Instant Virtualized Physical Infrastructure – Stratascale addresses market for hybrid physical and virtual servers.

Just interviewed Reed Smith, Director of Product Management for StrataScale and discussed their IronScale product.  Their announcement is here.

This is an interesting extension of service from Raging Wire collocation services to host a virtualized infrastructure.

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In many ways the Stratascale offering is a greener data center solution for companies with 50 – 500 employees who run their own servers on site or even a collocation offering. Why? Because the solution is designed with Virtualization as an assumption.  The good thing is versus services like Amazon Web Services you can also choose to have a no virtualization and be direct on hardware.  Also, the servers are not share with other customers. The virtualized servers are all yours.

This was my first chat with Reed, but I am sure I’ll be talking to him again to discuss Stratascale’s solution.

Part of Stratascale’s value is its UI for system provisioning.

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You can watch a demo here.

The physical servers are listed.

Available in 3 levels of automated integrated bundled environments, IronScale is built on real, physical dual- and quad-core x86 servers.

Level 1 Server...2 cores, 4GB RAM, 70GB storage

Level 2 Server...4 cores, 8GB RAM, 70GB storage

Level 3 Server...8 cores, 16GB RAM, 70GB storage

Each server bundle features:

Dual-/quad-core Intel® Xeon® CPUs

70GB of local RAID 5O storage

Your choice of a Red Hat® Linux® or Windows® Server OS

1 Mbps dedicated bandwidth

2 networks and 8 external IP addresses per client

100 internal IP addresses per network

VPN for 1 site-to-site and 5 remote users per client

24x7 Monitoring and Management

KVM access

The data center facility is listed is run by Raging Wire.

Our Tier IV Data Center

Staff

Multi-disciplined, certified engineering staff and 24x7 support team of IT experts is rigorously trained, has extensive industry expertise, and is committed to clients, standards, and best practices.

World-Class Facility

Tier IV class "A+" 200,000+ square foot data center

Engineered for 99.999% availability

Power and cooling is scalable beyond 200 Watts per sq. ft.

Carrier neutral high-speed Internet, over 20 Gigabits of bandwidth

N+2 minimum system and component redundancy for concurrent maintainance and fault tolerance

On-site, 69Kv power substation and well

Financial-grade physical security

Their PUE is not advertised, but given the highly virtualized environment the performance per watt should be high.

Environmental Responsibility

At RES, we have a healthy respect for our environment. Which is why we have always built common sense and green practices into everything we do. But being environmentally responsible isn't just good for the community and the planet - its good business. For our efforts, we have received numerous environmental awards, but we don't stop there. We constantly refine our processes to improve our power and resource efficiency, reduce and recycle wastes, and help us to operate more productively.

Efficiency and sustainability is key to everything we do.

Our power conservation efforts have saved more than 4,000,000 kWh of electricity.

We've increased our chilled water plant and cooling efficiency, conserving an additional 250,000 kWh of electricity per month.

Our two chemical-free water treatment systems have eliminated chemical use entirely and reduced our water discharged by 80%.

We recycle 100% of the cardboard, steel, copper, and aluminum we use for construction and other activities. In paper and cardboard recycling alone, it is equivalent to 36+ mature trees per year.

We recycle 100% of our lead acid batteries, over 700,000 pounds worth, and donate the proceeds to the United States Wolf Refuge.

We recycle more than 2,000 pounds of electronic waste per year, from both our own company and as a free service to our valued clients.

Our social and environmental responsibility is an essential part of contributing to and protecting the community we live in.

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Environmental Impact, FedEx comments on Laundry Detergent

OK I admit to being a logistics guy and wrote about UPS’s sustainability report. I spent some of my early career working on Apple’s and HP’s distribution systems building new distribution capabilities, and found some of the biggest potential improvements in software systems.

FedEx has a historical perspective post regarding sustainability efforts.

History’s Lesson: Sustainability Requires Everyone in the Trenches

By Mitch Jackson on April 21, 2009

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“Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity. We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed.” - Benjamin Rush -

Before making any judgments about this quote, let me reassure you that it has a positive aspect. Before I get to that, however, some might be asking who Benjamin Rush was. He was one of America’s lesser known Founding Fathers. He was an associate of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and a prominent physician in his day. And, the context of the quote, from a letter to John Adams, was in reference to some of the darkest days of the American Revolution.

What’s the relevance of the quote? As the historian David Hackett Fischer wrote in Washington’s Crossing, “He (Rush) thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible.” But, the positive aspect of this is that we do rise up and deal with problems, and eventually solve them.

That’s what is needed for the current vexing problems of the economy, energy security and the environment. Just as the nascent nation relied upon state militias to supplement those Continental soldiers in the field month after month during the Revolutionary War (sometimes to the Glorious Cause’s detriment), so, too, this nation requires everyone in the trenches to fight this action in transforming and sustaining our economy.

One of the more interesting points is FedEX discussing P&G Laundry Detergent.

I spoke at a summit some weeks back for The Economist magazine, titled The 2009 Sustainability Summit – The New Climate: Global Warming and Its Implications for Corporate Strategy. This is a big title for a big societal challenge. I was particularly struck by an innovation that could result in big environmental benefits. Procter & Gamble has done much in their sustainability efforts, even conducting life cycle analyses on their products. They found that their biggest environmental impact from energy usage was not their product manufacturing; it was not their materials, not their transportation of materials or products, not even material disposal; none of these were even close. No, it was the use of their laundry products in homes that was their biggest impact, primarily from the energy used to heat water. So, they developed Tide Cold Water. Procter & Gamble has calculated that washing laundry in cold water in every U.S. household would save 70 to 90 billion kilowatt-hours of energy every year – they say this is 3% of the nation’s total household energy consumption, equating to a reduction of 34 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Oh, yes, another interesting fact is that they calculate that the average consumer would save $63 annually on their utility bills. All of these numbers are large in total. And, importantly, they’re all trending the right way – reduced energy usage and environmental impact, reduced costs for consumers, and increased product sales potential for Procter & Gamble. A “win-win-win”, which is invariably better than “win-lose” scenarios – always the result of “us versus them” strategies.

Makes you think how many of you know what are the effects of users using your data center services.

What is the environmental impact of your data center services?

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Attending Data Center Dynamics San Francisco, July 17, 2009

I’ll be down at Data Center Dynamics SF on July 17, 2009.

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The benefits of attending are listed:

  • Network with other senior data center professionals

  • Multi-track programme that allows you to choose from 26 presentations

  • Post-event* access to the largest database of presentations

  • Post-event* access to market research key findings from all events

  • Special access* to filmed seminars on DCDtv
    *12 Months access to 'Delegate Resources' area (see top nav)

    • And, I fall into this first bucket of networking.  Unfortunately or fortunately, I learn much more networking with people then sitting in a presentation. I’ve spent too much time working on my own presentations and others and I don’t have the patience to sit and listen for an hour. Most of the time I am listening to the style of presentation and how they could improve their presentation with better organization, talking points, and graphics.

    If you are attending DCD SF, look forward to meeting some new people and reconnecting familiar faces.

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    UPS Discusses CO2 Emission Transparency as part of Logistics Supply Chain, Is Information Delivery Next?

    Logistics Management has an article about UPS’s Sustainability Report.

    Green logistics: UPS lays out CO2 emissions reduction goals in new sustainability report

    Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Logistics Management, 7/7/2009

    ATLANTA—UPS said today it plans to reduce its airline carbon emissions by an additional 20 percent from 2005 to 2020, which would be a cumulative reduction of 42 percent since 1990.

    This objective was disclosed in its annual UPS Sustainability Report, which noted that UPS Airlines has a firm position as an industry leader in fuel efficiency in the package delivery sector, with an efficiency factor of 1.42 CO2 pounds per available ton mile—and a goal to reduce that factor to 1.24 CO2 pounds per available ton mile by 2020.

    Distribution is a key point of eCommerce sites like eBay and Amazon.

    McIntire added that UPS also wants to be a reliable supply chain partner for shippers, which is why it now has transparency in its CO2 emissions reporting [Scope 1, 2, and 3] and emissions-reduction goals.”

    “UPS has taken a bold step in terms of their willingness to provide data related to their direct and indirect carbon emissions, as well as their call requiring all transportation and logistics companies to report their direct and indirect emissions,” said Brittain Ladd, director of logistics and manufacturing at Cognizant Technology Solutions and a leading expert on green supply chains and logistics. “The challenge, however, is that not all transportation and logistics companies have an infrastructure in place or the tools necessary to accurately capture and report their carbon emissions.”

    But with so many different consulting firms and 3PL's able to provide support to provide transportation and logistics providers—and shippers—with the expertise and tools to accurately capture and report their emissions, Ladd said he sees no reason why there won't be universal reporting of direct and indirect carbon emissions from all transportation and logistics providers within just a few years.

    “The report from UPS is also just one more indication that the issue of carbon emissions and their impact on supply chains continues to grow in importance to businesses, customers and shareholders,” noted Ladd.

    On page 74 of the 106 page UPS Sustainability Report is a bit about UPS data centers.

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    HP’s First ENERY STAR Servers

    TheRegister has an article about HP and Dell’s ENERGY STAR Servers.

    HP and Dell claim energy efficiency server firsts

    Power test pass with a catch

    By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author

    Posted in Servers, 6th July 2009 20:40 GMT

    Getting IT vendors to agree to any standard, even one that they have a big hand in shaping, is almost impossible. And so it is with the new Energy Star specification for servers, supposedly embraced by server makers to show the energy efficiency of their metal.

    The Energy Star specification for servers, which debuted in May, is designed to gauge server power consumption so IT managers can shop for the most energy-efficient machines using an agreed yardstick. In this case, a yardstick established by the US Environmental Protection Agency's popular Energy Star program.

    HP has their own site for ENERGY STAR servers.

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    Part of the ENERGY STAR specification are data sheets.  Here are a few HP has published.

    HP ProLiant DL360 G6

    HP ProLiant DL380 G6

    Access Power, Thermal and Utilization Parameters

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