Green computing

PUE - Power usage effectiveness

A typical data center facility spends almost half of its energy consumption on the systems powering and cooling the computers inside — and not on the computers themselves. Google, Efficient Data Center Summit

Last October, Google disclosed details about its data center energy usage, saying it was averaging a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.21 across its six company-built data centers. To put that into perspective, a PUE of 1 means every watt goes to computing machines. A PUE of 1.5 means that half the power goes to non-computing functions like cooling or lights.

Six months later, Google says it’s got that number down to 1.19.  So how is the search giant doing it? For a long time, nobody knew.  Google’s infrastructure was top secret. But then in early April, Google held a summit and gave everyone a peek behind closed doors. Surprisingly, what they seem to have done was follow the KISS principle. Relatively speaking, they are keeping things simple.  They have their own proprietary servers and the data centers themselves are just about as lean as you could imagine. Google’s made several tours available on YouTube — and this one (below) of a data center built out of shipping containers is just amazing.  There are over 45,000 servers housed in 45 containers.  Talk about utility computing — this container tour sure looks like a utility plant to me!

At the summit, Google reps shared best practices, saying:

The best practices we’ve presented here are the main reason we’ve been able to achieve our PUE results and can be implemented in most data centers today.

• Measure PUE (Circuit transformers)
• Optimize power distribution (High efficiency transformer and UPS)
• Manage airflow (Close-coupled cooling — Eliminate hot/cold mixing)
• Adjust thermostat  (Raise cold aisle temp)
• Use free cooling  (Chiller bypass, water-side economizer)
• Use free cooling  (Chiller bypass, water-side economizer)

Overheard - What color is your meter MAID? Green

Data center managers are starting to recognize that 70 percent to 90 percent of their data is not transactional in nature, but rather, persistent data that is rarely changed, and infrequently accessed…The key to managing persistent data is to deploy storage systems that are tuned specifically to its needs. One technology that is ideally suited for persistent data is MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) storage. Will Layton, Getting Ahead of the Data Storage Energy Crisis: The Case for MAID

Tonight I’ve been reading about MAID and how it can help cut energy costs in the data center by limiting the number of spinning disks.  This week’s buzzword (besides Obama) seems to have been “intelligent power management.”

Ironically, according to a CDW Corp. report titled “Energy Efficient Information Technology,” 94 percent of IT executives with purchasing responsibility said they cared about energy efficiency but had no idea how much energy their IT operations used — even though they realized that that knowledge is critical to energy reduction efforts.  CDW should have sent them all this list of low-hanging-fruit energy savers from SearchSMBStorage.com

Overheard: PCs can consume as much as 10% of your home’s energy bill

PCs can consume as much as 10 percent of a home’s energy bill and give off as much carbon dioxide as a family car. Martin LaMonica, Edison: Free energy-saving PC software

Verdiem offers a free download of their software that monitors desktop Windows PCs and puts them in low-power mode when they’re idle. It’s called Edison. Microsoft and The Climate Savers Initiative are both supporting the launch of Edison.

Overheard: EcoRAM is the perfect marketing name

Flash doesn’t need to constantly refresh the data on the chip the way that DRAM does, so it consumes about a tenth of the power when handling a gigabyte of data. Stacey Higginbotham, In a Flash Spansion Cuts Power

Traditionally, the way to handle more information has been to buy more servers in order to get more DRAM (Micron is offering lower-power DRAM as a “green” product). Spansion hopes to change all that by using a proprietary Flash memory called EcoRAM that replaces DRAM.

Overheard: Your PUE number is like golf

“Your PUE number is like golf — the closer to 1, the better. At least that has always been the common wisdom. The goal, says experts, is to reduce your PUE. But sometimes an IT energy efficiency project can play games with that number.” Mark Fontecchio, How a virtualization and server consolidation project could hurt your PUE

Overheard: Are data Center efficiency metrics purposely obtuse?

I have come to the realization that this industry does a wonderful job in telling its members WHAT to do, but lacks to follow-up with the HOW. Michael Manos, Struggling with CADE, McKinsey / Uptime Metric

Lots of buzz about the Uptime Institute’s symposium on IT Energy Efficiency and the study McKinsey released called Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency . It’s interesting that Michael Manos estimates that only 10% of data center managers measure the efficiency of their facilities. Could it be because it’s almost impossible for the average Joe to get the data they need to plug in the formulas? Or could it be that they’re waiting for a clear winner in the proposed metrics? Try this one out for size: CADE.

CADE is the new metric-of-the-week.

CADE (Corporate Average Data center Efficiency) = (Facility Efficiency) x (Asset Efficiency)

Facility Efficiency is defined as (Facility Energy Efficiency) * (Facility Utilization)
Asset Efficiency is defined as (IT Energy Efficiency) * (IT utilization)

Suppliers to large enterprises will need to prove their green credentials with an audit

Those organizations with strong brands are helping to forge the first wave of green sourcing policies and initiatives. These policies go well beyond minimizing direct carbon emissions or requiring suppliers to comply with local environmental regulations. For example, Timberland has launched a “Green Index” environmental rating for its shoes and boots. Home Depot is working on evaluation and audit criteria for assessing supplier submissions for its new EcoOptions product line.

Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organisations and Users in 2008 and Beyond

More than 1/3 of IT organizations will have environmental criteria on shopping list

Initially, the motivation will come from the wish to contain costs. Enterprise data centres are struggling to keep pace with the increasing power requirements of their infrastructures. And there is substantial potential to improve the environmental footprint, throughout the life cycle, of all IT products and services without any significant trade-offs in price or performance. In future, IT organisations will shift their focus from the power efficiency of products to asking service providers about their measures to improve energy efficiency.

Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organisations and Users in 2008 and Beyond

Overheard: Your old computer may be in Guiya, China

And though U.S. states increasingly require that electronics be sent to collection and recycling centers, even from those centers, American firms can send the e-waste abroad legally because Congress hasn’t ratified the Basel Convention. The results are visible on the streets of Guiyu, where the e-waste industry employs an estimated 150,000 people. Shipping containers of computer parts, old video games, computer screens, cell phones and electronics of all kinds, from ancient to nearly new, are dumped onto the streets and sorted for dismantling and melting. Christopher Bodeen, China: E-Waste and Environmental Disaster

Michael Zhao provides a glimpse of Guiyu in this YouTube video. You can view his excellent 20-min documentary about life in Guiyu at his Web site.

Overheard: Is there a market for the heat created by a data center?

The designers of the new mall worked out a plan to connect their heat pump system to the data center of a near by Telco facility. During the winter, the data center heats the mall and during the summer, the mall uses the heat generated by the server room to preheat a local hotel’s water system. kstroh, Selling Heat

Mercursenteret is a shopping mall established in an old telegraph building in Trondheim, Norway. The shopping mall is cooled and heated by a heat pump system. In the winter during the heating period, the heat pump uses the cooling distribution system of the telecommunication centre in the next-door building (Teknisk Telehus) as the heat source. In the summertime, the heat pump operates mainly for cooling. Excess heat from the heat pump system is sold to pre-heat sanitary water in a hotel in the neighbourhood. The seasonal performance factor is 3.5 for heating and 2.5 for cooling.