A More Efficient Monitoring Method – Hints

November 10, 2008 Dave Ohara

Part of what I look for in my research on green data center is techniques that are lasting and have big impacts.

Monitoring systems are complex and many times not effective, but a necessary evil. Why are these systems so hard to use? The aha moment is Monitoring systems have not embraced the fundamental idea of hints in computer systems.

It started reading James Hamilton’s post on Butler Lampson. Curious, I found Butler Lampson’s paper on hints. The paper was written in July 1983. And, here is the part that got my attention.

Use hints to speed up normal execution. A hint, like a cache entry, is the saved result of some computation. It is different in two ways: it may be wrong, and it is not necessarily reached by an associative lookup. Because a hint may be wrong, there must be a way to check its correctness before taking any unrecoverable action. It is checked against the ‘truth’, information that must be correct but can be optimized for this purpose rather than for efficient execution. Like a cache entry, the purpose of a hint is to make the system run faster. Usually this means that it must be correct nearly all the time.

This all makes sense for how Monitoring Systems should be designed.

Monitoring should speed up execution of changes.
Speed is traded for accuracy, and monitoring data must have a way to check correctness, because a hint can be wrong. But, any monitoring data could be wrong, yet who designs in monitoring redundancy?
Monitoring data that must be correct is optimized for its purpose vs. efficient execution.

What is a bit confusing is the paper itself is about hints, and the most useful hint was to use hints.

Hints for Computer System Design[1]

Butler W. Lampson

Computer Science Laboratory
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304

Abstract

Studying the design and implementation of a number of computer has led to some general hints for system design. They are described here and illustrated by many examples, ranging from hardware such as the Alto and the Dorado to application programs such as Bravo and Star.

1. Introduction

Designing a computer system is very different from designing an algorithm:

The external interface (that is, the requirement) is less precisely defined, more complex, and more subject to change.

The system has much more internal structure, and hence many internal interfaces.

The measure of success is much less clear.

The designer usually finds himself floundering in a sea of possibilities, unclear about how one choice will limit his freedom to make other choices, or affect the size and performance of the entire system. There probably isn’t a ‘best’ way to build the system, or even any major part of it; much more important is to avoid choosing a terrible way, and to have clear division of responsibilities among the parts.

I have designed and built a number of computer systems, some that worked and some that didn’t. I have also used and studied many other systems, both successful and unsuccessful. From this experience come some general hints for designing successful systems. I claim no originality for them; most are part of the folk wisdom of experienced designers. Nonetheless, even the expert often forgets, and after the second system [6] comes the fourth one.
[1] This paper was originally presented at the. 9th acm Symposium on Operating Systems Principles and appeared in Operating Systems Review 15, 5, Oct. 1983, p 33-48. The present version is slightly revised.

I can have a lot of fun with this topic. And, I’ll start working on a paper using this method after I have researched it further.

Greener Cars, Have Higher Insurance Costs

October 27, 2008 Dave Ohara

The EPA has a new transportation program called Smartway to help people buy greener cars.

In 2004, EPA launched SmartWay^SM — an innovative brand that represents environmentally cleaner, more fuel efficient transportation options.

In its simplest form, the SmartWay brand identifies products and services that reduce transportation-related emissions. However, the impact of the brand is much greater as the SmartWay brand signifies a partnership among government, business and consumers to protect our environment, reduce fuel consumption, and improve our air quality for future generations.

But, the WSJ brings up an interesting point about the greener cars having higher insurance costs.

Wieck/Toyota

Toyota Yaris 5-Door Hatchback

This year's higher gasoline prices are prompting drivers to switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. The trouble is, some of the money they save may be going to higher insurance premiums.

Small cars generally cost more to insure than larger ones because they're involved in more accidents and incur bigger claims, especially for injuries. That's true regardless of the driver profile, though younger and less-experienced drivers tend to buy smaller, cheaper cars.

A 40-year-old male driver would pay an average of $1,704 to insure a 2009 Mini Cooper that gets 37 miles per gallon on the highway, according to a study by Insure.com, an online insurance broker. That same driver would pay only $1,266 -- a difference of $438 -- to insure a Toyota Sienna Minivan, which gets 23 mpg.

Similarly, a Honda Civic compact that gets 36 mpg on the highway costs $412 more a year to insure than a Honda CR-V, a small sport-utility vehicle that gets 27 mpg.

Keep in mind when working on green projects to get your finance group involved as they’ll help figure out the total costs.

Tip for Green Projects – Changing Minds

October 27, 2008 Dave Ohara

The biggest obstacle for green projects is the resistance to change as it requires people to change their views. Yet, people change their minds all the time, so how do you get people to change their minds in the direction of going green in the data center?

Howard Gardner is recognized expert in analyzing how people think.

This election season, are you wondering if you can
change the mind of a friend who is leaning in the
wrong direction? In Howard Gardner's groundbreaking
book Changing Minds learn insights into the
phenomenon of changing minds and how to bring about
significant changes in persepective and behavior.

The core idea of the book changing minds is in this SAP article.

Changing Minds
By Howard Gardner
Generically, mind change entails the alteration of mental representations. All of us can develop mental representations quite readily from the beginning of life. Many such representations are serviceable, some have notable charm, others are misleading or flatly wrong. Mental representations have a content: we think of these contents as ideas, concepts, skills, stories or full-fledged theories (explanations of the world). These contents can be expressed in words – and in a book, that medium is customarily used. However, nearly all contents can be expressed in a variety of forms, media, symbol systems: these systems can be exhibited publicly as marks on a page and can also be internalized in a "language of the mind" or a particular "intelligence."

Present content and desired content
One should begin by determining what is the present (current) content – be it an idea, a concept, a story, a theory, a skill – and what is the desired content. Once the desired content has been identified, the various competing countercontents must be specified. The more explicitly one can lay these out, the more likely that one can arrive at a strategy suitable for mind changing in the particular instance. Both contents and countercontents may be presented in various formats.
Size of audience
The challenge of mind change is quite different, depending on whether one is dealing with a large audience or a tiny audience. Large audiences are affected chiefly by powerful stories, rendered by individuals who embody their stories in the lives that they lead; intimate audiences can benefit from approaches that are much more individually contextualized. Of special interest are the changes that take place in one's own mind, involving the most intimate kinds of conversation with oneself.
Type of audience
When one is dealing with an audience that is large and heterogeneous, one is dealing with the unschooled mind. Expertise cannot be assumed. Simple stories work the best. On the other hand, when one is dealing with individuals who share knowledge and expertise, one can assume a mind that is schooled and relatively homogeneous with respect to other minds in the group. Stories or theories related to such groups can be more sophisticated, and counterarguments can and should be addressed directly.
Directness of change
Political, business and educational leaders bring about change through the messages that they convey directly to their representative audiences. Creative and innovative individuals bring about change indirectly, through the symbolic products – art works, inventions, scientific theories – that they fashion. In general, mind changes due to indirect creations take longer, but their effects have the potential to last for a far longer period of time. In general, we remember the artistic creators of bygone civilizations far more vividly than we recall the political leaders.
Levers of change and tipping points
Classically, change takes place through compulsion, manipulation, persuasion or through some combination thereof. In this book I have directed attention to deliberate and open attempts at mind change. I have also stressed the classic forms of persuasion: talk, teaching, therapy and the creation and dissemination of new ideas and products. We must recognize, however, that in the future, these low-tech agents may well be supplanted by new forms of intervention: some will be biological, involving transformation of genes or brain tissue; some will be computational, entailing the use of new software and new hardware; and some will represent increasingly intricate amalgams of the biological and the computational realms.
The ethical dimension
As Niccolo Machiavelli pointed out dramatically, skills in bringing about change need not (in fact, he argued, should not) have a moral dimension. Indeed, most of the processes outlined in this book can be carried out for amoral ends, for immoral ends or for impressively moral ends.

Windows Live Writer Beta

October 12, 2008 Dave Ohara

One of the tools that makes blogging a lot easier is Windows Live Writer.

Microsoft just announced a beta for their latest release.

The beta feature I like best so far is being able to view a preview before publishing in Live Writer. In the past I would publish then view my blog entry on www.greenm3.com after TypePad published the content.

Now I can view the post within Live Writer.

Deutsche Bank CIO Prioritizes Facilities Changes, Reduces Energy Costs by 25 - 35%

September 27, 2008 Dave Ohara

Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), Juan Caballero,VP of IT Infrastructure and Skanska Mission Critical (data center construction/services) gave a joint presentation at Data Center Dynamics Seattle on "The Ultimate Green Move, Fix What you have first". ZERODOWNTIME magazine followed up with a print article with more details.

Robert Bellantoni, Director of Energy Services - Skanska Mission Critical

It’s not all about new product implementation in the energy efficiency race. Following a very well received presentation at the DatacenterDynamics Seattle conference in August, we asked Bob Bellantoni, Director of Energy Services for Skanska Inc. to expand on their “Fix First” concept.

In response to soaring energy costs and the immediate demands to reduce carbon emissions the Skanska Mission Critical team recently developed and deployed a Data Center Optimization (DCO) program focusing on a ”low tech” approach which is providing immediate improvement of DC efficiency and reduced operational cost.

The “Fix First” concept is based on the needs of current legacy data centers to make immediate and necessary improvements in their operational efficiency without costly retrofit, redesign or timely rebuilding options.

“The fastest way to needed improvement is often apparent and can usually be fixed with minimum cost,” says Bellantoni. “We conduct a physical audit of the as built state of their current cabinets and rack installation. Most legacy data centers are in a ‘mid-life crisis’ mode as a result of an aging design that may have been the bestof- breed at the time, but did not take critical efficiency and rising operating costs into consideration when creating the original design model.”

In the midst of the US Financial crises it is a smart move for Deutsche Bank to improve its PUE by lowering optimizing its existing power and cooling infrastructure early in its effort to green its data center.

I am amazed at how much money people will throw money at virtualization projects yet they have no funds allocated to improving the energy efficiency of their data centers.

Skanska and Turner Construction have been listed as top Green building contractors, but it is surprising Skanska has a group that will Green Legacy Data Centers as an alternative to building new ones.

Part of the bag of Tools Bob uses is thermal imaging derived from military applications to identify and document heat loses. How good are these thermal imaging devices? I found this youtube video showing heat detected from the stretching of a rubber band. Pretty cool, no hot.