Mother's Day Stand-up Paddle Boarding with PerfectWave and a bit of data center networking

Mother's Day was a perfect weather day here in Seattle, and the OHarder's (the new name for when the Ohara and Harder family get together) had Mother's Day Brunch to celebrate the day and new Stand-up Paddle Boards they had delivered from PerfectWave.  Both Hilary Ohara and Vanessa Harder had tried stand-up paddle boarding in Hawaii and wanted to make it part of their regular exercise routine, so stand-up paddle boards have been on the wish list for a while.

Below is the gang before we started the lessons with PerfectWave owner Bobby, who is in the middle with Hawaiian Shaka hand sign.

image

Bobby's giving us lessons.  He is the one standing in the below picture.

image

It's hard to stand when I have my son on the board and he is having fun pretending he is surfing.  He already skateboards and snowboards, so surfing is on his list.

image

But, I eventually get up when he settles down.

image

Overall a great day for all, and I was busy cooking bacon and pancakes for 20 people, quadrupling the buttermilk pancake recipe. 

Hilary and Vanessa did a great job researching what kind of paddle board to get and where to buy it from.  They checked out brands like Surftech Laird.  What local shops or REI they should buy from. A week ago, they found the place they wanted to buy their boards - PerfectWave, a local shop.

Founded by Bobby Arzadon, a local boy from the Island of Kauai, Hawaii, the Perfect Wave Surf Shop is your direct link to Hawaii, without leaving the mainland.

The Perfect Wave Surf Shop is located in the Northwest, approximately ten miles east of Seattle in Kirkland, Washington.

Ninety percent of the surfboards we carry are made in Hawaii. Surfboards can be custom ordered to suit your tastes. We also carry local surfboards made here in the Northwest along with a full line of accessories, for the expert or beginner.

The girls called me and asked me to come by the shop and met Bobby before buying the boards.  We talked about how he designs his own boards in addition to carrying other brands.  I asked him what he does for his day job, and he says he runs the CAD shop at Casne.  I told him yeh, I know Casne, they are one of system integrators for OSIsoft data center real time monitoring solution.

Casne Engineering, Inc. was founded in 1979 based on a firm belief that there is great value in the engineering process. The engineering process is what matures the owner’s ideas from a dream to reality. This is the vehicle that allows the owner to make informed decisions along the way.

Looking into the future, we see a continuing need for the engineering process, and Casne Engineering remains fully committed to our mission:

" Engineering Excellence Through Teamwork
    Anchored in Trust, Integrity, and Commitment. "

One of the people who came over to try the stand-up paddle board is Bobby's Casne co-worker , Nick Wiley, who coincidentally was at OSIsoft's user conference when I was there and we were both at the Data Center Birds of a Feather lunch meeting as we made the connection we were both at the table with HP's Dave Rotheroe. 

So, in between paddling and cooking, we talked a bit of data center shop and agreed to catch up later as we both agreed data center monitoring has a lot of potential and is in its early stages compared to other industries.

I am going to have a hard time topping this Mother's day next year.  But, maybe a Mother's day brunch paddling on the lake with the OHarder's is a new tradition.

imageimage image

Read more

Where do you find good ideas? In a corporate conf room or where you can be creative

Seth Godin's blog has a good tip on creative thinking.

Where do you find good ideas?

Do you often find ideas that change everything in a windowless conference room, with bottled water on the side table and a circle of critics and skeptics wearing suits looking at you as the clock ticks down to the 60 minutes allocated for this meeting?

If not, then why do you keep looking for them there?

The best ideas come out of the corner of our eye, the edge of our consciousness, in a flash. They are the result of misdirection and random collisions, not a grinding corporate onslaught. And yet we waste billions of dollars in time looking for them where they're not.

A practical tip: buy a big box of real wooden blocks. Write a key factor/asset/strategy on each block in big letters. Play with the blocks. Build concrete things out of non-concrete concepts. Uninvite the devil's advocate, since the devil doesn't need one, he's doing fine.

Have fun. Why not? It works.

The block ideas a good one,  to work with physical interaction to stimulate creativity.

But I am going to try and go further with K'Nex Engineering Marvels: Buildings, Structures, and Machines which is a closer alignment to data center challenges.

Engineering Marvels: Building, Structures and Machines

DESCRIPTION
KEY CONCEPTS
STANDARDS

  • Systems and Order within Systems
  • The Technological Design Process and Problem Solving
  • Identifying and Using Patterns as Recurring Elements
  • Careers in Technology and Engineering
  • Science and Technology Concepts that could Solve Practical Problems
  • Motion and Energy Transfer in Physical Systems
  • Processes of Inventions and Innovations
  • Modeling, Testing, Evaluating, and Modifying
  • Construction Technologies

I can see it now, I'll be spending hours working on complex data center concepts, and my wife will come into the office and see me playing with legos. I'll try to explain I am working on complex systems modeling concepts and lego parts don't work, and I want to try K'Nex to illustrate complex system relationships. One good benefit of working from a home office is I don't have to worry about co-workers or my boss watching me play with toys.

I could do all this in Visio or some other tool, but there is a brain stimulation that happens you use your hands to create a physical abstraction, a model representation of reality.  Also, Visio is 2D and I don't have the time to learn or think I need to spend the money on a 3D AutoCad program.

Read more

Can Bloom's Energy Server be used in Data Centers?

Today is a beautiful morning, getting up early for an East Coast phone call. I got the following view.

image

With a view of Mt Rainer on a clear cold morning in Redmond.

image

Mt Rainier is here in above picture.

image

Thinking about a Low Carbon Data Center, fuel cells as a potential source.  It's been a while since Bloom Energy made its debut at eBay's campus showing fuel cells used in the office environment.

eBay

"eBay believes in the power of our business model to make a real difference in the world, and that includes how we embrace innovation to reduce our carbon footprint. When Bloom came to us, it was an easy decision to become an early-adopter of their cutting-edge new technology. As a result, we're meeting financial and environmental goals with the project while fueling a more energy efficient global marketplace. That's good for us, our customers and the planet."
– John Donahoe, CEO

photo

www.ebay.com

Bloom Installation

500kW
June 2009
San Jose, CA

Objective

eBay Inc sought a cost effective, 24/7 solution that delivered 100% renewable energy, allowing them to meet both financial and environmental goals.

When I went up to Bloom Energy's site I found the mention of data centers.

DC Power: Bloom systems natively produce DC power, which provides an elegant solution to efficiently power DC data centers and/or be the plug-and-play provider for DC charging stations for electric vehicles.

Also, Bloom Energy Server can be used with intermittent renewable energy to generate hydrogen to later be used in the fuel cells.

Hydrogen Production: Bloom's technology, with its NASA roots, can be used to generate electricity and hydrogen. Coupled with intermittent renewable resources like solar or wind, Bloom’s future systems will produce and store hydrogen to enable a 24 hour renewable solution and provide a distributed hydrogen fueling infrastructure for hydrogen powered vehicles.

Fuel cells aren't up to the high availability for data center power generation which can be addressed with reverse backup.  This could make sense for areas with power prices above $0.10 kw/hr as cost reduction.

Reverse Backup: Businesses often purchase generators and other expensive backup applications that sit idle 99% of the time, while they purchase their electricity from the grid as their primary source. The Bloom solution allows customers to flip that paradigm, by using the Energy Server as their primary power, and only purchasing electricity from the grid to supplement the output when necessary. Increased asset utilization leads to dramatically improved ROI for Bloom Energy's customers.

One fact I hadn't seen is the ease of carbon sequestration.

Carbon Sequestration: The electrochemical reaction occurring within Bloom Energy systems generates electricity, heat, some H2O, and pure CO2. Traditionally, the most costly aspect of carbon sequestration is separating the CO2 from the other effluents. The pure CO2 emission allows for easy and cost-effective carbon sequestration from the Bloom systems.

How long will it be before a data center is powered by fuel cells? A friend offered to make some introductions at Bloom Energy, I think it is time to take him up on his offer and discuss some projects I know of that could use a fuel cell solution.

Read more

Cloud Computing is changing behavior, one of the hardest steps in Greening the Data Center

A Green Data Center is not a binary thing that is demonstrated by achieving a performance number.  Achieving a sub PUE of 1.2 is a good step, but does that make the data center Green?  It is more energy efficient than others.  A LEED platinum data center means the building has achieved enough points that the building now has more points than others, but is that Green?  These are all good ideas, but overall it is not changing behavior for the holistic system.

The book Switch: How to change things, when change is hard makes an excellent point.

• Buy Switch.
• Come see us on the book tour.
• Read the first chapter.

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?

The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

that

Usually these topics are treated separately—there is "change management" advice for executives and "self-help" advice for individuals and "change the world" advice for activists. That's a shame, because all change efforts have something in common: For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently.

When you build a LEED certified data center does it change the behavior of the occupants?  Does a low PUE change how you host your IT?  It changes the mindset a bit for the mechanical operations staff.

If you are running a Cloud Computing data center that is charging users for their resources used and there is a clear profit and loss goal for operations and customers, there are behavior changes all over.

James Hamilton posts on Dave Patterson's latest Cloud Computing keynote at Cloud Computing 2010.

The Berkeley RAD Lab principal investigators include: Armando Fox,  Randy Katz & Dave Patterson (systems/networks),Michael Jordan (machine learning), Ion Stoica (networks & P2P), Anthony Joseph (systems/security), Michael Franklin(databases), and Scott Shenker (networks) in addition to 30 Phd students, 10 undergrads, and 2 postdocs.

The talk starts by arguing that cloud computing actually is a new approach drawing material from the Above the Cloudspaper that I mentioned early last year: Berkeley Above the Clouds. Then walked through why pay-as-you-go computing with small granule time increments allow SLAs to be hit without stranding valuable resources.

James does a good job of identifying the top 6 slides out of the 50 slide talk.

If you look at all these slides each one of these are discussing how Cloud Computing is and will change behavior of people in the IT system.  Which is the biggest step in a Green Data Center.

I think leading Cloud Computing data centers will be greener than most as performance per hr is a number all think about.  And, a natural 2nd question is how much it costs.  The costs are largely affected by the power consumed.

Read more

Can China build Green Data Centers?

I am having conversations with an entrepreneur in China who is working on the Green Data Center idea in China.  All the big data center operators have been to China to look for data center sites.  I would expect most cannot find the right site for their data center operations for a variety of reasons.  Building data centers will be difficult with a short term approach if you only want to build one building.  What makes more sense is to take small incremental steps with continuous build out in China and other areas in Asia Pacific.

I've been to Beijing,Shanghai, and Hong Kong over a dozen times when I was working at Microsoft and Apple.  As well as Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore.  I saw many different sides of the country working with hardware suppliers, internal development groups, and software entrepreneurs.

Google's recent pullout of China can be interpreted in many ways and there are some interesting assumptions I can make based on some key people who are coincidentally now working in Google Asia who I used to work with.  These ideas are much too complicated and subtle to try and write in a blog entry.

So, back to the problem of can China build Green Data Centers?  Ideally China would have a few big US companies building data centers in China that Chinese engineers can learn from.  But as far as I know no one has done this, even though a lot of have evaluated sites.  Which makes things difficult, but creates an opportunity.  China doesn't have data center people who have been doing the same thing for the last 20 years who want to build data centers the same way they did in the past.

China can build smaller data centers, using geo-redundancy as part of the design.  Power may not exist, but China is building power generation faster than anyone else.  So, it isn't what power is available.  Tell me what power will be available.  See this Economist article.

Electricity and development in China

Lights and action

China is parlaying its hunger for power into yet more economic clout

Apr 29th 2010 | HONG KONG | From The Economist print edition

AFTER a brief blip caused by the global economic slowdown, the electricity business in China is back to normal: in other words, it is buzzing. On April 26th Huaneng Power, the country’s biggest utility, began work on a nuclear reactor on the island of Hainan. The week before, the firm had announced that its power output had risen by 40% during the first quarter. The day before that, Datang International Power, the second-largest utility, had said its output was up by 33%. Surges of this magnitude, unimaginable in most countries, are commonplace in China.

China’s endless power-plant construction boom has accounted for 80% of the world’s new generating capacity in recent years and will continue to do so for many years to come, says Edwin Chen of Credit Suisse, an investment bank. Capacity added this year alone will exceed the installed total of Brazil, Italy and Britain, and come close to that of Germany and France. By 2012 China should produce more power annually than America, the current leader.

The US gov't hasn't treated the Data Center industry as a strategic industry to provide special treatment.  China will.

Much of the data centers are built and designed to maximize profits for the vendors.  Data Centers are the most profitable construction.  The silos in Real Estate, Facilities, Data Center Ops, IT Ops, Finance, and SW are ripe for over specification for features that have little business value in the holistic view, but look right from a limited perspective.  The top data center people know this which is why they have broken down the silos and integrated the functionality within one manager.  Look to Google's Urs Hoelzle as the epitome of owning the data center stack, including SW infrastructure.

It is a bit of irony if China's data center strategy targeted Urs and his thinking as the customer, asking what he wants in data center infrastructure.  Google wants cheap, reliable, cleaner power.  Multiple Fiber paths.  And, government support for the data center build out.  In the US we hear about the tax incentives, and this is proof the local community wants the data center construction.

An example of the opportunity is to be work with the SinoHydro on a China Data Center strategy.  Here a perspective you'll enjoy reading on China's HydroElectric build out.

China: Not the Rogue Dam Builder We Feared It would Be?

Hydropwer accounts for the overwhelming share of China’s alternative energy mix, but is perhaps also the one of the more controversial alternative energy options due to the ecological and social impacts of dam construction.   This guest post by Peter Bosshard, policy director of International Rivers Network, examines China’s growing pains in its increasing role as an exporter of hydropower technology and expertise.

A few years ago, Chinese dam builders and financiers appeared on the global hydropower market with a bang. China Exim Bank and companies such as Sinohydro started to take on large, destructive projects in countries like Burma and Sudan, which had before been shunned by the international community. Their emergence threatened to roll back progress regarding human rights and the environment which civil society had achieved over many years. However, new evidence suggests that Chinese dam builders and financiers are trying to become good corporate citizens rather than rogue players on the global market. Here is a progress report.

Could you partner with China to build data centers around the world where dams are being built?  The power generation is one part, and Fiber is next.  Government support fits in easily as governments were involved in the Hydro construction.

One of Google's crown jewels are its data center designs.  Is part of the reason why Google pulled out of China are the issues they ran into if they built a data center in China?

Read more