Uptime Institute

How Energy Star could slow down Moore’s Law

The EPA’s plan to slap Energy Star stickers on servers could slow down Moore’s Law, at least temporarily.

I’m talking here about the economic portion of Moore’s Law rather than the technological portion. Chips will likely continue to shrink, and more and more processing power will be put onto smaller and smaller spaces. At the system level, you will continue to see the amount of server power (and by power I mean processing capability) per 1U of rack space increase.

But the economic effect of Moore’s Law — that the processing power gets cheaper and cheaper because of the natural competition in the marketplace — could see a hit due to Energy Star. Processing will continue to get cheaper, but perhaps not at the same rate as before. Or, at least, there will be a blip following the Energy Star implementation when the economic effect of Moore’s Law slows down.

Let’s take a look. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is working on implementing an Energy Star specification on servers in the same way it has them for washing machines, ceiling fans, and personal computers. Currently the EPA Energy Star program is digesting comments from a second draft for servers that came out this summer. The Energy Star label would immediately tell users how much energy each server uses, with the hope that vendors would start competing on energy efficiency.

If you go into your local Lowe’s or Sears, you’ll see how it works. Each appliance has a yellow sticker attached to it that tells you approximately how many kilowatt-hours (kwh) the appliance consumes, and approximately how much that translates into an annual cost of operation. If you want to check out qualified refrigerators and freezers (meaning 20% more efficient than federal standards), you can just go to the Energy Star website on refrigerators and freezers, or look for a special Energy Star approved sticker on the appliance itself.

So the idea for servers is the same — check out the Energy Star website and buy accordingly. The idea is to get server vendors competing with one another on energy efficiency. Which will probably happen.

But here’s the kicker — when the Energy Star program is implemented, won’t those vendors charge a premium for those servers that qualify under Energy Star? I think so. And that’s where Moore’s Law takes a hit. The cost of server processing capability per 1U of rack space won’t increase as much as before the Energy Star program, because of that premium.

Is this all ado about nothing? Well, maybe a little. After the hit — however long it takes — the economic effect of Moore’s Law will kick back in. But what about before the hit? Well, before the hit, users out there can do the energy consumption measurements and comparisons on their own without worrying about any sort of Energy Star premium.

I thought of this while sitting in the last session of Data Center Decisions in Chicago, with Ken Brill of The Uptime Institute talking about the Energy Star specification with about a dozen users. He, along with many others, have also stressed the need for data centers to start measuring their energy consumption. If they haven’t already, users should also start looking at the energy consumption of the servers they’re buying, if that matters to them at all. The information is available. If it’s not listed in the server specs sheet online, the vendor or VAR should be able to provide it.

In other words, if you’re eagerly awaiting an Energy Star specification so you can start buying servers based on energy efficiency, just do it now on your own. It will probably cost you less.

Data Center efficiency tips and tricks from Data Center Decisions

The overarching theme of the Data Center Decisions conference in Chicago last week was energy; how much data centers use, how much they pay for it, and how much they could be saving. 

The keynote addresses on both days of the conference, October 24 & 24, covered data center efficiency at length, with plenty of tips and resources to help data centers cut back on power consumption, though it appears that not many people are taking the necessary measures to reduce consumption. Because of this, government plans to step in and mandate power saving measures to prevent future climate change.

As awful as this sounds, government intervention is a necessary measure at this point, because facility spending has increased tremendously over the past two years with no end in sight, and with all of this additional compute capacity, the outlook for the environment is grim.

The energy required to power and cool a single server emits four tons of greenhouse gases, so by 2012, data centers worldwide will exceed greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry, according to Ken Brill, President and Executive Director for the Uptime Institute, who gave a keynote address called “Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency” on October 24 based on the McKinsey / Uptime Institute report.

So, why has data center power consumption spun out of control? In addition to the increasing demands from Web 2.0, 80% of today’s compute demand is performed on distributed systems with only 5% to 20% utilization rates, whereas before 1980, mainframes were used, and at much higher utilization rates, Brill said.

The way to reverse the trend sounds easy enough; use virtualization to consolidate systems and increase server utilization rates, and also kill comatose servers.

Simple as these steps sound, it can be difficult to do when you don’t keep track of servers to know their utilization rates, Brill said. In this case, implementing a formal de-commissioning program using ITIL to document, bill back and audit the systems is a first step. 

“If we want to become energy efficient we have to become better engineers,” Brill said.

Other measures that can make a major impact are correctly setting the cooling unit set point, shutting off humidification and de-humidification functions, implementing hot aisle/cold aisle containment, turning off unneeded cooling units, and if possible, increasing eco-friendly water side cooling, Brill said.

Data centers that are adding hardware should make an effort to buy efficient power supplies and hardware, which all the major vendors offer, and rightsize memory to avoid using excess power, Brill said

If your asking yourself who in IT has enough extra time to do all of these things, Brill had a suggestion for that, too; appoint an “Energy Czar” - someone who cares about the environment and wasting power - to make sure the data center facilities and operations are as efficient as possible.

Of course, the Energy Czar could also get a bonus here and there for lowering the company power bills, which most certainly will happen when even some of the above measures are implemented.

Companies can also use efficiency software tools or hire outside consultants to help increase energy efficiency, and there are plenty of choices today.