Google’s PUE Coverage

October 3, 2008 Dave Ohara

It has been interesting watching Google’s PUE and data center claims spread through blogs and news.

I haven’t blogged about Google’s post, even when I saw it on other blog sites.

Why? Because, I knew Google was going to write a PUE post, and by the time they finally did, I was disappointed it didn’t provide more facts. Nothing really new, other than Google claims being the most efficient.

As ComputerWorld mentions, the release of the PUE #’s coinciding with another marketing event.

This announcement coincides with a speech about energy that CEO Eric Schmidt gave Wednesday evening in San Francisco, in which he proposed a $4.4 trillion clean-energy plan.

It is great that Google has helped to educate thousands of people on PUE and how much energy can be saved.

There are some details, but not enough to help on equipment selection.

I plan on writing more on this and contrasting what others have shared on PUE best practices.

Summary of Microsoft's Data Center Event - Microsoft Set the Bar

September 30, 2008 Dave Ohara

TechHermit has three different attendees submit comments about the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Data Center Event. Mike Manos, Christian Belady, Daniel Costello, and the rest of the Microsoft Data Center team are changing the data center industry.

As good as this event was, the real one people want to get into is if Microsoft does this again for its Iowa Data Center, its next generation data center.

"The facility that we have planned here in Iowa will be something special and unique," said Manos, Microsoft's general manager of data center services. "It will be the first data center that what we consider our next-generation facility."
The new center will "drive significantly better energy efficiency than any center under construction today," Manos said. "Iowa, specifically West Des Moines, was the perfect location."

They could have an event for a whole week and people would gladly pay $10,000 each to attend.

Here are comments from TechHermit's blogs.

Jenny Rator

TH -
Well we just wrapped up the second day and I am now back in my hotel room relaxing after a very busy day.   The day began for me as I visited the presentation by Microsoft Security chief and General Manager Peter Boden. The program that Microsoft has around security, compliance, audits and the like is unlike anything I have ever seen before.   You never really think about the requirements for security and Microsoft’s program blends the logical and physical in a way that would astound most people.   Microsoft has an impressive list of certifications for their facilities, something you NEVER hear from anyone else advertising software as a service or operational accountability. More than that, Mr. Boden shared their approach, growth and evolution on how they got there. These were incredible lessons for those of us in the audience tasked with security requirements
I then attended a question and answer panel emceed by Michael Manos. The panel consisted of Microsoft’s top mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, architects, and Christian Belady. Frankly speaking this session was so information packed and the level of sharing of learnings so deep that its actually hard to describe. You could have done an entire day with just this team and not exhausted the questions and learnings. Everyone sitting around me agreed that you just dont get access to this type of information from ANYONE or you would have to pay an architecture and engineering company big bucks to get to talk to these kinds of people.   At lunch afterwards in one of the long hallways in the facility I talked about this session with several colleagues who were equally blown away by two key things - the forthrightness of answers and the level of sharing with the attendees. Microsoft has the most intelligent Data Center engineering organization I have ever seen.   If Microsoft ever does this again - This is a MUST ATTEND event.

Warhawk85:

TechHermit:
Like the person who posted yesterday I thought that I would send you some of my highlevel thoughts of this event.
IT TOTALLY ROCKED!
Microsoft did in one event what the last three years of attending Uptime Symposiums, DATA CENTER WORLDS, and Data Center Dynamics have completely failed to do! They shared real world examples, real data and engineering, and gave actual users exposure to real data that they could use. They did all this in a working data center that would completely blow your mind. The tour and the level of detail they went into on the facility design was just incredible. Microsoft knows how to build data centers. Dont let anyone ever tell you different. I have been in this business for 30 years and nothing even comes close.
The Microsoft event was vastly different than anything I have ever attended before in my career. It lacked the uppity air and pretentiousness of the Uptime events, and vastly more detailed than anything Dynamics or Data Center World would get into. As Michael Manos told me in the hall his goal was to have a conference “by operations people, for operations people, about operations and real world issues.” At that they totally succeeded.   Everyone I talked to went on about the quality of the sessions and sheer amazement at their open-ness.
In my opinion, Microsoft did more for Data Center end-users and the Data Center Community than a hundred conferences. I know you dont want to post about the Uptime controversy anymore but if there was ever a successor to that work, my vote would be for this group to manage it.

OilCanSam

Hermit,
I just wanted to send you my personal experience at the Microsoft Data Center Experience event in San Antonio as I see you have an entry about it. The event was wonderful. Microsoft executives and technical teams were frank, open, honest, and generally extremely generous with their time. While we have different design criteria and operations models it was great to see how someone else has approached the same problems. The tours of the facility, the technologies used, the engineering reasons they have done what they have done was clearly articulated to everyone. The opening night keynote had an interesting line : ” This event is not to show anyone the right way to do datacenters, the wrong way to do datacenters, just the Microsoft way of doing datacenters.” I have to say I was somewhat dubious that I would get a lot of sales marketing around their products but the event was all about operations and with the exception of some salesy stuff in the Virtualization track around Hyper-V it was incredibly down to earth. one of the best events around data centers and definitely the best Microsoft event I have ever attended. My personal kudo’s goes out to the Microsoft teams for an amazing experience.

I hope this creates pressure on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to open its doors or maybe people have given up on finding out anything about Google.. Has anyone else noticed how little news there is on Google's data centers?

VMWare’s CEO Paul Maritz says #1 Initiative is Virtual Data Center Operating System

September 30, 2008 Dave Ohara

EWeek has an interview with Paul Martitz where he says the Virtual Data Center OS is the #1 priority for VMware.

Why is VMware focusing so heavily on the cloud, as opposed to updating what it already has or some products that could come out in six months?

Key point to correct there—the cloud is not our only focus.

The three key initiatives are, No. 1, the virtual data center operating system, No. 2, vCloud, No. 3, vClient.

So our key initiative really is the virtual data center operating system, not the cloud. There’s a cloud dimension to it, but our focus is really on how we allow our customers to build upon the technology we already have to strengthen their use of virtualization, to achieve much more fundamentally efficient and flexible usage of their computing infrastructure.

We believe that, in doing so, it will open up opportunities for them to federate with the external cloud, but it starts, first and foremost, with the virtual data center operating system.

VMware’s path to cloud computing is through its virtual data center OS.

On one side you said you have the cloud, and you have the sort of very dynamic data center. What’s the vision that VMware has about pulling all of these different things together?

First and foremost, we believe our customers need to have a way whereby they can essentially start using their internal resources as a giant computer and, in doing so, get maximum efficiency and flexibility out of it.

Now, they can’t afford to rewrite all of their applications to do that, and the only strategy, really, to reach for that state is through increased use of virtualization. As we do that, though, we have to make sure that that strategy is open to all of the other partners who play in the data center—and, hence, the need for a virtual data center operating system.

It’s that layer of software that allows our customers to start treating all of their internal resources as a giant pool that they can provision loads onto. It addresses both existing approaches to writing applications, like Windows and Linux, as well as future ways of writing applications. And it provides a way whereby specialized infrastructure vendors—whether they be storage or networking—can plug into that environment.

Intel asks for Interest in Atom Servers

September 30, 2008 Dave Ohara

I found this post on Intel’s Software Blogs.

Atom processors in your ultra mobile... server?!

By Jeff Moriarty (Intel) (26 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 10:14 am

Not sure how I missed this at the time, but The Register reports UK hosting company Bytemark is using Atom processors in their servers.

Huh? Servers?

I was initially pretty amused by this, but given that a search of "green data center" on The Google returns 22 million hits I guess I shouldn't have been. Power consumption and cooling is a huge problem for data centers, and with the growth of grid computing Atom might be an interesting alternative. It also might be a great opportunity for developers to design data center applications specifically for low power chips like Atom.

There are already some good thoughts on this topic on both sides on the Register site. What do you think? Could Atom enter the data center, or is it just not practical?

Where Intel is missing the opportunity is at home for geek’s who want to run servers. The opportunity for the Intel Atom is not in the data center, but in areas where performance per watt is not the issue, but total power consumed for an always on server.

Newegg has a couple of barebones systems that you can use to build Intel Atom Servers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101076

Shuttle X27 Intel 945GC 1 x 240Pin Intel GMA 950 Black & Silver Barebone - Retail

Small and quiet

Reviewed By: MattK on 9/26/2008
Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week
This user purchased this item from Newegg
Pros: I bought this mini system for use as a network USB hub. Since the system will be on all the time and in a main room of the house, this good looking, low power, quiet computer fits the bill. Onboard gigabit ethernet is also a huge plus.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

MSI Wind PC Intel 945GC 1 x 200Pin Intel GMA 950 Black Barebone - Retail

(limit 1 per customer)

Windows Home Server

Pros: Low power consumption, easy construction, ultra-quiet, ultra-small. I installed MS Windows Home Server on it with zero problems. No need for SATA controller drivers. I'm guessing the MSI board is running SATA in IDE emulation mode. I was able to use the driver CD that came with the Wind to get all the necessary devices running in Windows Home Server.
Cons: Only one hard drive bay available.
Other Thoughts: I built a Microsoft Windows Home Server usnig this barebones PC and I'm happy with it. Note that I'm ONLY using the WHS for backups. If you are going to store data on it, it'd be best to add a second hard drive (for WHS redundancy) or to keep ongoing backups of the WHS Shared Folders. Unfortunately, there's no ROOM for a second hard drive (unless you want to pull the DVD drive and make system recovery a bit messier), so the MSI Wind is NOT a a good box for a full-service home server.

Microsoft Changing The Data Center Industry with an Event?

September 29, 2008 Dave Ohara

TechHermit has an inside track on the Microsoft MDX event. Given this is an NDA event there is no press that I know of, so we’ll see what details come out. But, TechHermit has quite a bit.

Microsoft Data Center "No Frills, Mad Skills" Show gets underway
September 30, 2008
I just got an update from one of my readers who is attending the Microsoft Datacenter Experience Conference in San Antonio. While the event is under non-disclosure certain facts have already leaked out about its content:

Microsoft has opened its doors to its key customers around its data center approach, technologies and plans.

The event is being held at the recently opened San Antonio Data Center. Apparently the lecture halls are actual data room halls of the facility.

Microsoft has brought its best and brightest data center engineers, program managers, and executives to the event to discuss the business, economics, and technologies of the data center industry.

Apparently this event is the brain child of Microsoft Data Center guru’s Michael Manos and Christian Belady but will have representation from all aspects of Microsoft Operations including Networking

The reader identified as “Jenny Rator” sent us the following email snippet. She is committed and bound by the NDA and will not be disclosing specifics around the various sessions, but promised to give us a “feel” for what she is experiencing.

Here are more details from Jenny Rator.

I have never been to an actual data center conference in a working data center before and they did a really nice job. Its clear that the focus is on the data, knowledge sharing, and ability to interact with Microsoft personnel, and not on selling Microsoft product or doing a fancy dog and pony show. I have honestly never experienced anything like this, and frankly I love it. Everyone got a tour of facility which is breath-taking. If you ever want to know how to do a data center right - you should go to this event if they have it again.

What is more credible than having a Data Center event at a Data Center?