Your Custom Text Here
OK, I had fun with yesterday’s post about my beating HP. Today I find I am beating Cisco with something much bigger that should be driving traffic to their web site..
Below are a couple of Google searches that caught my eye.
In this one I was actually beat by NetworkWorld, but I still get #2, and still beat Cisco’s page.
The US EPA has the energy star program for Enterprise Server and Data Center.
Enterprise Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency Initiatives
EPA is working with all interested parties to identify ways in which energy efficiency can be measured, documented, and implemented in data centers and the equipment they house, especially servers. Provided below are EPA's current initiatives in this area:
Consumer Reports raises Issues with the Energy Star program. Hopefully, the server and data center program can avoid the pitfalls mentioned for appliances.
Qualifying standards are lax
About 25 percent of products in a category should qualify, according to the EPA. But until recently, for example, 92 percent of all dishwashers qualified. Under a tighter standard, it's now about 50 percent. A high number of residential-use oil-fired boilers (67 percent) and dehumidifiers (60 percent) also qualify for the Energy Star program.
Tests are out of date
Federal test procedures haven't kept pace with technology, a point Energy Star leadership conceded in a meeting with Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.
"A number of test procedures are out of date or problematic," says David B. Goldstein, codirector of the energy program at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Part of the reason is that the DOE doesn't have the staff they need to do very much on test procedures. There's also willpower. They don't want to do it."
What's more, it usually takes the DOE three years to publish new rules—a period that includes comments from manufacturers, organizations such as Consumers Union, and others—and another three years for the updated minimum efficiency requirements to take effect. Comment cycles at other federal agencies are much shorter.
Input into the rule-making process by those who have a vested interest in easy-to-meet standards, such as manufacturers, can also help dilute those standards. "Because of all the parties involved, you may get a level that isn't as aggressive as it could be," says Jennifer Thorne Amann, director of the buildings program for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Companies test their own products
The DOE does not test products for compliance with its Energy Star standards; manufacturers do it. And there's no independent verification of what they report. Rather, the government relies on manufacturers to test their competitors' appliances and notify it of suspicious energy-use claims.
WSJ has an article on Computing Makers seeing Green (money) in Retooling Client’s Data Centers. Let’s start with the highlights form big names.
IBM surprised Wall Street this year when it said its new "Green Data-Center Services" business -- which redesigns customers' data centers and sells energy-efficient products -- signed $300 million in orders in the 2007 fourth quarter.
…
IBM Chief Executive Samuel Palmisano recently told analysts that IBM expects more than 70% of the world's biggest companies "will modify their data centers significantly in the next five years" to deal with energy shortfalls and rising costs.
…
H-P last November bought EYP Mission Critical Facilities Inc., a 350-person engineering firm that specializes in designing data centers. EYP President Rick Einhorn says that while energy efficiency used to be an afterthought when customers requested quotes, today "every request we see has a requirement for energy-efficient design."
…
Savings can be significant. EMC Corp., a Hopkinton, Mass., provider of storage systems that also has an energy-consulting business, redesigned its own computer rooms to eliminate unneeded equipment and use air-conditioning more efficiently. EMC projects that over three years it will avoid $4 million in costs of energy and expanded floor space.
Virtualization is covered.
Virtualization software is another big trend in power-efficient computing. In the past, companies used a separate physical server for every software application. Frequently, each ran at only 10% of its capacity, while using a full load of electricity. With virtualization, many jobs can be run on a single computer using more of its capacity, which cuts power needs.
Albert Esser, head of power and infrastructure solutions at Dell, says that advising customers how to cut power use through virtualization is an increasingly important part of Dell's $6 billion-a-year services business. He declined to disclose specific amounts.
EMC's VMware Corp., the biggest maker of virtualization software, says that a company that virtualizes 100 servers to run on 20 physical servers can save nearly $67,000 a year in energy costs.
And a small world connection. In the WSJ article Citigroup is mentionedfor its Frankfurt green data center.
Citigroup Inc. is scaling down to 14 major data centers from 52. The financial giant has been building so-called green data centers, including one in Frankfurt, Germany, with an earth-topped, green roof and exterior wall planted with sedum, a dense, succulent plant that retains cooling water in its leaves, shielding the building from the sun's rays and reducing the need for air conditioning.
I blogged about the Citigroup effort back in Dec 10, 2007 identifying the work by Harvey Cobbold.
A group of us had the pleasure of having Harvey Cobbold who is responsible for Citi's Data Center construction on our Green Data Center panel discussion at IT Forum. Behind the scenes of any Green PR release is a team of people who have been working on the project for years. These are the people who are now being recognized by their companies and industry as doing the right thing for the environment. Great Job Harvey!!!
News.com writes on why Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) dropped 5.5% today.
Google closed the regular trading session down 5.47 percent to $419.95 a share. Earlier in the day, the Internet giant's share price dipped as low as $417.55 per share, inching closer to its 52-week low of $412.11.
"I can't point to any one thing, but there are four things that you probably could say contributed to (today's) decline," said Jason Helfstein, a media and Internet analyst with Oppenheimer & Co.
Topping the list, Helfstein and several other analysts, pointed to an announcement over the weekend by the Association of National Advertisers, which called on the U.S. Department of Justice to block the controversial Google-Yahoo advertising search deal from going through.
"Google doesn't stand to make a lot of money from the (Yahoo) deal, but if it's rejected, Yahoo may have no choice but to sell to Microsoft and that wouldn't be good for Google," Helfstein noted.
This was too fuzzy of an explanation.
WSJ 7 hours later has the news.
Top Lawyer Is Selected
As U.S. Mulls Google SuitBy JOHN R. WILKE
September 9, 2008Washington -- The Justice Department has quietly hired one of the nation's best-known litigators, former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Sanford Litvack, for a possible antitrust challenge to Google Inc.'s growing power in advertising.
Mr. Litvack's hiring is the strongest signal yet that the U.S. is preparing to take court action against Google and its search-advertising deal with Yahoo Inc. The two companies combined would account for more than 80% of U.S. online-search ads.
Google shares tumbled 5.5%, or $24.30, to $419.95 in 4 p.m. trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, while Yahoo shares were up 18 cents to $18.26.
For weeks, U.S. lawyers have been deposing witnesses and issuing subpoenas for documents to support a challenge to the deal, lawyers close to the review said. Such efforts don't always mean a case will be brought, however.
Mr. Litvack, who was the Justice Department antitrust chief under President Jimmy Carter, has been asked to examine the evidence gathered so far and to build a case if the decision is made to proceed, the lawyers close to the review said.
It isn't clear whether a U.S. challenge would target the Google-Yahoo deal alone or take on broader aspects of Google's conduct in the growing online-advertising business. The agreement with Yahoo, announced in June, gives Google, of Mountain View, Calif., the right to sell search and text ads on Yahoo sites, sharing revenue with Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Display and search-based Web advertising, which are dominated by Google, have transformed the media industry. As a result, a federal antitrust case against Google could set new boundaries for Internet competition, much as the Justice Department suit against Microsoft Corp. a decade ago broke ground applying antitrust law to new technologies.
This will be interesting watching Google defend its case.
Google has said the Yahoo deal doesn't violate antitrust law. It has forcefully argued -- in public testimony before Congress and in private meetings with Justice Department lawyers -- that the deal is pro-competition. The companies say they voluntarily delayed closing the deal until early October, to allow the U.S. to complete its review.
"We voluntarily delayed implementation of this arrangement to give the Department of Justice time to understand it, and we continue to work cooperatively with them," Google said. "While there has been a lot of speculation about this agreement's potential impact on advertisers or ad prices, we think it would be premature for regulators to halt the agreement before we implement it and everyone can judge the actual impact."
Yahoo is there seeing the Google/Yahoo deal as essential for its survival.
In a statement late Monday, Yahoo said: "We have been informed that the Justice Department, as they sometimes do, is seeking advice from an outside consultant, but that we should read nothing into that fact. We remain confident that the deal is lawful."
Microsoft is taking pleasure having their turn filing a complaint.
Microsoft also has objected to the deal, saying it would unfairly foreclose competition on the Web. In Senate hearings in July, Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, testified that "if search is the gateway to the Internet, and most people believe that it is, this deal will put Google in position to own that gateway and the information that flows through it."
I wonder how appealing the free food looks to Google new hires now that they have a potential lawsuit from the Justice department on the horizon. Will the existing employees with options under water think of bailing?
And, for us data center focused people, do the state governments that gave Google data center construction tax breaks question their decisions?
This could be the big turning point for Google’s image.
HP just announced their Blades for Virtualization, and I blogged about their announcement.
But, I noticed they focused on comparing to Dell and IBM. Suspecting HP avoided a comparison to Sun, I asked some people at Sun how their products compare to HP's BL495c.
So, if you need 16 DIMMS for 128 GB of memory, 10 GbE, and SSD, the HP BL495c is the only blade out there. If don't need that much memory, or SSD, then the Sun X6220\X6250 may be another alternative for your virtualization solution.
In less than 6 months, Dell and IBM will have their latest wares. Good news for virtualization solutions there are more choices for addressing IO issues with more RAM, storage, and NIC capacity.
One alternative you may want to evaluate instead of SSD is Virident's flash memory solution given 16 DIMMs.
Virident Systems has developed the first data-centric technology platform to deliver a new class of green memory solutions for the data center. This low-energy, high-performance platform solution enables Internet data centers to cost-effectively keep pace with the rising performance and energy demands of Internet-Scale. Underlying this platform is the GreenGateway™ technology conceived and developed by Virident. Spansion® EcoRAM is the first memory product built on this platform.
Quisque iaculis facilisis lacinia. Mauris euismod pellentesque tellus sit amet mollis.