Storage User Group Presentation: Don't Believe Green IT Hype

ByteandSwitch reports on a user group presentation.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- IT managers need to claw through the hype surrounding Green IT if they want to get their power costs under control, according to users here today.

”Talking green is easy, but being green is difficult,” warned Dave Vellante, senior storage analyst at the Wikibon research and user group, during a presentation this morning. “Smart companies can cut through the hype.”

Even technologies such as de-dupe, thin provisioning, and virtual storage, which are increasingly touted as a way to slash power and storage space costs, are no silver bullet, according to Vellante. “They are all tactics to improve utilization, but they do not solve the underlying problem. I would say that about 3 percent of the people that we speak to have visibility into what energy costs are in their data centers. Until that changes, it will be difficult to change the problem.”

A slew of vendors, including IBM, Xyratex, and 3PAR, are pushing technologies that aim to reduce data center power consumption, but Vellante urged users to get back to data center basics.

Focusing all your attention on servers, storage, and other IT equipment is not the way to go, according to the analyst. “If you just start there, you are missing a big opportunity,” he said, urging users to instead focus their initial efforts around legacy kit, cooling, air movement, and even lighting.

This is a good article for common sense approach to Greening the Data Center.

Focusing all your attention on servers, storage, and other IT equipment is not the way to go, according to the analyst. “If you just start there, you are missing a big opportunity,” he said, urging users to instead focus their initial efforts around legacy kit, cooling, air movement, and even lighting.

”Get rid of old stuff, turn things off [and] do simple power management. Clear out the data centers, use hot and cold aisles, use outside air [and] use water.”

These sentiments were echoed by Vellante’s co-presenter William Souder, the chief information security office at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga. “It’s really simple, you walk the data center, you look behind your racks, you look for cable management [and] you look for your hot spots. Understand that it’s the simple things that get you there.”

Even the term "green computing" is misleading, according to Souder: “I don’t really call it green. You have to be a good steward about your spending anyway, and look to save money.”

This is not the first time that users have been urged to use common sense before spending big bucks on the latest, greatest, piece of "green technology," although it seems that relatively few IT managers even have an environmental policy in place for their data center.

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Lesson from US Biofuel Subsidies, similar problems in IT Chargeback models

WSJ has a post about how US Biofuel Subsidies are being exploited in a practice to game the system.

The U.S. taxpayer forks over a $1 subsidy for every gallon of biodiesel that is blended in the U.S. for export later. The idea was to give a nudge to the U.S. biofuel industry. But it is boomeranging, as the Guardian reports today in the latest installment on biodiesel “splash-and-dash.” (Other stories on this here, here, and here.)

Increasingly, traders ship biodiesel from Asia or Europe to U.S. ports, where it is blended with a “splash” of regular diesel, the paper reports. That qualifies the shipment for U.S. export subsidies. Then it is shipped back to Europe where it is also subsidized. European biofuels organizations talk about between $30 million and $300 million in U.S. subsidies being exported that way to Europe.

The result? Biofuel’s already-tarnished environmental reputation comes under more fire, because round trips across the Atlantic add unnecessary transport emissions to the mix. And Europe’s own biodiesel industry has been shutting plants, despite its own efforts to ramp up production to meet political mandates. Imports are undercutting local producers on price.

When reading this it reminds me of how IT chargeback systems can be gamed and are actually the cause of inefficiencies like the above example. When the business units are not charged for their power use, then they have no incentive to purchase energy efficiency features like energy efficient power supplies.

The hardest in going green in the data center are the pockets of self-optimizing behavior who only have their own self-interests in mind.

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11th Best Practice hidden in Microsoft's 10 Best Practices

I've been staring at the Microsoft's Best Practices for Energy Efficiency in Microsoft Data Center Operations that they published as part of Steve Ballmer's announcement at Cebit, thinking about how to use the document. I checked with some Microsoft friends and there have been 640 downloads of this document from the press release site in one week. The number will go up significantly when the content gets hosted in a higher traffic Microsoft area like TechNet. The early feedback has been good and customers are asking for more.

For those of you haven't downloaded the document here are the 10 best practices:

  1. Engineer the data center for cost and energy efficiency.
  2. Optimize the design to assess multiple factors.
  3. Optimize provisioning for maximum efficiency and productivity.
  4. Monitor and control data center performance in real time.
  5. Make data center operational excellence part of organizational culture.
  6. Measure power usage effectiveness (PUE).
  7. Use temperature control and airflow distribution.
  8. Eliminate the mixing of hot and cold air.
  9. Use effective air-side or water-side economizers.
  10. Share and learn from industry partners.

The one thing I really liked about the list is the order. The order in which you run a Green Data Center project is the most important best practice and can be listed as the 11th Best Practice.  You can fine tune the order for your organization, but you get the idea of looking at the big picture first, putting in your green infrastructure, implement, and learn more.

    • Big Picture
      • Engineer the data center for cost and energy efficiency.
      • Optimize the design to assess multiple factors.
      • Optimize provisioning for maximum efficiency and productivity.
    • Green Infrastructure
      • Monitor and control data center performance in real time.
      • Make data center operational excellence part of organizational culture.
      • Measure power usage effectiveness (PUE).
    • Implement
      • Use temperature control and airflow distribution.
      • Eliminate the mixing of hot and cold air.
      • Use effective air-side or water-side economizers.
    • Learn More
      • Share and learn from industry partners.

This is the first step anyone should take in Greening their data center.  Answer the question:

In what order will you implement Best Practices?

This will have the largest effect on the success or failure of the project.

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Moore's Law applied to the Data Center, podcast of Microsoft's Mike Manos

Techhermit posted a blog entry, pointing to an Uptime Institute podcast with Microsoft's Mike Manos, chief of data centers discussing the idea of Moore's Law Applied to the Data Center.

Can Moore's Law be applied to the data center?  The late Jim Gray wrote on Moore's Law topic, and made the following observations.

Beginning as a simple observation of trends in semiconductor device complexity, Moore's Law has become many things. It is an explanatory variable for the qualitative uniqueness of the semiconductor as a base technology. It is now recognized as a benchmark of progress for the entire semiconductor industry. And increasingly it is becoming a metaphor for technological progress on a broader scale. As to explaining the real "causes" of Moore's Law, this examination has just begun. For example, the hypothesis that semiconductor device users' expectations feed back and self-reinforce the attainment of Moore's Law (see Figure 1) is still far from being validated or disproved. There does appear to be support for this notion primarily in the software industry (e.g., "Wintel" de facto architecture). Further research, including survey research and additional interviews, is required to address this possible relationship.

What has been learned from this early investigation is the critical role that process innovations in general, and manufacturing equipment innovations in particular play in providing the technological capability to fabricate smaller and smaller semiconductor devices. The most notable of process innovations was the planar diffusion process in 1959 -- the origin of Moore's Law. Consistent with Thomas Kuhn's (1962) paradigm-shifting view of "scientific revolution," many have described the semiconductor era as a "microelectronics revolution." (Forester 1982, Braun and Macdonald 1982, Gilder 1989, Malone 1996, and others) Indeed, the broad applications and pervasive technological, economic, and social impacts that continue to come forth from "that astonishing microchip" (Economist 1996) seem almost endless. However, this phenomenon has also been aptly described by Bessant and Dickson (1982) as evolutionary, albeit at an exponential rate.

"In a definite technical sense there has been no revolution (save, perhaps, for the invention of the transistor in 1947) but rather a steady evolution since the first invention."

Moore's Law is one measure of the pace of this "steady evolution." Its regularity is daunting. The invention of the transistor, and to a lesser degree the integrated circuit a decade later, represented significant scientific and technological breakthroughs, and are both classic examples of the Schumpeterian view of "creative destruction" effects of innovation. This is evidenced by the literal creation of an entire new semiconductor industry at the expense of the large electronics firms that dominated the preceding vacuum tube technological era. This period of transition from old technology to new technology is characterized by instability, and factors that underpin very irregular performance. This would be considered a shift in the economic and technological paradigm (Dosi 1984, 1988) similar to Constant's (1980) account of the "Turbojet Revolution" where the invention of the turbojet, along with co-evolutionary developments including advancements in airframe design and materials, enabled significant performance improvements in air speed and altitude. The turbojet produced a whole new "jet engine" industry and helped redefine both military and commercial aircraft industries and their users (e.g., airlines). Following the early experimental years of the turbojet, these industries settled in on a new technological trajectory (Dosi 1984, 1988) toward the frontier of the "jet age."

Innovations within the boundary limits of this new frontier occurred at a rapid, but more regular rate. The role of accumulated knowledge -- both tacit and explicit (Freeman 1994) -- and standards (e.g., the role of the Proney brake as the benchmark for performance measurement and testing) are emphasized. Similarly, semiconductor development since the planar process has followed Klein's (1977) description of "fast history," but is more in line with Pavitt's (1986) application of "creative accumulation" (i.e., the new technology builds on the old). The "new" technology in this case is the accumulated incremental -- particularly process-oriented -- advancements indicative of the Moore's Law semiconductor "era." As for standards, indeed Moore's Law itself is used throughout the industry as the benchmark of progress, evidenced most strikingly by the kilo- to mega- to giga-bit density DRAM chips. Increasingly, regular advances in microprocessor performance measures such as MIPS (millions of instructions per second) and MHZ processing speeds follow -- and become part of -- Moore's Law.

Moore's law can apply to the data centers when you apply Jim's observations

  • Process innovations play a critical role
  • Steady evolution
  • Role of accumulated knowledge

Is this what Mike Manos was trying to explain in his podcast?

Is this how Microsoft's Data Center Solutions group develops their data centers?

It will be interesting what Mike presents as a speaker at AFCOM and Uptime Institute.

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WSJ article, How to Tap IT's Hidden Potential, ideas work for Green Data Center as well

The WSJ has an article about How to Tap IT's Hidden Potential , and many of these same ideas ideas apply to how Green Data Center projects should be executed. In fact, most companies who have green IT initiatives practice most of the ideas in this article.

Simply put, top executives at most companies fail to recognize the value of IT. It can help a company transform data from its operations, its business partners and its markets into useful competitive information. It can be the source of profitable innovations in the way a company interacts with its customers and suppliers. But there is still a tendency to think of IT as a basic utility, like plumbing or telephone service.

VIDEO: IT'S HIDDEN POTENTIAL

[see video]

The chief information officer's role has become so important that it can now be a steppingstone to the CEO's office. Amit Basu discusses this development and its implications in an interview with the Journal's Carol Hymowitz.

In many industries, IT consumes a significant amount of capital expenditures and gross revenue. Though recent research has shown that managing IT well can significantly increase a firm's profits and deliver substantially higher returns on IT investments, its potential is overlooked, and even its workaday application is often mismanaged.

The result isn't just missed opportunities -- it's also wasted money. Analysts estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars are blown every year on IT projects that fail to achieve the desired goals.

This last point can include energy savings projects when you don't have a monitoring system in place to measure successes and failures.

Here are the points in summary:

  1. Begin with IT literacy -- and commitment -- at the top
  2. Hire an IT leader who sees the big picture
  3. Create demand for IT solutions
  4. Make sure nothing gets lost in translation
  5. Rationalize IT spending
  6. Create an IT portfolio by evaluating risks and returns
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