Greenpeace creates bogus Green AWS site

Greenpeace has launched a GreenAWS site that makes it seem like it is Amazon, but it is not.  How do you know?

For more information about the energy that AWS and other companies use to power the cloud, please read our April, 2012 report "How Clean is Your Cloud?" or contact us via direct message on Twitter@cleanourcloud or email cleanourcloud@greenpeace.org

You contact greenpeace.  :-)

GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher posts on this as well.

About AWS Green Team

At AWS, we are always working to make our cloud options the best in the world. Now we are starting a new initiative to make the AWS cloud the greenest too.

Powering a cloud of AWS's size requires a lot of energy, and recent events have demonstrated the need for us to ensure that our energy supply is both more secure and more sustainable. Too much of our energy supply comes from coal and nuclear power plants, and as we are seeing increasingly from Japan to New York City to Northern Virginia, these traditional energy sources are increasingly vulnerable to disruption. While AWS has worked hard and has been successful in preparing for electricity service disruption, we're constantly looking for ways to decrease risks even further.

Lessons to help someone. Listen! Don't preach!

TED has a talk that will get you thinking.  Thinking about a different way to help people.  

Ernesto Sirolli got his start doing aid work in Africa in the 70's -- and quickly realised how ineffective it was.

Why you should listen to him:

Ernesto Sirolli is a noted authority in the field of sustainable economic development and is the Founder of the Sirolli Institute, an international non-profit organization that teaches community leaders how to establish and maintain Enterprise Facilitation projects in their community. The Institute is now training communities in the USA, Canada, Australia, England and Scotland.

Below is the talk and I'll pull some points from the transcript that will get you give some ideas.

The talk is from Ernesto's experience providing aid to Africa, and how the Western world makes mistakes.

We Western people are imperialist, colonialist missionaries, and there are only two ways we deal with people: We either patronize them, or we are paternalistic. The two words come from the Latin root "pater," which means "father." But they mean two different things.Paternalistic, I treat anybody from a different culture as if they were my children. "I love you so much." Patronizing, I treat everybody from another culture as if they were my servants. That's why the white people in Africa are called "bwana," boss.

I was given a slap in the face reading a book, "Small is Beautiful," written by Schumacher, who said, above all in economic development, if people do not wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid.

If you want to help someone.  A typical approach would be to match their need with your offering.  But, Ernesto's approach resonates with one I use.  Look for people's passion.

The most important thing is passion. You can give somebody an idea. If that person doesn't want to do it, what are you going to do? The passion that the person has for her own growth is the most important thing. The passion that that man has for his own personal growth is the most important thing. And then we help them to go and find the knowledge,because nobody in the world can succeed alone. The person with the idea may not have the knowledge, but the knowledge is available.

Why.  If you are trying to work on lead edge, innovative stuff.  You can't plan for an entrepreneurial event.

Peter Drucker says: "Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy." Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.

And, what does he do?  He helps entrepreneurs find the other parts to be successful - develop, market, and manage.

However, there is a secret to work with entrepreneurs. First, you have to offer them confidentiality. Otherwise they don't come and talk to you. Then you have to offer them absolute, dedicated, passionate service to them. And then you have to tell them the truth about entrepreneurship. The smallest company, the biggest company, has to be capable of doing three things beautifully: The product that you want to sell has to be fantastic, you have to have fantastic marketing, and you have to have tremendous financial management.Guess what? We have never met a single human being in the world who can make it, sell it and look after the money. It doesn't exist. This person has never been born. We've done the research, and we have looked at the 100 iconic companies of the world -- Carnegie, Westinghouse, Edison, Ford, all the new companies, Google, Yahoo. There's only one thing that all the successful companies in the world have in common, only one: None were started by one person.

Are you hiring the best or playmates?

After 26 years in big companies, I don't miss the process of interviewing for a new job.  One of the rules I tell people is they almost never tell you why you didn't get the job.  The bottom line is whether they liked you more than the rest of the candidates, not whether you are best for the job.  This advice can come off cynical.  But, guess what here is research that shows employers are more interested in hiring their playmates than the best.

Employers Often More Interested in Hiring Potential Playmates Than the Very Best
Candidates

WASHINGTON, DC, November 27, 2012 — Employers are often more focused on hiring someone they
would like to hang out with than they are on finding the person who can best do the job, suggests a study
in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.

“Of course, employers are looking for people who have the baseline of skills to effectively do the job,” said
study author Lauren A. Rivera, an assistant professor of management and organizations and sociology at
Northwestern University. “But, beyond that, employers really want people who they will bond with, who
they will feel good around, who will be their friend and maybe even their romantic partner. As a result,
employers don’t necessarily hire the most skilled candidates.”

Do you find yourself stuck in this rut?

Do you have a similar level of education? Did you go to a similar caliber school? Do you enjoy similar activities? 

Are you excited to talk to each other? Do you feel the spark? These types of things are salient at least to
the employers I’ve studied.”

If you find there is little diversity in an organization your chances are probably low to get a job or to hire someone who isn't like the rest.  Even though you may be open to the best, different candidate, your peers influence the hiring.

The study also found that the cultural similarities valued at elite professional service firms have important
socioeconomic dimensions. “Evaluators are predominately white, Ivy League-educated, upper-middle or
upper class men and women who tend to have more stereotypically masculine leisure pursuits and favor
extracurricular activities associated with people of their background,” Rivera said. “

Think about this as Data Center companies are not known for its diversity.  There are exceptions to this rule, and I try to spend more time with these companies as they have focused on hiring the best, and not their playmates.

Lessons to learn from HP's acquisition of Autonomy

HP's bungled acquisition of Autonomy is all over the news.  Here is an analysis that shares some insight.  The perspective is well explain in the last paragraph.

As an ex-auditor, I realize that while a lot of the focus will be on finding people to blame for this, I think that more focus should be put on making sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again at HP or to you. We can learn from the mistakes of others. HP has been an excellent teacher, though I think it is well past time it passed this responsibility on to another firm.  

The author highlights the flaws in the acquisition process.

Wrapping Up: Acquisition Method

Now that the mistake is in HP’s history, process changes have been put into place to assure this same mistake is less likely to occur, and the CEOs who were responsible are both gone from the acquired and acquiring companies. However, one final lesson stands out: HP’s acquisitions have been going very badly and so had Autonomy’s. Both firms appear to have used the integration merger process, which appears to have a better than 80 percent failure rate.  

While this showcases an ongoing problem of doing things the way they have always been done, regardless of how badly they work out, it should also showcase that firms like EMC and Dell have been following a very different path far more successfully of late and that it is their example, not the historical failed process, that should now be followed.  

Keep this in mind when you think about acquisitions in the data center ecosystem.

Google receives Modular Data Center Cooling Patent

The USPTO has awarded Google patent #8,320,125

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United States Patent	8,320,125
Hamburgen ,   et al.	November 27, 2012

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Modular data center cooling 

Abstract

A datacenter cooling apparatus includes a portable housing having lifting and transporting structures for moving the apparatus, opposed sides in the housing, at least one of the opposed sides defining one or more air passage openings arranged to capture warmed air from rack-mounted electronics, opposed ends in the housing, at least one of the opposed ends defining one or more air passage openings positioned to allow lateral passage of captured air into and out of the housing, and one or more cooling coils associated with the housing to receive and cool the captured warm air, and provide the cooled air for circulation into a datacenter workspace.

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Inventors:	Hamburgen; William (Palo Alto, CA), Clidaras; Jimmy (Los Altos, CA), Leung; Winnie (Palo Alto, CA), Stiver; David W. (Santa Clara, CA), Beck; Jonathan D. (Mountain View, CA), Carlson; Andrew B. (Atherton, CA), Chow; Steven T. Y. (Foster City, CA), Imwalle; Gregory P. (Sunnyvale, CA), Michael; Amir M. (San Mateo, CA)
Assignee:	Exaflop LLC (Mountain View, CA)
Appl. No.:	12/631,644
Filed:	December 4, 2009

Unfortunately, the patent approval is so new, the images are not available yet.

There are 60 claims in the patent.  Here are some of the highlights.

1. A datacenter cooling apparatus, comprising: a portable housing having lifting and transporting structures for moving the apparatus, opposed sides in the housing, at least one of the opposed sides defining one or more air passage openings arranged to capture warmed air from rack-mounted electronics; opposed ends in the housing, at least one of the opposed ends defining one or more air passage openings positioned to allow lateral passage of captured air into and out of the housing; and one or more cooling coils associated with the housing to receive and cool the captured warm air, and provide the cooled air for circulation into a datacenter workspace, wherein the opposed sides each define one or more openings to engage with back-to-back computer racks.

20. A data center cooling system, comprising: a plurality of cooling modules aligned end-to-end in one or more rows; sides on the cooling modules defining openings for capturing warm air from electronics racks mounted to the cooling modules; and ends on the cooling modules defining openings for passing air into and out of the cooling modules along a row of cooling modules, wherein the cooling modules in a row are positioned to have open spaces between adjacent cooling modules and wherein the spaces are sufficiently sealed from a data center workspace to form a warm air capture zone.

43. A data center cooling system, comprising: a frame comprising four side openings, a top opening, and a bottom opening defining an interior volume; at least one cooling coil mounted within the interior volume and securable to the frame, the cooling coil thermally separating the interior volume into a cold air plenum adjacent a first face of the cooling coil and a warm air plenum adjacent a second face of the cooling coil opposite the first face; at least one sealing member mounted on the frame to substantially prevent airflow between the bottom opening and the top opening; and one or more fans mounted to the frame and arranged to generate airflow through one or more computer racks supporting electronics adjacent at least two of the side openings and through the at least two side openings to the top opening.

60. The system of claim 43, wherein the frame is sized for transport by truck from a manufacturing facility to a data center.

Here are the reference to Drawings that I can't see yet.

DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS 

FIG. 1A shows a perspective view of a modular data center cooling apparatus. 

FIG. 1B shows a perspective view of a cable rack for use in a data center. 

FIG. 1C shows the cable rack of FIG. 1B mounted to the top of the data center cooling apparatus of FIG. 1A. 

FIG. 2 shows a perspective view of a data center cooling apparatus providing cooling to a number of computer racks. 

FIG. 3A shows a front view of a data center cooling apparatus with a single computer rack. 

FIG. 3B shows a data center cooling apparatus with a pair of back-to-back computer racks. 

FIG. 4, shows a plan view of two rows in a computer data center. 

FIG. 5A shows a plan of an empty computer data center facility. 

FIG. 5B shows the facility of FIG. 5A with computers and cooling systems installed. 

FIG. 6 shows a schematic side view of an example data center facility. 

FIG. 7 shows an alternative base for a cooling module. 

FIG. 8 is a flow chart of a process for locating rows in a data center so as to hide structural columns in the data center.