December 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Green Grid announces tech forum in February
Datacenter energy-effiency enthusiasts, mark your calendars: The Green Grid consortium will hold its first annual general members' meeting and technical forum come Feb. 5 and 6 in San Francisco.
The Green Grid, of course, is a consortium of companies -- such as HP, IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft -- as well as individuals seeking to lower overall power consumption in datacenters.
The technical forum will give attendees an opportunity to learn about "The Green Grid's Datacenter Metrics, current and emerging techniques for managing datacenters for efficiency and future technical deliverables from the organization," according to the group's announcement. The group says it will also host discussions with leading industry policy-makers from around the world.
This will be the group's first technical forum. The Green Grid held a technical summit last April, though, which proved helpful for developing its roadmap and other deliverables.
Green Grid members have first priority to attend the forum. Membership starts at $5,000. For more information or to register, go to www.thegreengrid.org/events/technical_forum.
Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 11, 2007 10:41 AM
August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Contrary to Gartner's opinion, The Green Grid should concentrate on datacenter efficiency rather than dabbling in politics
More than a year ago, a handful of high-tech companies sowed the seeds for the Green Grid, a group they envisioned would work toward developing industry-wide best practices, metrics, and technologies for improving datacenter energy efficiencies.
The idea took root, and last February, the fledgling organization broke through the soil into the public light.
Since that time, it has blossomed impressively, boasting more than 80 members ranging from hardware and software companies such as Intel, AMD, and Microsoft, to telecoms such as BT, to public utilities, including PG&E.
The organization has borne some tangible fruit, including three white papers on topics such as preliminary, high-level benchmarks as well as broad best practices. And just this week, it outlined for the public a rather ambitious road map for delivering a bounty of studies to aid datacenter operators in wringing the most performance out of their facilities while using the least amount of energy possible.
But as critically observed by Gartner in a recent report, the Green Grid has demonstrated no plans to overtly tackle broader environmental issues beyond the datacenter -- reducing e-waste, for example -- through means such as political lobbying.
Gartner presented its criticism of the Green Grid in a paper titled "The Green Grid: A Paler Shade of Green." While the paper is, in some ways, supportive of the Green Grid's efforts, the authors of the paper start off with this sentence:
"The charter of the Green Grid extends beyond power and cooling strategies to include dealing with broad environmental issues. However, much of the initial focus misses the greater opportunity to influence legislation and behavior for broader green issues."
Nowhere on the Green Grid's Web site do I see mention that one of its goals is to address "broader environmental issues," and it's certainly never come up in my various interactions with members of the group. Still, its members do acknowledge that there is, indeed, a plethora of IT-related environmental issues to address. However, the group is determined to remain focused on its primary objective: energy efficiency in the datacenter.
"In the green space, energy is the 800-pound gorilla. It translates directly to economic savings and greenhouse gas savings. Not that there are other important issues, but if you're looking at what to attack first, go to energy efficiency first," says Mark Monroe, a Green Grid board member who represents Sun.
Focusing on that issue is critical to getting the job done, asserts Jim Pappas, Intel's representative on the Green Grid board, who has worked on many successful groups to develop industry standards. "I understand Gartner's position. I don't necessarily agree with it," he says. "We're trying to keep our focus on solving tangible problems and making a difference that way. [That leads to] a much quicker path to demonstrable advancement in the industry."
The Green Grid's goals are very ambitious, and the fruits of its labor are extremely important for IT organizations and tech-reliant companies throughout the United States and beyond as they struggle with keeping energy costs down and datacenters humming. For Gartner to dismiss the group's focus, as it does in the report, as "simply power efficiency in the datacenter" is to demonstrate, in my view, a serious lack of understanding of and appreciation for just how serious the issue of energy efficiency is for companies, how complex the datacenter environment is, and how tricky it is to establish useful and meaningful green standards and benchmarks.
I certainly am not arguing that the consortium shouldn't have any interaction with the government; it does. For example, the Green Grid provided technical feedback to the EPA for its recently released study on server and datacenter efficiency.
But providing technical feedback is where the Green Grid wants to draw the line, notes Monroe. "The Green Grid wants to be viewed as a technical resource for the IT industry and people working on legislation. We're not going to be a lobbying organization, but rather a technical resource for those folks," he says.
As much as I respect Gartner, I have to agree that members of the Green Grid ought not don a PAC-like cap. There are other tech-oriented organizations out there that are pushing for eco-oriented legislation -- and there are some Green Grid members in their ranks.
But if the Green Grid is to effectively pursue its ambition of being an independent body for developing vendor-neutral recommendations on best practices, metrics, and technologies for all datacenter operators, the last thing it needs is to let itself be distracted -- or potential members and supporters to be put off -- by its dabbling in politics.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 9, 2007 03:00 AM
August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Green Grid reveals ambitious road map
The Green Grid has remained fairly quiet over the past couple of months, save for the occasional announcement of a new member. But judging by the road map the group unveiled yesterday, it's safe to say that the consortium has been quite busy indeed.
In a Webcast presentation, members of The Green Grid outlined an ambitious timeline for delivering a number of studies and other deliverables that should prove useful for datacenter operators looking to get a handle in bringing money-saving data efficiency into the datacenter.
Notably, it's not clear yet which of these studies, or how much of their content, will be available to the public at large versus just to paid members of The Green Grid. Per my discussion with boardmembers yesterday, that's still up in the air. General membership costs $5,000 per year.
Following is the road map, as outlined (more or less verbatim) by The Green Grid:
Data Collection
* Datacenter Standards and Metrics Inventory (Q3 of '07) – This study will document existing standards and metrics for energy efficiency, identify coverage gaps, and make recommendations for future development.
* The Green Grid Metrics: Describing Datacenter Power Efficiency (Q3 of '07) – This study will be an update to The Green Grid's existing study on datacenter efficiency metrics and will look at workload classification through a datacenter segmentation model.
* Operationalizing Energy-Efficiency Data Collection (Q4 of 2007) – This study will identify the requirements for collecting and aggregating datacenter power consumption data.
* Datacenter Efficiency Baseline Market Study (Q3 of 2007) – This study on the current state of the industry will allow The Green Grid to identify key factors driving companies to take action on datacenter power consumption and the challenges in doing so. Collecting and analyzing this data will help to provide companies with a baseline to compare their own initiatives, goals, and performance.
* Operational Best Practices (Q4 of 2007) – These studies will focus on right-sizing the datacenter and will outline best practices in the adoption of virtualization and consolidation technologies.
* Database for Datacenter Performance (Q4 of 2007) – The Green Grid will begin development work on a database focused on datacenter characteristics and performance schema.
Technology Proposals
* Initial Technology Roadmap (Q4 of 2007) – This road map provides an initial assessment of existing and emerging technologies affecting data center efficiency and performance, taking into consideration both return on investment and risk to the end-user.
* Power Distribution Options for the Datacenter Study (Q3 of 2007) – This study will look at the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of datacenter power distribution configurations.
* Cooling Options Study (Q4 of 2007) – This study will focus on the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of datacenter cooling architectures.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 8, 2007 12:18 PM
July 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Thin-client vendor Neoware has joined The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in datacenters.
"The Green Grid is a forward-thinking organization dealing with some of the most significant technology and environmental issues facing businesses today," said Klaus Besier, president and CEO of Neoware. in a written statement. "Neoware is proud to be a part of The Green Grid along with other information technology leaders."
The company brings to The Green Grid mix its expertise in desktop virtualization and thin clients, which consume significantly less energy than desktop PCs: Desktops require a maximum of 280 watts of power whereas thin clients use around just 30 watts in the same time frame.
By my count, The Green Grid's roster includes around 75 members, a significant expansion since the group was officially announced last February.
I, for one, am looking forward to hearing what the group has been up to, as it's been rather quiet since holding its first technical summit last April.
As observed by Neoware's Besier, the group does have a critical task to achieve in developing standards and best practices to help datacenter operators get a handle on reducing waste and pollution in their facilities. Even members of the U.S. government have acknowledged the importance of the task, as evidenced by a section aimed at datacenters in Congress members' proposed energy bill.
Posted by Ted Samson on July 10, 2007 03:38 AM
June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Energy bill spotlights datacenters
Legislation calls for development of benchmarks and standards for datacenter energy usage -- similar to The Green Grid's goals
Datacenters have not been entirely forgotten in the proposed energy bill put forth by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In fact, the draft legislation has an entire section aimed squarely at addressing energy consumption in these oower-hungry IT hubs.
Specifically, a section of the "Energy Independence Bill," as dubbed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, would require the Department of Energy and the EPA to consult with members of the IT industry and devise a voluntary information program aimed at datacenter operators. "There is a potential for significant data center energy savings as a result of such a program," the bill reads.
The program would provide specifications, measurements, and benchmarks that would enable datacenter admins to "make more informed decisions about the energy efficiency and costs of data centers."
It would reflect total energy consumption of datacenters, including the performance and utilization of servers, data storage devices, and other equipment; the efficiency of HVAC systems; energy savings from the adoption of software and data management techniques; and other factors.
Interestingly, the bill would have legislators designate an information technology industry organization to coordinate the program. By a remarkable coincidence, such an industry organization already exists: The Green Grid, a consortium of organizations and individuals seeking to lower overall power consumption in data centers. Members include big-name tech companies like Microsoft, HP, Sun, and Google.
The Green Grid, which went public last February, has already set out to achieve the very same goals laid out in this proposed information program. In fact, the group had its first technical summit in April.
Whether or not this energy bill ends up passing, I surely hope that the Feds and The Green Grid can sync up on the project of setting specs and benchmarks for measuring datacenter energy consumption -- as opposed to working separately, which would be wasteful and redundant.
You can read the entirety of the energy bill right here. The portion about the datacenter information program is in Committee Print #1.
Posted by Ted Samson on June 29, 2007 12:22 PM
June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Alternative-power datacenter part of Rackspace green initiatve
New green facility, carbon offsets part of managed datacenter-hosting company's eco-friendly initiative
Rackspace has joined the ranks of companies such as HP, IBM, Dell, and Yahoo announcing plans to become better environmental stewards by embracing carbon reduction, energy conservation, and other green initiatives.
A managed datacenter hosting company with 90,000 square feet of space worldwide, Rackspace today announced that as part of its GreenSpace campaign, it's planning to open a new data center next year in the Slough, England region which will be powered directly by alternative energy from a utility called Slough Heat and Power.
Also, the company has teamed up with NativeEnergy, a national marketer of renewable energy credits and carbon offsets. Rackspace plans to purchase offsets through NativeEnergy for each new customer server it brings online. Specifically, the company will buy offsets through a wind farm project, which powers at Sioux Indian reservation in South Dakota, as well as a methane project that powers a dairy farm in Pennsylvania.
The practice of purchasing carbon offsets has garnered criticism from some environmentalists, arguing that companies should take direct measures to reduce CO2 pollution. But Rackspace CTO John Engates said that it's difficult to find utilities in the U.S. offering direct alternative energy. "As power and utility companies in regions we work have alternative power available to buy directly, we'll explore that," he said.
In addition to reducing its carbon footprint, Rackspace has been looking at other ways to reduce its energy consumption, including choosing servers that use less power. "Primarily, we buy from HP and Dell. HP has servers that are our primary model: a dual-process, dual-core server that is many times more efficient than servers of two generations ago," Engates says.
The ongoing chip wars between AMD and Intel have affected which hardware the company buys. "When Intel had problems with power and AMD was winning, we switched to AMD for a vast majority of our deployments," says Engates. "Intel is back on par, perhaps in the lead, and we're starting to offer the latest Intel processors to our customers."
Like other IT leaders, Engates is also concerned about there being sufficient energy available in the future. "If we don't pay attention to this and start to cut power usage, we all in for power problems down the road. We'll still need to continue to build power plants, but hopefully, we won't have to add as many if we can work on programs like these down the road," he says.
Companies like Rackspace are also increasingly concerned with their image as it pertains to energy usage. "The fact that dactacenters are going to be large consumers of power means that we need to work on [conservation]. We don't want to be the bad guys. People will eventually look for large-scale users of power and will ask them to cut their consumption," Engates says.
Finally, in addition to being an active member of The Green Grid consortium, Rackspace is working to foster environmental awareness and education among employees. For instance, the company had a its first "Green Day" event earlier this month, inviting more than fifteen vendors and non-profit organizations to present employees with environmentally friendly tips and product alternatives.
Posted by Ted Samson on June 11, 2007 09:26 AM
