Posted by Michael Bullock on Thu, Jun 24, 2010
TDS Unified Monitoring Service
Before virtualization, understanding the inter-dependencies in a typical network environment was fairly straightforward. A connected with B connected with C.
With the proliferation of virtualization, compounded by clouds and SaaS applications, the challenge of maintaining continual visibility and control has put availability and performance of systems at risk.
While traditional monitoring tools provide availability and performance monitoring at the application, network and operating system layers,they do not provide sufficient visibility into virtualized and hybrid enterprise computing environments with multiple critical applications competing for shared resources. There is a clear need for a more holistic approach including unified monitoring, performance trending and unified alerting and event correlation.
TDS unified monitoring solves this need by providing a consolidated view of all internal and external services. Built for complex, enterprise deployments, TDS tools provide visibility into both the end-to-end application environment and storage level to quickly detect and diagnose the root cause issues which are affecting service delivery. Utilizing industry-standard monitoring tools, TDS provides a "single pane of glass" view of all internal and external services.
This unified approach identifies and isolates cross application impact (including network, storage, CPU,memory, etc.) that may not exist in the traditional environment, but do exist in a shared component, virtualized environment.
There are many considerations involved in managing a hybrid data center. TDS unified monitoring addresses the need for a single, centralized view of overall data center performance and availability.
Posted by Michael Bullock on Tue, May 18, 2010
AFCOM recently suveyed 436 member data center sites on eight of the hottest topics ranging from Greening and Data Center Consolidation to Performance Monitoring and Cyber Terrorism.
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- 71% are actively engaged in greening
- Power Recovery - 60%
- Cooling Recovery - 51%
- Expansion
- 60.3% require additional data center capacity within five years
Please view the tabulated results and significant findings below:
Posted by Michael Bullock on Fri, Apr 30, 2010
Think IT and facilities operating in silos is last year's problem? In some cases, it may actually be getting worse.
Last year I wrote Four Reasons to Get Facilities and IT on the Same Page. At the time, I was surprised by how little IT leaders knew about their real data center costs, and I suggested that these leaders would do well to talk to their facilities people to understand better where their money was going. I even showed how IT could help facilities by understanding their problems. Since collaboration between IT and facilities can provide immediate financial benefits to the enterprise without layoffs or the risk of IT outages, there's a lot in it for both groups to work together.
At least one would think.
But when I bring the subject up, especially with the press, I find that most believe the problem has already been solved. "IT and facilities operating in silos is last year's problem, right?" Wrong. When I work with real world customers, I realize that the situation is bad and maybe even getting worse.
Why is there this disconnect between perception and reality? Perhaps it's because when the press looks for a story, it needs real-life case studies to make the story compelling and believable. And, of course, it is possible to find companies where, in fact, facilities and IT are on the same page. Naturally, they're willing to go public with their stories. But nobody is all that interested in going on record to talk about how they've made mistakes, how IT and facilities don't work together, or how they're pouring money down the drain by having both IT and facilities operate in a vacuum.
Don't believe there's still a problem? Here are some real life examples illustrating what can go wrong when facilities and IT don't collaborate:
• I saw a company purchase a building because it looked like an attractive value and, as a bonus, it already had a data center the company thought it could use. Because the facilities group knew IT needed a new data center, it followed the realtor's recommendation and purchased the building at a bargain. After learning that their new data center would require an additional $17 million in upgrades to make it usable for IT, plus another $500,000 a month in WAN charges, the company decided a collocation alternative would be a better approach. In the end, the company avoided that $17 million upgrade but it also ended up with a building it didn't really need. This could have been avoided with closer collaboration between facilities and IT.
• I recently visited a 9,000 square foot data center where something was amiss. IT had requested Tier 3 level (N+1) redundancy so the facility would be concurrently maintainable. Facilities actually delivered what they believed to be a full Tier 4 environment (2N) with no single point of failure. Besides costing the company over $500,000 more than it should have, the center actually did have a single point of failure, meaning it wasn't even a Tier 3 data center. Another investment of $150,000 was required to correct the problem.
• I've recently seen over 100 cabinets at one location ejecting hot exhaust right into the intake of other systems. Besides subjecting these systems to the risk of premature failure, this made it necessary to run the data center much cooler than it needed to be just to head off cooling-related problems. This unnecessarily raised the PUE, resulting in an electric bill that was 30 percent higher than it needed to be. By now everyone knows about hot aisle-cold aisle alignment, but many legacy data centers—such as this one—haven't been reconfigured to take advantage of efficiency improvements like that just because IT and facilities are not communicating and are instead holing up silently in their respective silos.
I have other stories like this; I see them every day.
Let's face it. Facilities typically reports to the CFO's office and IT typically reports to the CIO and when the CFO and CIO get together they have better things to do than discuss PUE, power density, cooling, ultrasonic humidification and data center tier ratings (although I'm sure they have a chat or two about budgets).
CFOs and CIOs expect their respective teams to do the right thing. We all understand that. But maybe these teams need some top-down guidance to help get them moving in the right direction, together.
So I open this blog up to learn about your own experiences with IT and facilities. Have you had any great successes or horror stories you'd like to share?
As always, I welcome feedback, questions and comments. And if you know of other companies effectively enabling cloud computing with an impact on the enterprise you believe similar to those listed above, I'd be interested in learning more. You may reach me at cioblog@transitionaldata.com.
Posted by Michael Bullock on Tue, Oct 27, 2009
What you don't know can hurt you...
If you're in the market for new or additional data center space, I have some advice that can help you make better decisions, save money, and avoid some lurking pitfalls.
For example, a company found what at first seemed like the one of the most affordable spaces around, but after I asked the colocation provider a few pointed questions (actually, it was more like 70), it turned out to be one of the most expensive. Once the provider was pinned down and the customer's true requirements were taken into account, it turned out that all the power charges were vastly underestimated and the simple, 1,000 square foot / 120KW facility would have cost the customer about 250% more than he originally thought, amounting to an extra $1.6 million over the first five years of tenancy.
That's a lot of money.
So my advice has two parts:
- Try to keep more than one target space in the mix until the deal is done. Even if you are actively negotiating with your first choice, it pays to have a backup option. At minimum, this will allow you to negotiate without feeling trapped and provides a solid plan ‘B' plan should the preferred space become unavailable - or too costly upon full discovery.
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My second tip is that you should go into negotiations armed with a trusty sword of skepticism. As Ronald Reagan said many years ago, "Trust, but verify." And since you and your company will be living with this decision for at least 5-10 years, it's very important to understand the details and long term impact of your agreement with your data center provider. It's always a mistake to view them as IT consultants who are there to help you. Their goal is to get you to commit to their space and lock you in while they retain the flexibility to increase their rates over the long term. This is not because they're bad guys. This is simply their business. You'd do the same.
Here are some of the collocation gambits that will end up costing you:
The Shell Game -- As you know, total facility fees include rent, power (utility) and a power surcharge that covers cooling, humidification, UPS (to avoid spikes and dips), etc. An inefficient facility will look very expensive and risky based on this surcharge, which could amount to one-to-two times as much as the cost of the actual metered power usage. So as not to scare off prospective customers, some operators may try to hide a percentage of this cost (that comes from their own inefficiency) by burying it in your lease charge. This would not be an issue were this a fixed cost, but more often than not the lease is subject to annual escalations. So you need to make sure you understand your provider's true operating expenses, pass through charges and cost escalation terms in order to have some degree of cost predictability going forward.
Convenient Laziness -- I've seen this happen this way: You put out an RFP with very specific questions, such as, "Does your proposal include redundant power feeds?" The bidder provides a one page summary of its expected charges and then replies to your question about backup power by writing, "See quote." When you look at the quote, you see a line item for redundant power. So does that answer your question? Maybe yes, maybe no. The quote may refer only to the UPS battery backup on the primary line and not to the second power feed into the building that's required for Tier 3 facilities. So, at best, it takes a lot of digging and hard work on your side to interpret the provider's response when he writes "See quote," and there's always the risk that you won't get it right. On the other hand, this convenient laziness in the response to your RFP allows the provider to crank out many quotes for many RFPs using an Excel spreadsheet with fixed assumptions that have nothing to do with your unique business and its unique requirements, not to mention the specifications contained in your RFP-the only one you care about. So when issuing an RFP for data center space, you should make it clear that specific, detailed responses are required or the bid will be rejected as noncompliant.
The Old Bait and Switch -- In this case, the bidder may provide detailed responses to your questions but he may not have the capacity or architecture to live up to his promises or your requirements. Recently, I saw a colo provider assure a customer of Tier 3 redundancy even though its facility's backup power feed was unconditioned street power. This meant that it was unprotected by UPS power and therefore represented a single point of failure and vulnerability to power spikes whenever the primary went down for maintenance. The tenant was paying market rate (which seemed like a good deal) for a true Tier 3 facility but the truth was that it wasn't getting one. In other cases, I've seen mismatches in what a given facility is capable of providing and what is actually quoted and provisioned to the customer. In these cases, the provider hopes first to get the new tenant in the space and plans to address the requirements later, after the relocation has been completed. I wouldn't feel comfortable with that set-up. Would you?
Rounding Down -- In this scenario, the customer asks for a specific power capacity he requires to operate his IT equipment. The colocation bidder immediately discounts this by 20%, claiming, "You shouldn't run the system above 80% of design load." So the facility provides you with 120 KW of breakered service where only 80% (or 96KW) is available for IT use. Of course, it could have provided 150 KW of breakered service (120 IT usable), but then its price would look too high. All the power and cooling estimates you get after that are based on this assumed 20% reduction to your requirements. If you don't look at the details, you may end up with a space you thought was 20% more efficient than others but really has 20% less capacity than the alternatives.
The message is that when evaluating new data center space, make sure you're diligent, and be on your guard. Take advantage of the people in your organization (or outside experts) who have the experience to know how large data centers are operated and where to look for the traps and gaps that will cause your requirements to go underserved. And beware of real estate brokers who may not understand what data centers really require and simply try to sell you on sites that pay them a higher commission. I'm not saying all real estate brokers are like that . . . I'm just saying . . .
As always, I welcome feedback, questions and comments. You may reach me at cioblog@transitionaldata.com.
Posted by Michael Bullock on Fri, Oct 02, 2009
With data center operations, equipment maintenance, staffing and licenses consuming the lion's share of today's IT budgets, companies can gain a great deal by optimizing their current operations.
Given the current recessionary environment, technical expertise, strong budgetary controls and procurement discipline are more critical than ever to maintaining operating margins.
Across the board we are seeing organizations taking on smaller, quick hit projects to balance spending and risk. Conversely, most companies are postponing or scaling back major transformational projects as managers look for rapid ROI either by better utilizing the technology assets they already have or by undertaking initiatives with shorter implementation times and faster paybacks. Not surprisingly, fewer companies are willing to fund multi-year projects that will not begin paying back their investment for 18 to 24 months or more.
But saving money is never easy. Many initiatives to reduce recurring long term costs are complex and expensive endeavors in themselves and especially difficult to implement during a recession. Even in the best of times, such projects warrant a thorough technical and financial analysis to make sure they align with the company's business direction and economic goals.
My advice for CIOs and their enterprises is to continue to invest in solutions that deliver well-defined results that at the same time minimize disruptions to employee productivity. You may be surprised how many projects can produce a healthy ROI in just nine months or less. These are the initiatives that will easily pass muster with your CFO and executive team.
Here are two examples of how taking a fresh look helped two companies save significantly on OPEX and CAPEX - delivering faster value to their organizations:
Example 1: How we saved $17M and moved one year early
A Fortune 1000 manufacturer planned to relocate to a new data center at a projected cost of $17 million. The company's facilities manager had spent months considering the move and was among the chief advocates for building a new data center over the next two years. He knew facilities (but not data centers) and his site selection was based on traditional real estate values -- size, location and cost -- which, unfortunately, do not always translate well into data center requirements.
Fortunately, with some outside help, the company took a closer look at the proposed relocation, set aside its internal preferences, and a $17 million mistake was avoided. The company discovered that it would need to install a fiber ring connecting the new data center at a recurring cost of $500,000 per year. On top of that, the new facility would not have sufficient cooling capacity for the anticipated power load.
By starting with the requirements, not the real estate, the company found suitable colocation/lease space with total annual costs equivalent to the fiber trunk expense alone. By going into a collocation facility with multi-carrier access, the fiber trunk requirement was eliminated, facility construction costs were avoided, and the cooling problem went away. On top of this, the client moved into the space one year ahead of schedule.
The moral of this story is that in-house employees, and even senior managers with lots of experience, can become cheerleaders for projects that keep them in their comfort zone or may even seem to guarantee long-term job stability. Companies need to spend some effort on understanding that which is less familar and looki in unfamilar places for fast payback rewards.
Example 2: How to save $300,000 per year and improve service
Large enterprises with big IT operations and large facilities staffs typically have multiple departments reporting to different parts of the organization. It's not uncommon for such groups to operate in silos, ignorant of each other's
For example, a major Boston-based investment firm's IT infrastructure had grown over the years through mergers and acquisitions and by decisions made by department heads who didn't communicate.
As the company became alarmed by its ballooning IT budget, it sought help from an independent IT consultant with no ties to a specific hardware vendor. After looking at all its processes, the company discovered that it was spending $2.7 million annually on a jumble of security systems with many overlapping features. Worse, these systems were installed in a cascading fashion that created management headaches and performance bottlenecks.
By redeploying the existing technology more effectively and retiring unnecessary systems, the company immediately cut annual fees by $300,000 per year while improving manageability and performance.
Stories of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing are rampant in business. The lesson here is that taking a full inventory of systems and services across all groups is an important first step in consolidation and cost containment.
As you search for new ways to deliver value, don't forget to take a hard look at areas that you may have forgotten during the boom years. Be open to questioning your internal biases and the ways you've always done things. There are many places you may be able to recover budget simply through smarter operations.
Posted by Steve Gunderson on Wed, Sep 16, 2009
If you'll be moving your servers to a new location during the next couple of years, I have some advice for you: Before you buy more servers and storage systems from your current vendor, find out what impact a relocation will have on your warranty and maintenance agreements. A little forethought in this area may save you a bundle down the road.
Now while most vendors work in a reasonable and collaborative manner, and take into account the heterogeneous nature of data centers, some do not. We've noticed that some well known service and storage vendors exert a lot of pressure when it comes to signing up customers to services they don't really need.
Make no mistake: Data center relocations are complex undertakings, full of business and technical risks, and every vendor would like to get a piece of the pie when you relocate. That's their business and there's nothing wrong with that. And many vendors provide reasonable value for the fees proposed. But you really owe it to yourself and to your enterprise to apply some due diligence and a measure of skepticism when they start tacking on services and fees that don't make business sense.
Here's a scenario I've seen repeated often:
1. After the vendor is notified that its systems will be moved, the customer is told that he can't use third-party movers for the vendor's gear. In fact, the customer even may be told he must use the vendor's own moving vans. If every vendor took this position, moving day would turn into a logistical nightmare as one would need to manage multiple vendors and multiple trucks at the loading docks on both sides of the move.
So if your vendor demands that you use its men and equipment to relocate, ask it show you where this is spelled out in your purchase and maintenance agreements. These agreements are highly customized but a requirement that you must use the vendor to move is rare. So if it's not there, just say no. But after you do, be prepared for the vendor's fallback position.
2. You're told that if you use a third-party mover, you will void the warranty/maintenance and you'll need to have your systems recertified. Again, check your agreement. The truth is most likely to be that if the system operates at the new facility for 30 days without failure, then it will be returned to warranty/maintenance status. Even if you do pay for recertification, you'll still be on the hook for hardware fees related to any failure during the 30-day window; recertification service only covers the labor, not the hardware components. If you dig into the details about recertification, you're likely to find that given the cost, the benefits are minimal. Most companies are better off self-insuring their servers or simply asking their relocation partner to take on this risk on their behalf.
3. You may also be told to expect a very high failure rate (as high as 20%) when you power on your servers at the new location. If you hear this from your vendor, you owe it to yourself to press for details. Is there any data to support the assertion -- which certainly should raise concerns about the system's fragility, no? But don't be alarmed; the failure rate caveat is pure moonshine. Having relocated thousands of servers over the last 12 months, I have only seen two failures -- and these were very old boxes caked in dust before the move. Now if you have some servers that have been in service for years without a power cycle, yes, there's risk. But there's also a simple solution to shake out the outliers. Prior to relocation day, you should power cycle all systems (and maybe clean them at the same time) to make sure they're not just a power cycle away from a failure. If some of the systems do fail, this can be fixed under your current maintenance plan before the relocation.
4. If this pressure doesn't work on you, then don't be surprised if the vendor goes to your CEO or CFO. But by doing your homework, you can explain to your executives how you can save the company a lot of money while avoiding unnecessary and non-value added service fees.
Certainly, some large, monolithic systems are best moved by the vendor, but applying that thinking to general purpose rack and blade servers is a mistake.
Finally, a well-executed data center relocation will improve reliability, not degrade it. Since most data center relocations are undertaken to solve underlying problems with power, space and cooling, moving into a properly designed space will eliminate hot spots, reduce power spikes and improve system reliability.
I welcome your comments and feedback. Have you had similar experiences with your server and storage vendors during a data center relocation?
Posted by Michael Bullock on Mon, Jul 20, 2009
I’m going to stay away from the global warming and climate change debate; it looks (for now) like that train has left the station. Instead, I’d like to focus on the potential tax exposure created by "Cap and Trade” as it relates to the data center.
Last week I wrote about the Five Myths of Data Center Optimization, or Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). However, a concept that is not a myth is that power distribution and cooling expenses act as a multiplier to the total cost to operate a data center. In other words, a data center operating at a 2.0 PUE level is generally wasting 1/3 more of the electricity it purchases to support IT operations than one operating at a more efficient PUE of 1.3. If you can buy power cheaply enough, it may seem like the penalty created by that 2.0 PUE rating is inconsequential. Trust me, it’s not.
If you look more closely, you’ll see that cheap electricity does not necessarily translate to a reduced carbon footprint. In fact, some electricity that’s cheap by today’s standards may increase substantially in total expense to you in the near future as Cap-and-Trade takes full effect. So, in the long run, making data center site selections based on today’s lowest cost of electricity may not be a wise strategy.
For example, the CO2 produced by nuclear and hydro-electric sources is minimal when compared to coal and petroleum-based plants, which are expected to produce 2.1 and 1.9 pounds of carbon dioxide gas respectively per kWh of electricity. Over time, as taxes work their way through the value chain and increase prices, you can expect the cost of electricity to reflect these differing methods of generation and their consequent emissions more accurately.
According to the EPA, the average emission rate of CO2 per kWh across all US regions is about 1.4 pounds. NY, CA, the Pacific Northwest and New England are all on the good side at about 0.9; the South averages around 1.5 and the Rockies come in at just over 2.0. And in the absence of some complicated, yet-to-be-defined measurement and auditing system, it seems logical that the federal government will use the EPA’s sub-region map for determining Cap and Trade allocations.
Here are two examples based on regional PUEs and local power grids:
• A data center in New England leveraging free cooling can achieve a sustainable PUE of about 1.3. At about .9 pounds of CO2, this facility generates about 1.17 pounds of CO2 per kWh.
• A data center in Texas with constant cooling demands will have a hefty PUE of about 2.0. Producing about 1.4 pounds of CO2 (per kWh), this facility will contribute 2.8 pounds of CO2 per kWh – for an increased carbon impact 140% above the New England example.
If you’re wondering just what impact this increased carbon footprint will have on global warming, join the club. There’s only one thing on which we can all probably agree – this increased carbon footprint will most assuredly be taxed. Bet on it. I don’t know about you, but avoiding an increased tax exposure of around 140% sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
By now you might be trying to figure out how cogeneration and alternative energy can help. Put down your pencil. Of the fossil fuel alternatives (eco-unfriendly, but reliable), natural gas is best at about 10 pounds per kWh (with diesel generators topping out over 22 pounds per kWh). Clearly, solar and wind power generation are carbon friendly, and may help your organization one of these days, but right now (and for the foreseeable future) they don’t scale to the magnitude and constant power demands required by corporate data centers.
I wish I could tell you how this will all play out in terms of specific tax impact, but your guess is as good as mine. In the meantime, the best advice is to focus on the stuff you can control. Optimize your PUE and don’t rush into a new facility without first taking a close look at your potential carbon exposure.
Listen carefully. Are those (carbon) footsteps you’re hearing? Or the tax man’s?
As always, I welcome your comments, tips, insights and topic suggestions. You can reach me at cioblog@transitionaldata.com.
Posted by Eric Kraieski on Wed, Jul 08, 2009
This is a "must read" for anyone who designs, builds, operates or maintains data centers.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed this 2007 Report to Congress on Data Center Energy Efficiency in response to Public Law 109-431. This 130 page report assesses current trends in energy use and energy costs of data centers and servers in the U.S. and outlines existing and emerging opportunities for improved energy efficiency.
The 13 page Condensed EPA Report is also available.
Posted by Michael Bullock on Fri, Jun 26, 2009
Understanding and improving power usage effectiveness (PUE)
At a recent CIO / CFO conference, I saw why so many executives tune out when the topic turns to green IT and why they fail to make the "no-brainer" decisions that would immediately benefit their organizations. At the root of their apathy is the frequency with which they’re bombarded by green claims from vendors that often are misleading and sometimes absolutely meaningless.
As a reader commented on my recent blog Green IT Hype vs. Real Deal: "too many companies are running around hyping themselves as 'the green solution' while doing nothing more that re-advertising their same old products."
And this, my friends, is a big part of the problem. Despite valuable green innovations in the data center, the really good ideas are having trouble rising above the clatter of the vendors’ PR and sales machines.
Hopefully, data center executives can hear this: If you can improve your Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) in ways that produce a fast payback, you will save money and reduce your carbon foot print. This is like hitting the Daily Double: You conserve natural resources while making money.
Think of it this way. What if you could instantly increase your car’s fuel efficiency by 35 percent via an upgrade that would pay for itself in the first year based on reduced fuel costs alone? You’d jump at the chance, right? So why is there so little interest in doing the same thing in data centers? Because it’s hard to tell which upgrades are real and which are only "the same old products" in new green wrapping.
I’m not going to dive into specific energy saving technologies; instead, I’m going to provide a framework that will allow you to get beyond the vendor hype and evaluate them on your own. (If you’re curious about what these technologies are, check out my recent CIO.com blogs on built green / built right and cool ways to save money).
A quick refresh: A data center’s PUE is the total load required to operate the IT systems plus support systems such as power distribution, humidification, and cooling. A PUE of 2.0 - which is typical of most data centers today - means that for every dollar spent on IT load you burn up another dollar on support. Some facilities have average annual PUEs over 3.0 (not good) and the best run data centers can sustain PUE levels around 1.3.
So here are five myths regarding PUE engineering that often get in the way of good data center optimization and design and prevent executives from making informed decisions for their data centers:
Myth 1 – PUE is a constant that applies 24/7/365
Not true. PUE can fluctuate by season, and even by time of day. For example, if the design leverages the free cooling of outside air, then that benefit will only be available when the outside temperature is optimal. That’s why it’s important to determine average annual PUE and not best case – which may only apply on cool days and nights. So when a vendor says that its technology will reduce your PUE to 1.3, take the time to find out if this claim is best case, steady state, or annual average.
Myth 2 - During data center design and construction, you should optimize PUE to full anticipated load.
Not only is this not true, it’s an approach that’s doomed from the start, almost guaranteed to leave you with an underutilized or oversubscribed data center for much of its life cycle. You’d be better served by thinking of your data center as a resource that will morph over time. This will guide you to make design decisions that emphasize flexibility.
For example, the power density in your data center will change over time and with it the demand for power and cooling. If you build for the target capacity, you’ll be spending money in the early years for more cooling capacity (and backup power) than you need. In other words, a half-full data center designed for an average annual PUE of 1.4 may run at 2.0 until it fills up, however long that may take.
Building a flexible environment means you might oversize pipes, raise your floor above three feet and use variable air handling options. In this way you can build a data center with a PUE that will provide more scalability (and efficiency) over an expected 10+-year life cycle.
Myth 3 – Alternative energy sources improve PUE
False. Supply side technologies such as cogeneration and renewable energy sources do not improve PUE, which is a measure of consumption efficiency. If anyone tells you that alternative energy sources will improve your PUE, keep asking them how they’ll improve power consumption efficiency. Eventually, they’ll shut up.
I’m not saying that renewable energy sources are bad; they simply don’t impact PUE. And sometimes they don’t save much money, either. Once maintenance costs are factored in, the power company will still need to provision power to you in case the system fails.
So you should evaluate these power sources on their own financial merit based on cost, reliability, and time-to-payback. Don’t jump in thinking these alternatives will earn you efficiency rebates or future carbon credits, especially if they’re driving inefficient power and cooling.
Myth 4 – You can’t improve PUE for existing facilities
Luckily, this is also false. If your data center is operating above its designed power and cooling capacity, there are things you can do to improve your PUE. The biggest gain can be achieved by removing heat-creating support systems from the data center floor. You can leverage outside air economizers; turn off the steam-based humidification systems, or replace CRACs with roof-top units. Anything that reduces heat generation or increases cooling can improve PUE, may have a fast payback, and can be subsidized through power company rebates. On the other hand, if you introduce a new technology that consumes electricity and adds heat to the system, you may be addressing one problem while creating another. For example, floor fan tiles are a sure giveaway that a facility is operating in a suboptimum range.
Myth 5 - New servers & virtualization improve PUE
This is partly true and partly false. By now, everyone should understand how server and storage virtualization can reduce the number of systems required to support your mission while lowering power consumption costs. Again, this alone does not improve PUE. If your data center is operating at the top 10 percent if capacity, simply removing load (i.e., heat generation) may reduce the duty cycle on the cooling system enough to improve PUE. But data centers operating below 80 percent of maximum capacity will not see PUE improvements through virtualization.
That said, these systems use less electricity and understanding how to leverage virtualization should be at the top of everyone’s green agenda.
Hopefully, dispelling these myths will allow you to ask the right questions of your architects, engineers, and vendors as you put together the data centers you’ll need to live with for 10 years or more. By evaluating PUE for yourself, you’ll be ready to save greenbacks and the environment.
Posted by Michael Bullock on Thu, Jun 04, 2009
I absolutely believe green is good. Unless it's being used in a misleading, manipulative or self-serving way.
I feel like the world is stuck in some kind of mash-up of the movies Wall Street and Groundhog Day. It’s an unsavory mix of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas’), “Greed is good!” mantra combined with weatherman Phil Connors’ (Bill Murray’s) loop of selfish, hedonistic habit.
In our real life version, we’re seeing entire industries cycling greed and going nowhere fast. Here is the pattern:
1. Find an angle to exploit.
2. Run it into the ground while ignoring the future.
3. At the end, when the check comes due, look for a handout.
Think about it. First we had the whole banking subprime mortgage fiasco. Once the government “modernized” the banking industry, practically everybody could borrow any amount of money they wanted based on the hype-fueled upward spiral of property values – which, of course, was a fantasy and not sustainable. And once the government stepped in to fix the problems it helped create, it became more difficult for qualified borrowers to get timely loans, making sure times stayed tough. This despite the fact that Bank of America and Citigroup received over $100 billion of taxpayer money combined (of the $200 billion banking total). (By the way, how much of that cash did you get? I’ve yet to receive my slice.)
And then we have GM which was loaned $15.4 billion by the US Treasury Department under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 and then received another $30 billion this year. So where did those billions go? They circled down the toilet of debt service, payroll, severance, and other “black hole” expenses, and now they’re gone. Again, it’s a Groundhog Day loop with a centrifugal spiral of greed and habit.
I suppose I side with Texas Congressman Ron Paul who last November wrote, "In bailing out failing companies, they are confiscating money from productive members of the economy and giving it to failing ones. By sustaining companies with obsolete or unsustainable business models, the government prevents their resources from being liquidated and made available to other companies that can put them to better, more productive use.”
So where is the IT industry in this cycle? We’re definitely in the “find an angle to exploit” stage and that angle is “Green is good.” And you don’t need to buy into the whole global warming scenario to acknowledge that energy conservation and sustainability are worthy initiatives if for no other reason than that they conserve capital and preserve resources.
It certainly appears that everyone who sells goods, services and information to the IT sector has embraced green. Now don’t get me wrong. I absolutely believe green is good … unless it is being used in a misleading, manipulative or self-serving way.
For instance:
I recently attended the Network World, “IT Roadmap Conference and Expo” eager to hear what groundbreaking insights were going to be offered by Cisco and Verizon.
These companies sponsored a green IT seminar to discuss power management in the data center and office environments, utility computing, thin clients and virtualization as a green enabler. Unfortunately, what we got was an hour long infomercial on the merits of telecommuting and video conferencing. I felt like I had been suckered with a resort timeshare-type bait-and-switch.
There are, of course, good reasons to green IT. Virtualization clearly offers the promise of better resource utilization and lower operating expense. Energy-Star servers, outside air economizers and the like offer true green advantages. But, for example, are floor tiles with embedded fans green? No. In fact, they’re entirely unnecessary in a truly green facility. If you’re convinced you need them, I’m sure you’re wasting a lot more electricity than you realize. Is cogeneration green (i.e., producing your own primary electricity from fossil fuel-based generators)? While it may lower your electricity costs, it’s by no means carbon friendly and it’s certainly not green.
Here’s a question: When you think of Symantec, what comes to mind? Do you think “Green IT and data center optimization?” I don’t. Yet they’re on the green bandwagon: “Symantec helps IT decision makers to reduce energy consumption and increase space utilization by providing solutions that increase desktop, server, and storage efficiencies.” Ok, maybe this is a side benefit of their offering but it’s a bit of a stretch to call it green, no?
That said, Symantec has produced a decent white paper worthy of a peek: The Green Data Center – A Symantec Green IT Guide. Early in the report Symantec notes that half the power required for a data center is NOT used by the IT equipment; it’s used for power distribution and cooling. And then the remainder of the paper focuses on the IT side where the savings are more difficult to attain and quantify, and require a significant investment of time and money.
Why do so many companies, like Symantec, focus on the more difficult side of the equation? Because that’s the only side they can influence. It reminds me of the old adage: “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
If you are running out of power, space, or cooling, you should be thinking about data center facility optimization because that’s where you’re likely to achieve substantial and immediate gains. When you hear the “green is good” drum beat, take the time to figure out what’s truly relevant. In many cases, you’ll find a lot of hype and very little substance.
So, are IT vendors are heading toward a Groundhog Day crash-and-bailout-and crash cycle? I don’t think so. This industry thrives on competition and innovation. With a relatively low level of unionized labor and a very small pension burden, the ground rules in tech are entirely different than they were for, say, GM. In the tech sector, boom and bust is as natural a cycle as cicadas and solar storms. We’ve all been there before. Companies offering innovation and substance will survive. Those that depend upon hype will perish. It has always been that way in tech and it always will be.