communicate their importance to other people.

The one big thing though I found missing is the lack of discussion on the role of software in a green data center.  Virtualization in many ways is just a hardware utilization technology, working at a low level close to the hardware that software doesn’t care.

There is a communication gap between the software developers, IT operations, and data center facilities.  These groups speak different languages and have different priorities. I actually think it is too hard to get all of these groups in one room, and even if you did get them together once, you’ll have a rapid fall off in any remaining discussions.

The good thing is there are some groups who get the role of software (the consumers of data center resources) need too be aware of their energy use and the impact of their actions.  Look for more on the topic Software and a Green Data Center.

Microsoft has a paper on Virtualizing a 32 core eight server physical environment to a 32 core two server Hyper-V virtual environment, saving 50% of power with equivalent performance.

Below are some screen shots from the document.

This paper is well thought out and discusses the test methodology.

The same workload was put on the servers.

There is lots of news on Intel’s purchase of Wind River Systems. The Wind River PR folks must like the Fool.com article as they point to this one on their home page.

Intel Has Wind in Its Sails

By Anders Bylund (TMF Zahrim)
June 4, 2009 | Comments (0)

The Atom processor may have disappointed Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) investors last quarter -- but the company is not giving up on the ultra-light computing market.

Instead, Intel is getting much more serious about netbooks and handheld gadgets. The semiconductor titan is buying device software specialist Wind River Systems (Nasdaq: WIND) for $884 million in cash, or $11.50 per share. And on the same day, Intel released four new low-voltage processors for ultra-thin mobile systems. I can see a market focus taking shape.

The one sentence summarizing the value of Wind River to Intel is:

Intel gets a software development package that helps gadget builders make the most of their hardware.

Wind River’s annual report has a description of their value.

Wind River’s value proposition—enabling customers and partners to do more with less—is extremely compelling in today’s cost focused environment. Market forces driving the adoption of Device Software Optimization (DSO) are consistent with our strengths and core competencies. Increasingly, our customers, device manufacturers, are faced with shrinking time to market deadlines. The functionality requirements for devices are exploding, as the amount of software that differentiates devices is increasing significantly. Device and application performance demands are increasing. Higher device quality is imperative. And the pressure to reduce device costs is paramount. We believe the combination of these market forces have and will continue to help catalyze a shift from customers building device software in-house to buying commercial-ready solutions like the market leading solutions Wind River offers.

When you read this, you can see how you can describe Wind River as a green system developer, focusing on getting the most performance from the hardware.

There are some data center market leader who are focusing on this same idea of how to green their data center.

It is hard to believe that the ARM chip developers at Wind River see a long future. Where will these engineers and executives go? Given the popularity of the ARM chip, it is not hard to imagine a bunch of VCs seeing Intel’s acquisition of Wind River as an opportunity to fund development of new OS’s.

Green Hills Software is a Wind River Competitor as well as QNX.

Mike Manos wrote his follow on post to explaining his exit from Microsoft to Digital Realty.

Forecast Cloudy with Continued Enterprise

May 5, 2009 by mmanos

This post is a portion of my previous post that I broke into two.   It more clearly defines where I think the market is evolving to and why companies like Digital Trust Realty will be at the heart of the change in our industry.

It is a long post, are a few nuggets.

On Fogs, Mist, and the Clouds Ahead . . .

After living in Seattle for close to 10 years, you learn you become an expert in three things.  Clouds, rain, and more clouds.   Unlike the utilities of the past, this new Information Utility is going to be made up of lots of independent cloudlets full of services.  The Microsoft’s, Google’s and Amazon’s of the world will certainly play a large part of the common platforms used by everyone, but the applications, products, content, customer information, and key development components will continue to have a life in facilities and infrastructure owned or controlled by companies providing those services.    In addition, external factors are already beginning to have a huge influence on cloud infrastructure.  Despite the growing political trend of trans-nationalism where countries are giving up some of their sovereign rights to participate in more regionally-aware economics and like-minded political agendas, that same effect does not seem to be taking place in the area of taxation and regulation of cloud and information infrastructure.  Specifically as it relates to electronic or intellectual property entities that derive revenue from infrastructure housed in those particular countries or do so (drive revenue) off of online activity of citizens of those nations.

Mike’s bottom line is there will be a hybrid of data centers and cloud services.

The Continued and Increasing Importance of Enterprise Data Centers

This post has concentrated a lot on the future of cloud computing, so I will probably tick off a bunch of cloud-fan-folk with this next bit, but the need for the corporate data centers is not going away.  They may change in size, shape, efficiency, and the like, but there is a need to continue to maintain a home for those company jewels and to serve internal business communities.  The value of any company is the information and intellectual property developed, maintained, and driven by their employees.   Concepts like FOGs and MISTs and such still require ultimate homes or locations for that work to be terminated into or results sent to.  Additionally look at the suite of software each company may have in its facilities today supporting their business.  We are at least a decade or more away before those could be migrated to a distributed cloud based infrastructure.  Think about the migration costs of any particular application you have, then compound that with having the complexity of having your data stored in those cloud environments as well.  Are you then locked into a single cloud provider forever? It obviously requires cloud interoperability, which doesn’t exist today with exception of half-hearted non-binding efforts that don’t actually include any of the existing cloud providers.   If you believe as I do that the “cloud”  will actually be many little and large channelized solution cloudlets, you have to believe that the corporate data center is here to stay.  The mix of applications and products in your facilities may differ in the future, but you will still have them.  That’s not to say the facilities themselves will not have to evolve.  They will.  With changing requirements around energy efficiency and green reporting, along with the geo-political and other regulations coming through the pipeline, the enterprise data center will still be an area full of innovation as well. 

The cloud hybrid approach is one that aligns with Mike’s forecast.  Here are a few articles on AWS hybrid approach.

http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=10815

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-cloudpt1/ Explore cloud computing and the offerings from the major cloud platform vendors: Amazon, Google, Microsoft®, and SalesForce.com. In this first of a three-part series, take an example of a typical corporate application that uses a JMS queue, and examine what would be involved to hybridize part of this JMS infrastructure in the cloud.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-cloudpt2/ This is Part 2 of a three-part series on connecting to the cloud. To determine the best solution for creating a hybrid cloud application, Part 1 examined some of the offerings from the major cloud platform vendors. In this article, Part 2 of the series, you will implement the hybrid cloud application, which combines local application components with cloud computing. The application makes use of a JMS queue locally as well as an SQS queue in the cloud, combining the two in a single hybrid application

http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/03/04/WTIAScalingIntoTheCloudWithAmazonWebServices.aspx

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/08/cloudbursting-.html

If Mike is correct more people will be looking as a choice to host cloud services at Digital Realty Trust or Amazon Web Service.

Here is an article I worked on the Seven Steps to a Hyper-Green Virtual Server System.

Green IT Framework for Building a “Hyper-Green” Virtual Server System

Adam Bogobowicz and Dave Ohara

Contents

Step 1: Know Your Server Loads
Step 2: Plan for High Utilization
Step 3: Save Power
Step 4: Eliminate Waste
Step 5: Identify your Hyper-V SKUs
Step 6: Plan, Deploy, Monitor
Step 7: See the Forest, not the Trees
Moving Forward

Organizations of all sizes are focused on cutting costs by increasing the efficiency of their computing resources. Virtualization is a standard Green IT technique. But how do you equate energy efficiency efforts beyond "I used virtualization to consolidate my servers."

Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine as virtual machines (VMs), consolidating workloads across multiple underutilized servers. But are you really achieving a performance per watt that is better than other enterprise users?

Building a Hyper-Green virtualization server system is focused on taking the extra steps necessary to further reduce energy consumption. Your approach can start small; it can be comparable to switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs at home. Your next step could be analogous to turning off lights, automatically setting thermostats, and using devices such as Kill-A-Watt to identify practices and components that waste energy. The specific technologies are not as important as an awareness of the situation and a dedication to make things better. A zealous focus on efficiency and reducing waste has lasting effects.

In Warren Buffett's biography Snowball, he discusses the idea of an "Inner Scorecard" that allows you to measure where you are meeting your personal goals and where you are falling short. The internal scorecard measures whether you are doing what is right versus doing what external forces or expedience would lead you to do. In the area of green services, doing what is right is having a focus on performance per watt, not just on performance or on watts expended. The Microsoft Virtualization site can help you keep score of your energy savings by measuring energy consumption before and after virtualization and then using local energy prices to calculate savings. By focusing on reducing energy costs, you can ensure the success of your virtualization project.

There was a deadline to hit the publish date, and there will be an update to this article.  Adam Bogobowicz and I have had great success with these seven steps to discuss a framework for green virtual server system.

One of the things we have been able to do is arrange the order of execution in an easier way to execute the seven steps.

1) Save Power

2) Eliminate Waste

3) Manage for High Utilization

4) Power Size Hardware

5) Power Size Software

6) Plan and Deploy for Green

7) See the Forest for the Trees