- Ecobutton a quick, slick reminder to power down PCs
- Dell's shiny green blade server
- AMD yields more efficiency, Intel more throughput in quad-core CPU showdown
- CES: HP pledges to cut PC power usage by 25 percent
- Emerson delivers free Energy Logic blueprint for building a power-efficient datacenter
- Q&A: From 90 years old to LEED gold
- Govs pledge to buy greener hardware for state governments
- Cassatt unveils Active Reponse suite for cutting datacenter energy waste
- RIP, DC power?
- VMware Infrastructure 3.5 will power down unused servers
January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Ecobutton a quick, slick reminder to power down PCs
Not only are tradeshows growing greener; so to is the promotional swag companies are doling out. One fine example is a clever device dubbed the ecobutton from called a company called BIG.
The concept behind the ecobutton is pretty straightforward. You connect the device to your computer via USB and download the necessary software. Then the big green illuminated ecobutton sits atop your workspace, reminding you how much you like nature and/or dislike wasting energy (or paying to waste it). Whenever the time comes to take a break -- short or long -- you simply press the button. Doing so puts your system into what BIG deems ecomode, "which ensures that both your computer and monitor draw only the same nominal power as when they are shut down."
When you return from the break, you press the ecobutton again and voila, your system awakens instantly, according to BIG. (I'd love to actually see for myself whether it can rouse my machine instantly, as opposed to "eventually.")
As a bonus, the accompanying software lets users see how much money, power, and carbon units they've saved using the device. PC power management tools like this can save you as much as $50 per year in energy bills. (By the way, the ecobutton is also ROHS compliant.)
What makes the ecobutton promotional tool? Companies can order ecobuttons in bulk and have their company logo, message and Web address incorporated into the ecobutton splash screen.
It's a neat idea, this ecobutton. Some might argue that it's a bit too ironic to promote waste-reduction by attaching yet another piece of plastic and metal to your machine, and that there are tools available that enable you to put a machine to sleep with a couple of mouse-clicks. However, I see a positive trade-off here: The brightly illuminated green button should serve as a constant visual reminder to users to not only to power down their systems but to hopefully conserve in other ways.
The ecobutton starts at around £12.76 ($25), and bulk discounts are available. Go to the ecobutton Web site for more information.
(Thanks to Environmental Leader for the find.)
Posted by Ted Samson on January 28, 2008 10:44 AM
January 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dell's shiny green blade server
The PowerEdge M-series from Dell has it all, from a hyper-efficient power supply to superior cooling and power management
From a green-tech perspective, the most intriguing server I've ever known (from a distance) was the Gemini Green Series from Open Source Solutions (OSS). Highly efficient power supplies? Check. Efficient internal cooling? Check. Easily swappable components -- from motherboards to memory to power supplies -- to eliminate the need for ripping and replacing upgrades? Check.
Alas, OSS is no more, but its legacy won't be forgotten -- not by me, anyway. The fact that it's gone the way of rainbow suspenders is no reason to dismiss the beauty of its product design either. In fact, I see glimmers of the Gemini in Dell's newly announced PowerEdge M-Series chassis and blades. Dell designed the M-Series "from the ground up using Dell Energy Smart technologies, resulting in 30 industry patents," clearly with sustainability in mind.
Playing it cool
Like the OSS Gemini (which was a 2U server, by the way), Dell's new PowerEdge blades employs 90-plus percent efficient power supplies, developed in-house. (For reasons I still can't fathom, the standard among server vendors still appears to be in the realm of 80 percent.)
Not only is Dell's power supply capable of hitting a higher energy-efficiency level; it does so more quickly than rival power supplies, according to Mike Roberts, senior product planning manager for the M-Series line. He says that most power supplies achieve their maximum level of energy efficiency only when the supply is running at 90 to 100 percent utilization -- which certainly isn't the norm. "We get to a really good efficiency level at relatively low threshold, 88 percent at only 20 percent utilization," he says.
Those seemingly small differences among power supplies can actually make a dramatic difference in terms of reducing a server's power and heat waste -- and the associated costs scale impressively the larger your datacenter.
Dell also claims to have developed an innovative internal cooling system, designed to adapt to the needs of both high-end and low-end configurations. In addition to its optimized fans (as well as their underlying algorithms), the system boasts a superior airflow design, according to Roberts; Dell has taken great pains to remove impedance throughout the chassis. "The easier the air flows, the less hard the fans have to work," says Roberts.
The chassis also has three distinct cooling zones, each cooled by its own fan bank. In lower-end configurations where the chassis isn't fully loaded with blades, "the fans on the side can run really slowly because they don't have to work hard to cool their zone," says Roberts.
There's also the swappability factor (a word you will not find in Webster's, by the way). In an ideal green-tech world (mine anyway), an IT admin would be able to swap in and out all major components in his or her servers, while they're on the rack, such that machines wouldn't need to head to the shop or, more likely, to the recycling bin if a substantial upgrade is needed. It doesn't look like the major hardware vendors of the world are ready to offer that level of hardware interoperability, but here, Dell has taken a step in that direction.
Specifically, the company has developed what it dubs FlexIO switch technology for easily upgrading the machine's network connectivity up to 10Gig without replacing the base switch. For the enclosure, customers can opt for an upgradeable Dell PowerConnect M6220 Layer 2/3 Ethernet blade switch, with 1Gb ports and optional bays that can support either 10GbE or stacking ports.
Further, customers have three Cisco Ethernet switch choices, including a switch with a variety of 1Gbps, 10 Gbps, and stackable ports. Also available: a Cisco Infiniband switch. Add to that the options for two Brocade 4Gbps Fibre Channels, as well as Fibre Channel and Ethernet Pass Through options.
Additionally, with an eye on the future, Dell has designed the M1000e enclosure not to be dependent on specific server processor/chip set architecture. Further, it will be able to accommodate double-wide blades down the road.
Secret software sauce
Dell's hardware choices alone don't result in a more energy-efficient machine. Like an increasing number of vendors, Dell is turning to server management software to rein in energy waste -- a promising development that stands to lower those power bills and extend the life of hardware.
In Dell's case, that software takes the form of its Version 5.3 of its OpenManage systems management suite, released last November. Dell touts the package -- which comes at no cost with the blade package -- as "easy-to-use yet powerful management tools that help reduce the cost and complexity of managing computing resources."
Among its features is dynamic power management, which enables admins to set high- and low-power thresholds to help ensure blades operate within their defined power envelope. The norm is for servers to consume the maximum recommended amount all the time, even if they're not usually being run at full bore. Moreover, the package offers real-time reporting for enclosure and blade power consumption, and the ability to prioritize blade slots for power to provide optimal control over power resources.
So, for example, if an admin were to allot 3,000 watts to a given chassis, the system would distribute power evenly among all the blades. However, if the chassis wasn't pulling enough power, for whatever reason, it could be set to prioritize which blades would be throttled down first.
Your benchmark or mine?
As Dell tells it, the various greenovations it's injected in these babies reap superior power efficiency (that is, performance per watt) over rival blade offerings from HP and IBM. According to a Dell-sponsored study by Principled Technologies, "the PowerEdge M-Series consumes up to 19 percent less power and achieves up to 25 percent better performance per watt than the HP BladeSystem c-Class. Compared to the IBM BladeCenter H, the M-Series consumes 12 percent less energy and achieves up to 28 percent better performance per watt."
Were you to apply a cost-per-kilowatt amount to those figures, as Dell has, you'd save $2,600 annually per year over HP's blade competitor and $1,500 per rack per year over IBM's.
I wouldn't discount Principled Technologies figures outright, just because the study was sponsored by Dell. It's entirely conceivable that, given the power-efficient measures Dell has taken, its blades consistently delivered better per-watt performance -- but only in that test, which used the SPECjbb2005 benchmark.
Problem is, that benchmark wasn't really developed to measure power efficiency. Organizations and analysts are still grappling as to what method is best for accomplishing that, as evidenced by a recent study comparing the power efficiency of AMD and Intel's respective quad-core chips.
The point is, benchmarks are slowly emerging, such as SPEC's recently announced SPECpower_ssj2008. However, that benchmark isn't suited for a blade environment. In short, work here remains to be done.
Hopefully the InfoWorld Test Center will have a chance to test Dell's claims against offerings from HP and IBM. Whatever the outcome of that test might be (again, if it happens), I still extend kudos to Dell for further raising the green bar more among hardware vendors.
One last thought: IBM and HP may claim that they're not worried about Dell's latest foray into the world of blades. In fact, a rep from one of those vendors sent me a rather dismissive note prior to the official Dell announcement: "We've been hearing rumors over here that Dell finally plans to announce their copycat blade on Monday. Odd that they'd choose a national holiday to announce, but that's another story ;-)."
Of course, when you go out of your way to eagerly point something out and declare you're not worried about it -- you're probably at least a leetle bit worried about it. Conceivably, Dell has surprised the competition with the level of innovation it's brought to the table here, enough to generate some concern.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 24, 2008 03:00 AM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
AMD yields more efficiency, Intel more throughput in quad-core CPU showdown
In a recent gauntlet of tests comparing AMD's quad-core Opteron processor (Barcelona) to Intel's quad-core Xeon (a.k.a. Tigerton), the Xeon delivered up to 14 percent more throughput, but the Opteron used up to 41 percent less energy.
The series of tests were conducted by Neal Nelson and Associates, an independent consulting firm. If you've been following my blog for a while, that name may sound familiar: Nelson has run similar power and performance tests over the past year, one in July and one in August.
Nelson conducted this series of tests using similarly configured quad-core Xeon and Opteron servers using 1GB memory modules at 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB main memory sizes. He also used one- and two-socket configurations at speeds of both 2.0GHz and 2.33GHz.
Cutting to the chase, Nelson determined the following in his tests:
-- When the sizes of the database working sets were small enough to fit in the servers’ kernel disk buffer cache, such that there was virtually no physical disk I/O, the Xeon-based servers delivered up to 14 percent higher throughput than the Opteron-based servers.
-- When the sizes of the database working sets were too large to fit in the kernel disk buffer cache, which forced substantial physical disk I/O, the Xeon-based servers delivered up to 3 percent higher throughput than the Opteron-based servers
-- When the servers were subjected to various identical levels of transaction arrival rates, the Opteron-based servers consumed up to 32 percent less power than the Xeon-based servers.
-- When the systems were idle and waiting for transactions to process, the Opteron-based servers consumed up to 41 percent less power than the Xeon-based servers. ("The power consumption at idle is particularly significant since studies have shown that many servers are powered on, but idle, 80 percent of the time," Nelson notes.)
"By themselves, the Intel processor chips may use less power, but all current Intel Xeon servers require the use of fully-buffered memory modules [FB-DIMM]. These FB-memory modules appear to consume more power than the DDR-II memory modules used by the AMD-based servers. The result is that in many cases an Opteron-based server actually uses less total power than a Xeon-based server," says Nelson in a written statement.
A better green benchmark?
Nelson reached his conclusions by employing what's he's dubbed Neal Nelson's Power Efficiency Benchmark. The benchmark works as follows: Nelson simulates users from 32 separate computers submitting individual transactions to similarly configured servers running Apache2 Web server, the MySQL relational database, and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server O. He measures the throughput and power usage of the systems in increments of 50 users, from 100 to 500, over half-hour sessions. "The benchmark has a complex multi-user load with a large memory footprint, a high volume of context switches, significant network traffic, and substantial amounts of physical disk I/O," according to Nelson.
In addition to sharing his conclusions for his test, Nelson has made an effort to differentiate his power-efficiency benchmark from the one recently unveiled by SPEC. "The SPECPower test has a single-client machine feeding batches of 1,000 transactions to a small number of Java-based application programs," says Nelson. "[It also] has a small memory footprint, a low volume of context switches, simple network traffic, and it performs no physical disk I/O. The SPEC test was created by a committee of computer vendor employees, and SPEC offers no guarantee that their numbers will correlate to a customer's real-world experiences."
Nelson's test results can be viewed in their entirety on his Web site.
Related articles:
AMD launches Barcelona
Intel releases quad-core Tigerton
Study: AMD more power-efficient than Intel
In AMD-Intel square-off, memory proves key
SPEC seeds future green-server benchmarks
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 January 16, 2008 11:50 AM
January 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)
CES: HP pledges to cut PC power usage by 25 percent
Using the greener-than-ever CES as a backdrop, HP this week announced plans to reduce the energy consumption of its volume desktop and notebook PC families by 25 percent by 2010 -- relative to its 2005 numbers.
HP's strategy for achieving this goal is pretty straightforward. In part, the company will continue to integrate more efficient power supplies and lower-energy chip sets into its systems. Here, HP is safely betting on the fact that these component vendors down the supply chain will continue to crank out increasingly efficient wares.
Power to the PC
HP's approach to power supplies is worth noting; I find it quite interesting, given the green agenda the company has embraced. In 2007, HP rolled out smaller form factors for its USDTs (ultra slim desktops). The HP dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC, for example, is 46 percent smaller than previous models.
As part of the new design, the company incorporated a standard 85 percent efficient external power supply, according to Andrew Medlin, senior manager of business PC product marketing at HP. (External power supplies tend to be more efficient than internal, Medin points out.)
That's fine for small systems. Large-chassis systems, however, run on internal power supplies. HP customers seeking to purchase a larger system with a relatively more efficient 80-plus percent internal power supply will need to pay a $20 premium.
In other words, HP isn't making the more efficient supply the standard here. "There is significant cost associated with more efficient power supplies in general, and since not all customers value the more efficient power supplies, we chose to provide them a choice," says Medin.
Of course, I'd love to see HP and other PC vendors pushing green agendas to make efficient power supplies the standard on all of their machines. Yes, I can appreciate that the cold, hard reality of the bottom line can offset the greenest of intentions, a fact that many a vendor is dealing with. Even pushing the efficient power supply at a discount (say, $10 a piece) and highlighting the green and cost-saving benefits would be a good start.
Resting easy
In addition to using efficient components to achieve its goal, HP says it will employ more energy-saving technologies and processes into its volume PC portfolio. As an example, the company pointed out that Verdiem's Surveyor remote power management software agent comes preloaded on all its dc7800-series PCs. "When activated, Surveyor can help measure, manage, and reduce power consumption on PCs and monitors by up to 33 percent, or about 200 kilowatt-hours per PC annually," according to HP.
Indeed, there are cost savings and other green-related benefits to be enjoyed through PC power-management tools. But, as with an 80-plus percent efficient power supply that comes at a premium, the Surveyor tool isn't free; it's costs around $20 per licensee to activate.
Here, I'm less critical of HP's choice. Verdiem's offering is geared toward managing power consumption of PCs throughout a larger organization and is far more powerful than the run-of-the-mill tools that put the average home PC in sleep mode when it's not in use. Tools from Verdiem and its competitors are designed for remotely managing a fleet of PCs, ensuring they're powered down when not in use and turned on just before end-users come to their desks in the morning. Many of these power-management solutions are also designed to wake up systems from sleep mode after hours for patches and backups, then put them back to sleep. Given the power and complexity of these types of tools, it's only fair that HP pass the cost to large-size customers.
HP's Medin does add that HP is working on a power-management tool aimed at small businesses and SOHO customers that "will eventually be available at no added cost."
The bottom line here, as I see it, is that HP's on the right track in pursuing its green agenda. In fact, given all the increasingly efficient components and energy management software we're seeing, I don't expect it will be too difficult for the company to attain its goal of cutting energy usage of its volume desktop and notebook PC families by 25 percent by 2010.
I am, however, interested to see how HP and its competitors will continue to raise the green bar. Will we, in fact, see a company commit to making the most energy-efficient power supplies out there the standard in their systems? Will more PCs come preloaded with better power-management tools? I certainly expect so.
How do you envision PC vendors making their wares greener?
Related links:
CES groomed for green
ColdWatt powers energy-efficient servers
When PCs don't snooze, you lose
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 January 10, 2008 12:58 PM
November 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Emerson delivers free Energy Logic blueprint for building a power-efficient datacenter
How-to guides are downright handy for tackling daunting projects, such as deploying a new BPM (business process management) solution or building a birdhouse (one of those really fancy ones with indoor plumbing).
One of the most daunting tasks that companies face today is figuring out how to wring greater energy efficiency out of their datacenters. Certainly, many vendors are ready to step up and demonstrate where their respective products fit into the power-saving puzzle. But there's something to be said for a vendor-neutral blueprint to plan the overall task.
That all is a wordy lead-in to pointing you to a new report -- available as a free download -- released today by Emerson Network Power. It's titled "Energy Logic: Reducing Data Center Energy Consumption by Creating Savings that Cascade Across Systems," and it's an impressive piece of work, outlining ten interrelated technology strategies that comprise a holistic approach to improving datacenter energy efficiency by as much as 50 percent, according to the company. And as I noted, it's free.
For a little background, Emerson has coined the term "Energy Logic" in this report, a strategy which, according to the company, "centers on 'the cascade effect' by which one watt saved at the processor level can save an average total of 2.84 watts in energy consumption."
The report starts at the server component level, outlining the benefits of low-power processors. "Independent research studies show these lower-power processors deliver the same performance as higher power models," the report says. "In the 5,000-square-foot datacenter modeled for this paper, low-power processors create a 10 percent reduction in overall datacenter power consumption."
Next up: power supplies. The report notes that most power supplies found in servers are working at around 72 percent effiency -- yet "best-in-class power supplies are available today that deliver efficiency of 90 percent. Use of these power supplies reduces power draw within the data center by 124 kW or 11 percent of the 1127 kW total," the report says.
From there, the report suggests that datacenter operators look at power-management software. Despite the fact that processors have built-in power-management features, they end up disabled for fear of crippling response time. Yet "in idle mode, most servers consume between 70 and 85 percent of full operational power."
The Emerson Energy Logic report suggests that admins reconsider how they use power-management features. In the 5,000 square foot datacenter model, the report says that using power-management features can reduce peak power draw from 80 percent to 45 percent, saving "an additional 86 kW or eight percent of the unoptimized datacenter load."
Blade servers have a role to play in the energy-efficient datacenter, according to the Emerson report. "Blade servers consume about 10 percent less power than equivalent rack-mount servers because multiple servers share common power supplies, cooling fans and other components. ... More importantly, blades facilitate the move to a high-density data center architecture, which can significantly reduce energy consumption."
Moving on, Emerson's Energy Logic strategy highlights server virtualization. In the 5,000 square foot model, "assuming 25 percent of servers are virtualized with eight non-virtualized physical servers being replaced by one virtualized physical server, ... virtualization provides an incremental eight percent reduction in total datacenter power," according to the report.
No. 6 on Emerson's energy-efficiency menu for datacenters: best cooling practices. That includes "sealing gaps in floors, using blanking panels in open spaces in racks, and avoiding mixing of hot and cold air." This is low-hanging fruit that requires no additional technology investment but can result in a five percent efficiency boost, based, again, on the 5,000 square foot datacenter model.
415V AC power distribution is the next strategy component in Emerson's Energy Logic scheme. The short of it is, most UPS systems are rather inefficient, as they convert incoming power to DC and then back to AC within the UPS. "In most datacenters, the UPS provides power at 480V, which is then stepped down via a transformer, with accompanying losses, to 208V in the power distribution system," according to the report. "These stepdown losses can be eliminated by converting UPS output power to 415V." The result: "an incremental two percent reduction in facility energy use" in the 5,000 square foot model.
Cooling reappears in the report next, specifically variable capacity cooling. "Typically, CRAC [computer room air conditioners] fans run at a constant speed and deliver a constant volume of air flow. Converting these fans to variable frequency drive fans allows fan speed and power draw to be reduced as load decreases," the report says. Emerson specifically cites digital scroll compressors here, which "allow the capacity of room air conditioners to be matched exactly to room conditions without turning compressors on and off."
The payoff: "A 20 percent reduction in fan speed provides almost 50 percent savings in fan-power consumption."
Ninth in the Emerson Energy Logic lineup is, lo, another cooling strategy: high-density supplemental cooling. Datacenter operators are cramming more machines into their facility, and CRAC systems alone can't handle the extra heat. "Supplemental cooling units are mounted above or alongside equipment racks, and pull hot air directly from the hot aisle and deliver cold air to the cold aisle," the report explains. These units can reduce cooling costs by 30 percent, Emerson reports.
Last but not least, there's monitoring and optimization. With varying types of hardware spread out around the datacenter, cooling can prove inefficient. "Cooling control systems can monitor conditions across the datacenter and coordinate the activities of multiple units to prevent conflicts and increase teamwork," the report says. "In the model, an incremental saving of one percent is achieved as a result of system-level monitoring and control."
There's plenty more information to be gleaned from Emerson's 21-page Energy Logic report, along with helpful charts and diagrams to help datacenter operators as they venture toward a greener, more sustainable facility.
Did I mention the report is available as a free download? Get it right here.
Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog, tracking trends toward greener, more energy-efficient IT. Subscribe to his free Green Tech newsletter here.
Posted by Ted Samson on November 29, 2007 10:02 AM
November 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Q&A: From 90 years old to LEED gold
There's a tendency in our society to simply throw out the old and replace it with something shiny and new. Sometimes, that might be necessary; often, though, the old still has value, and chucking it results in costly and unnecessary waste. An older server, for example, could still function as a test machine for patches. Or a 90-year-old building could be transformed into an energy-efficient, eco-friendly datacenter.
Skeptics may scoff at the notion, but not Jim Smith, vice president of engineering at Digital Realty Trust. Smith took the lead in transforming 20,000 square feet of a facility built in 1917 into the world's first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold-certified datacenter.
Judging by previous interactions I've had with Smith, I can safely say that this project wasn't simply a "green-washing" publicity stunt. Smith approaches sustainable IT from a very practical, business-oriented standpoint: boosting efficiency and reducing waste results in long-term cost savings. Embracing LEED benchmarks, as companies such as Adobe, Qualcomm, and HP have done, helps to lay down the foundation for reaping those benefits.
Following is a Q&A between Smith and me about the datacenter renovation project.
Ted Samson: I see the building was built in 1917. Did the company recently acquire it and do a full renovation before starting to use it, as opposed to using it, then deciding to do the LEED renovation?
Jim Smith: We've owned the 350 East Cermak building in Chicago for more than two years and LEED Gold certified a new datacenter within the building as a project for a customer. We did not have to do any major renovations to get the LEED certifications, but it was nonetheless an intensive process. Not simple, but we did it and are proud of how it turned out.
The LEED Gold certification is not for the entire building. 350 East Cermak is a huge building -- more than a million square feet in total -- and this specific certification is for about 40,000 square feet, which is still a large space but not the entire building. We have another project in the works that will be an entire floor and we're excited about that.
TS: What was the thinking in upgrading an existing, old building as opposed to finding a more modern building or starting from scratch?
JS: A few factors went into the decision to use an existing building. One is that the customer really liked the 350 Cermak facility because it is such an ideal spot, right in the Loop and at the exchange. Another important factor for us is that the LEED certification encourages reuse of existing structures, which is very energy-efficient when you look at how much energy is used in materials and construction for new buildings.
There are some misconceptions that LEED certification only makes sense for new buildings, but this project showed us that the process definitely works for existing buildings. Even huge, old, historic structures like this one in Chicago.
One key takeaway from this project for the datacenter industry as a whole is that energy-efficiency initiatives should not just be limited to new construction. You can do great projects in existing buildings and get amazing results.
TS: Could you please give me a couple of "before and after" examples as to what changes you made to the facility to help it earn its Gold certification? I'm particularly interested in anything that improves energy efficiency, that was solved with IT tools, or that affects the datacenter performance.
JS: One important thing we used are sophisticated energy-measurement tools.... These are not expensive, but they provide critical data that let you understand what is happening in the datacenter. Every datacenter should have this, particularly since it is such a small investment and provides such valuable information. Step one for energy-efficient operations is always to have a way to measure.
Another important thing ... is commissioning -- both fundamental commissioning and advanced commissioning.... It was an important step in the process for this LEED Gold datacenter. The commissioning process is very meaningful because it verifies the design basis and makes you test the systems for efficiency. You learn a lot during this process and can apply that knowledge right upfront to make adjustments that ensure you are maximizing your energy savings.
We [also] installed tools to monitor outside air at the facility. The equipment and monitoring system makes sure the air is clean, and helps us improve performance of the ventilation system and improve indoor air quality.
TS: How much did the project cost?
JS: The financial impact of the LEED process was an extra 4 percent in cost -- half of which was materials and tools, and the other half of which was administrative. Very efficient from a cost perspective, and it has an overwhelmingly positive net present value. Definitely worth the cost.
One important thing that I would highlight is this: There is some skepticism out there about how relevant LEED certification is to datacenters and about how significant the benefits are. I would argue that is does have a lot of value and should be strongly considered as one of number of tools that companies can use to make their datacenters more efficient. It's not the end-all-be-all, but it does provide a way of focusing the engineering and design and construction and operations teams -- with a process that builds good habits and keeps them focused on objectives that do achieve energy efficiency.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a datacenter project knows the value in having a process that keeps those teams focused and organized in this way. That alone makes this process valuable, even before you factor in the energy-efficiency gains.
Posted by Ted Samson on November 8, 2007 03:00 AM
November 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Govs pledge to buy greener hardware for state governments
If you're a hardware vendor and "energy efficiency" isn't high on your product-feature list, you're risking losing some valuable customers -- perhaps as many as 50, with names such as Kansas and Minnesota.
The National Governors Association (NGA) today announced a partnership between the NGA chair's Securing a Clean Energy Future (SCEF) initiative and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) to spur deployment of more energy-efficient computers and servers in state offices and agencies.
Two governors, NGA Chair Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, have committed to the partnership thus far, and they will work to encourage their 48 peers to follow suit.
The move would certainly have eco-friendly benefits. Moreover, it would result fewer wasted tax dollars. Underutilized hardware can spell costly waste. For example, powering down PCs that aren't in use can result in as much as $45 in energy savings per system and $30 per monitor, per year, according to Energy Star.
"The average desktop PC currently wastes half of the power it receives," said Gov. Pawlenty in a written statement. "Having states increase the energy efficiency of their computing equipment will save consumers and taxpayers money, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change."
Under the terms of the agreement, these states have committed to reducing energy consumption from a majority of their computing equipment by:
- pledging to purchase high-efficiency computer equipment that meets or exceeds federal Energy Star ratings;
- optimizing existing computer systems by educating employees about more efficient and effective computer power-management strategies, such as better using hibernation and sleep modes;
- and ensuring in subsequent years states purchase computing equipment with increasing levels of efficiency.
Beyond preserving precious tax dollars, the initiative could spur citizens and merchants to embrace more sustainable practices themselves, observes Bill Weihl, co-chairman of the CSCI board of directors and Google's green energy czar. "[Their] actions will provide leadership for residents and local businesses looking to implement effective emission reduction policies," he said in a written statement.
CSCI, an initiative started by Google and Intel, brings together manufacturers, businesses, organizations and individuals to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers. The group is led by representatives from nine board of director companies, including Dell; Electronic Data Systems; HP; Intel; and Microsoft.
For more information about the SCEF Initiative, go to nga.org/ci. For more information about CSCI, visit climatesaverscomputing.org.
Posted by Ted Samson on November 7, 2007 10:24 AM
November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Cassatt unveils Active Reponse suite for cutting datacenter energy waste
Company says app-aware, platform-agnostic software intelligently powers servers off and on as needed
With backing from big-name IT companies such as Sun, Citrix, and Red Hat, Cassatt today unveiled its Active Response 5.0 software suite, capable of actively powering servers on and off as needed and pooling physical and virtual server resources to reduce datacenter energy waste by as much as 50 percent, according to the company.
Combining Cassatt Active Power Management and utility computing technologies based on Cassatt Collage, Active Response is designed to rein in the amount of power wasted by servers that often sit idle for long periods until they are needed. Those include machines in development and test centers, scale-out production environments, failover, and disaster recovery sites.
Specifically, Active Response employs a policy engine that, according to Cassatt, powers servers up and down on an as-needed basis, "[taking] into account server priorities and needs, server interrelationships, application dependencies and relationships, and individual server power consumption."
The software also takes into account variables such as peak and off-peak power schedules, time of day, and emergencies such as "demand curtailment" mandates from power companies to reduce electrical consumption.
Admins also can set policies to ensure server resources are available to meet service level agreements for application delivery.
The company says the system is application aware, knowing when and how apps must be shut down and brought back up. Further, it's aware of application interdependencies shared across multiple servers, Cassatt reports.
The company says the suite will run on any platform and works with any virtual or physical server , (including blade servers). Changes to existing hardware and software configs aren't necessary, either.
All told, there will be four editions of the Active Reponse suite: Standard, Premium, Data Center, and Enterprise. Especially interesting to me is the Enterprise Edition, slated for release in next year. The company says it will enable an organization to share and optimize its resources across multiple data centers in different geographies.
"Pooling your IT resources and then using software to intelligently and actively control them can create a real shift in the economics of running a datacenter," said Michelle Bailey, research vice president for IDC, in a written statement. "With products like Cassatt Active Response, customers can start to see the type of energy efficiency, application availability, and datacenter responsiveness that previously were only possible by having much higher levels of infrastructure and operations investment."
Cassatt, launched in 2003 and based in San Jose, Calif., has announced a fairly impressive array of supporters for its technology, including Sun, Citrix, Red Hat, and BearingPoint.
"We view green initiatives that promise to reduce energy with minimal resources as a win-win for everyone, and as a platform with the potential to transform the data center," said Frederic Veron, managing director, financial services infrastructure solutions at BearingPoint, in a written statement. "We are very pleased to be working with Cassatt on Active Power Management solutions that will enable our clients' data centers to intelligently power up or down in synch with business cycles and demand."
Cassatt Active Response 5.0 will ultimately be available in four editions. Standard Edition, out on Nov. 16, starts at $200 per managed machine. The Premium Edition, available today, starts at $1,250 per managed machine. The Data Center Edition, also available today, starts at $2,500 per managed machine. Finally, the Enterprise Edition will be available in the second half of 2008.
Posted by Ted Samson on November 5, 2007 12:45 PM
October 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
In the high-voltage battle between AC and DC power, DC will be the ultimate loser, predicts Robert Mitchell over at Computerworld.
The observation is particularly timely in that The Green Grid consortium has just released to the public a new whitepaper titled "Qualitative Analysis of Power Distribution Configurations for Data Centers," which discusses the qualitative differences between seven possible configurations that can either be found in the United States or Canada today, or could be used in the future.
AC power is, of course, the reigning electricity standard these days, but it's garnered criticism from penny- and eco-conscious souls for its inherent wastefulness compared to DC: "IT equipment power supplies convert incoming AC power to the various DC voltages the subcomponents require. While some equipment also accepts DC input power, most data centers distribute 208-volt AC out to the racks. At least 10 percent of the AC power coming into data centers is lost to AC/DC and DC/AC conversion inefficiencies before it reaches the IT equipment," Mitchell writes.
But DC has two factors working against it. First, any company seeing to take the DC route in its datacenter would have to make some hefty infrastracture investment. "Adopting DC would mean maintaining two power distribution infrastructures, since there will always be equipment in the data center that needs AC. And without a major financial payback, organizations are unlikely to invest the time and money to move into new and uncharted territory," Mitchell writes.
Moreover, by some accounts, DC's advantages over AC are negligible. According to a study from APC (American Power Conversion) [PDF], "a detailed analysis and model show that many of the common benefits claimed for DC distribution are unfounded or overstated." Among APC's findings, "the DC approach with the best performance is the high voltage DC distribution architecture, which offers as much as a 4 percent improvement when compared with other approaches. However, this approach requires a new generation of IT equipment that does not yet exist."
The Green Grid's report has similar observations that DC, though possibly more energy-efficient, faces an uphill battle. Of the DC configurations, the consortium is most bullish about 380V DC, which "appears to promise the highest efficiency but will require the introduction of new products, including UPSs, and changes to IT equipment power supplies."
Among the AC configurations, the paper suggests that 400V AC holds the greatest promise. (480V and 600V are currently the standards for datacenters.) "400V AC can be implemented today, is compatible with a wide variety of power distribution and IT equipment, and has the potential to increase system efficiency," the whitepaper says.
The Green Grid, by the way, intends to examine compare AC and DC in quantitatively and in more detail down the road.
Posted by Ted Samson on October 24, 2007 01:15 PM
October 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
VMware Infrastructure 3.5 will power down unused servers
Virtualization, in and of itself, is quite the green technology: It lets companies use fewer servers to get the same amount of work done. But the forthcoming Version 3.5 of VMware Infrastructure, which will include the new VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5, will include a feature designed to further reduce power consumption.
As descibed by VMware, "VMware Distributed Power Management is an experimental feature that reduces power consumption in the data center through intelligent workload balancing. Working in conjunction with VMware DRS, Distributed Power Management is designed to automatically power off servers not currently needed in order to meet service levels, and automatically power on servers as demand for compute resources increases."
That's a pretty cool trick indeed, though the "experimental" descriptor gives me a little pause. Hopefully on of the Test Center analysts will get a chance to kick those tires.
But it's certainly a step in the right direction toward a dynamic server farm.
VMWare Infrastructure 3.5 is due out later this year.
Posted by Ted Samson on October 8, 2007 03:24 PM
September 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Survey: 63 percent of companies have run out of datacenter power, space
I'm not a Trekkie, but I have vivid memories of scenes where Captain Kirk would suddenly demand of Scotty, the chief engineer, "We need more power!" when trying to complete a critical task.
These days, plenty of datacenter operators feel Scotty's pain. According to a recent survey, 63 percent of IT organizations have run out of power, space, or cooling capacity -- without warning.
That statistic, brought to us by NAS vendor ONStor, is a perfect indication of why the green technology movement is heating up. Running out of datacenter power, space, or cooling capacity without warning has some pretty dire consequences. One day, your company is humming along, enjoying growth and success. Then you realize one day, out of the blue, you discover you can't add any more machines to your datacenter, due to lack of power, space, and/or cooling. You tell the CEO you've hit a capacity ceiling and have to turn away business. He hits the floor. The poop hits the fan.
That's where a well-developed green-technology strategy comes in: Companies need to find ways to squeeze the most efficiency out of their hardware through such approaches as consolidation, virtualization, smart cooling, and good old-fashioned conservation.
Whereas 63 percent of the 369 respondents in ONStor's survey have already suffered the consequences of insufficient planning, another 43 percent are bracing for trouble, saying that at the current data growth rate, they could only stay in their current infrastructure for another six months to a year if they changed nothing. Fortunately, they have time on their hands, plus the benefit of realizing that a threat is looming.
But how many companies will manage to act in time? According to the ONStor survey: 60 percent of respondents reported that they either have a green initiative in place, would have one in place in the next two years, or had at least talked about it with management. I'm curious how that statistic breaks down, because there's a huge difference between having a plan and simply talking about it.
"We know from conversations with our customers that datacenter power consumption amidst the exorbitant growth of data is a key concern for CIOs and other IT professionals," said Bob Miller, ONStor CEO, in a written statement. "What we find most interesting from this survey is how many executives aren't implementing solutions to address these challenges. There's a disconnect between having an awareness of the need to lower power consumption in the datacenter and doing something about it."
Among other notable findings in the study: Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they would go green if doing so resulted in 20 to 50 percent cost savings; more than than one third would go green for 10 to 20 percent cost savings.
My take here: Clearly, a business wants an ROI on any technology investments it makes. One of the benefits of green technology is that companies can see significant and measurable long-term savings on energy bills. Moreover, if your datacenter is crammed to capacity, embracing green technology to free up space and power is a clearly superior choice over the alternative of putting a hold on your company's growth as you invest millions of dollars and at least a couple of years building a brand new facility.
And according to the ONStor survey, that's a realistic choice that some companies are facing: 24 percent of respondents reported that the cost and time of building another datacenter is the most serious issue driving the reduction of data infrastructure power consumption.
Posted by Ted Samson on September 18, 2007 11:21 AM
July 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Congress contemplates upgrading the nation's dumb electricity-delivery infrastructure to a smart grid
Electricity prices are costly, sure, but you know what else is expensive? Power outages. They cost U.S. business at least $50 billion a year, according to Electric Power Research Institute estimates, as computer screens go black, servers stop humming, conveyor belts stop moving, and workers step out for coffee. (By an odd coincidence, InfoWorld's San Francisco office is suffering a power outage as I write this article at my home office in Sacramento. I think I've discovered another benefit to telecommuting.)
It's rather heartening to see that elected officials have taken notice of the problems with the nation's energy-delivery systems, which have proven to be, at times, unreliable (rolling blackouts, anyone?) and unable to meet the nation's ever-increasing demand.
Part of the proposed energy bill from members of Congress calls for the possible development of a countrywide smart electric grid, a system that could result in overall more efficient and reliable electricity service here in the States.
Essentially, a smart grid is an intelligent electricity-delivery system, through which energy suppliers and consumers are all interconnected through a network. Smart meters are installed at homes and business to monitor energy consumption and transmit that information back to energy providers. Energy providers not only have the ability to track energy consumption -- but also to automatically throttle down energy consumption on a granular level when demand gets too high.
For example, participating users -- be they business or home owners -- might agree to have their building's air conditioning systems automatically turned down, or certain lights turned off, during peak hours when the grid is being heavily taxed. That reduces the strain on the grid, thus preventing rolling blackouts and costly downtime.
Preventing unplanned downtime for systems and employees is but one of the benefits of a smart grid. Smart meters are capable of measuring energy consumption all hours of the day, and utilities could set prices according to demand during a given time. Thus, those who wait until after peak hours to perform certain tasks -- be it a consumer turning on the dishwasher or a network admin setting systems to be woken up for patching -- could save some green.
"Letting customers choose to lower their bills by shifting usage reduces peak demand and helps avoid power shortages, transmission problems and the need to build new power plants," says Richard Mora, president and CEO of Landis+Gyr, a member of the Demand Response and Advanced Metering (DRAM) Coalition. "Just as important if not more so, by some customers reducing peak demands, it dampens the market power of sellers during peak periods and thus lowers prices for everyone."
Mora also notes that "the two-way communication ability that comes with smart meters and other demand-response technologies gives electricity providers another tool for optimizing their planning and operations and creating a truly smart grid.”
(There's an interview with Steve Widergren, administrator for the GridWise Architecture Council, right here in which he discusses in more detail how this might work for a business.)
A smart grid also can deliver energy more efficiently, according to a report by the Energy Future Coalition titled "Challenge and Opportunity: Charting a New Energy Future." [PDF] "Grid upgrades that increase the amount of power that can be moved through the transmission grid and that optimize those power flows will reduce waste and maximize use of the lowest-cost generation resources."
Again, that's good for consumers -- plus by reducing waste, it's also good for the environment.
Yet another benefit: Using the smart grid monitoring tools, providers could assess in real time how much electricity far-flung green power sources, such as wind farms and solar panels, are churning out at a given time.
Points for the grid
Smart-grid technology is already proving is worth. I recently spoke with JT Keating, the VP of marketing at Site Controls. The company offers an energy and facilities management solution called Site-Command. The platform remotely monitors, logs, and controls HVAC, lighting, outdoor signage, refrigeration, and other major in-store energy consumers. Admins have online, real-time access to the switches for all of these energy-users.
Additionally, the company offers a hosted service to monitor energy usage at its customers facilities. (Right now, the company targets large retail, restaurant, and convenience store chains.)
According to Keating, the company works with customers to establish practices for reducing energy consumption for times that local utilities are threatening to launch rolling brownouts because energy demand is too high -- a practice Keating likens to "performing surgery with an ax."
Depending on the customer, that might mean setting the AC a couple of degrees higher or turning off certain lights, practices that can add up and prevent the need for a planned blackout. According to the company, "Site Controls' intelligent load management capabilities reduced peak load by 38 percent during the emergency curtailment requested by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)" in 2006.
Utilities such as PG&E in California and Con Edison in New York already have smart meters in place at some of the customer's locations, which have proven successful in helping monitor energy consumption and promote conservation to stave off power outages.
Smart grid technology is out there, and as evidenced by the proposed energy bill, even our sometimes non-tech-savvy elected officials are now becoming aware of the potential benefits. Even if the overall bill ends up getting buried, I, for one, certainly hope that the Feds vigorously pursue legislation promoting smart grids. Like so many other green-technologies, it's good for business and it's good for the environment, something all politicians should be behind.
Posted by Ted Samson on July 5, 2007 12:03 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 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
HP injects power-capping tool in Systems Insight Manager
Feature limits energy-use on a per-machine basis, potentially reducing overall datacenter power consumption by 70%, HP says
With many companies struggle with soaring energy costs as well as limits on getting the power they need to expand, or even run, their datacenters, HP today a new power-capping component for HP Insight Power Manager, part of the HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) hardware management platform.
Using Insight Power Manager, customers can measure the average and peak power usage of their HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers and cap power at specific wattages, according to HP. That, in turn, can reduce power and cooling costs. Moreover, it helps companies ensure that they don't draw more energy from the grid than they're allotted. Trying to draw more energy than is available to you can reduce in unexpected downtime.
Currently, datacenter administrators plan their power budgets -- the total amount of energy they expect the hardware in the datacenter to consume -- based on collective power-consumption specs provided by the vendors. However, those numbers are based on high-usage scenarios, which some servers never actually reach, according to Jeff Carlat, director of industry standard servers software at HP. Thus, companies are pumping more electricity into certain machines than may be necessary.
"The energy usage grows significantly as you reach that faster speed on the server. The ability to capture the power and drive conservation of power can free up excess power in your power budget to deploy new servers," said Carlat.
Alternatively, depending on a companies needs, you can just put those savings back in your pocket.
According to Carlat, HP found in lab tests that it was able to reduce power consumption by 70% through power-capping, though the tests were limited to ten servers.
Admins can tweak the power-cap on a given server as needed, too. A database server, for example, might need more energy when churning at monthly reports. Thus, an admin could set it to receive 1,000W during report time and 700 the rest of the time.
The potential drawback to not setting the power cap high enough is degraded hardware response time, which admins can rectify by adjusted the cap -- or accept in exchange for the associated savings.
In addition to the new power-capping features, HP also introduced remote management features through Integrated Lights-Out 2, a plug-in application to HP SIM. Through a shared remote console, the tool allows for up to four users at one time to diagnose system issues and execute tasks, from anywhere in the world, according to HP.
Through the console replay capability, users can document procedures, train others or share with others to troubleshoot a problem.
The power measurement and power capping capabilities now ship standard with Insight Power Manager, which starts at $99. HP ProLiant Essentials Integrated Lights-Out 2 is also now available and starts at $349.
Posted by Ted Samson on June 25, 2007 03:00 AM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Report: 62.4 million work PCs left awake during off-hours
Not to belabor my writings about desktop-power management, but according to a study released today, as many as 62.4 million PCs are left on during evening and weekend hours at companies across the United States, which results in around $1.72 billion of wasted power (assuming even just 50 percent can be put into hibernation or sleep mode).
Those figures come from a report released today titled "PC Energy Report 2007: United States," composed by Harris Interactive and sponsored by 1E, which provides systems management tools -- including solutions for managing PC power consumption -- and the Alliance to Save Energy.
The report says that "a mid-sized company wastes more than $165,000 a year in electricity costs for computers that have been left on overnight."
From an ecological standpoint, according to the report, leaving a PC on overnight creates 920 pounds of carbon dioxide. "If 60 percent of the country's work PCs are used this way — and 50 percent use hibernation or sleep mode — then 14.4 million tons of carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere each year, needlessly. Preventing that amount of CO2 from reaching the atmosphere would have roughly the same impact as taking 2.58 million passenger cars -- more than exist in the entire State of Maryland (2.48 million )-- off the road entirely."
"Ideally, everybody would shut down their PCs at the end of a working day. Research we have commissioned shows that this doesn't happen," writes Sumir Karayi, CEO of IE in the introduction of the report. "Some people assume their IT departments need their machines to be left on overnight in order to deploy security patches and software updates. Others believe an on-board 'sleep' or hibernation mode kicks in, which isn't usually the case. And an alarming number of people admit that they just don't care."
According to the report, "more than 30 percent of employees cite the IT department's policies or activities as reason for not shutting down computer each night."
As I wrote last week, there are, in fact tools out there that enable companies to easily set PCs and monitors to power down when not in use -- and remotely awoken if they need to be patched, backed up, and/or to be ready for use when end-users return to the office the next day.
Posted by Ted Samson on June 18, 2007 02:55 PM
June 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Putting PCs to sleep, revisited
I wanted to address to some comments posted in response to my article about savings you can reap by employing desktop power management at your organization.
Some commentors suggested that shutting down systems at night results in wasted productivity in the morning, as users have to sit there waiting for the PCs to reboot.
That would be true if users were, indeed, expected to turn on their systems each morning. However, products I mentioned in my article are capable of waking up systems at predetermined times, through wake on LAN. Thus, an admin might set policies to wake up systems 15 minutes before users are due to arrive.
Also, powering down the system doesn't necessarily mean shutting it down. There are lower-power modes such as Standby, a state in which a system uses far less energy and which doesn't take much time to wake up from.
A couple of people also posed questions or observations as to why companies haven't done this in the past (or currently).
Based on my discussions and research, I'd attribute it to a few factors:
1. Companies aren't aware that these type of products exist, or don't understand how they work. (See above.)
2. A lot of companies haven't been associating IT energy consumption with electric bills, which is understandable: different department heads, different bills. Thus, getting users to power down down at night hasn't been a priority. (A lot of companies seem to leave their lights on all night, too.) But as the country (and the world) is becoming more eco-conscious, as well as concerns grow about power shortages, that's changing.
3. There are misconceptions that it's "bad" for PC to turn it off and on, because of some perceived excessive wear and tear it experiences when it powers on. Plenty of research I've seen dispels that myth.
4. There's concern that systems need to awake at night for patching and backups, so as not to disrupt users while they work. That's true -- but it's also, again, where various products on the market come in: They can wake up systems for patch and backup, then power them down again.
Finally, a couple of vendor reps, one from Sun and one from Symbio, weighed in to pitch their thin-client products as less energy-hungry alternatives to PCs. I generally don't like my blog to be used as a forum for vendors to pimp their wares, but their general points are worth noting. Though I will point out to Lew Tischler at Symbio that I have written about thin clients recently.
Posted by Ted Samson on June 15, 2007 11:46 AM
June 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
When PCs don't snooze, you lose
Companies are waking up to the fact that powering down systems after hours can reap significant cost and energy savings
One of the more frustrating aspects of launching a new technology project at an organization, such as a new document management system or upgraded CRM software, is that the return on investment can be downright difficult to measure in clear, obvious monetary figures.
Therein lies the advantage of certain green projects: Beyond the environmental benefits, the ROI can be so immediate and evident, your CFO might just slap his or her forehead for not doing it sooner.
PC and monitor power management falls under that easy-to-measure, cost-saving, carbon-reducing, CFO-self-masochism-inducing category. The bottom line is, lots of organizations leave their PCs and monitors humming nights and weekends when no one is around to use them. Powering down those systems can result in as much as $45 in energy savings per PC and $30 per monitor, per year, according to Energy Star.
Just chew on that for a moment. That's $75 a year, times the number of PCs and monitors at your organization. Or you can take the more conservative figure of $25. Whatever the case, a company with 5,000 systems is looking at adding around $125,000 to the happy side of the accounting ledger at the end of the year, and for very minimal effort on IT's part.
Environmentally speaking, a machine left on all the time results in an extra half-ton of CO2 emissions per year, according to California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Thus, the ecobenefits are evident as well.
Ripe for the plucking
"What we're solving here is really low-hanging fruit with results that are significantly larger than all the datacenter work that's going on out there," says Sumir Karayi, the CEO at 1E, which is among a host of vendors offering tools aimed at helping network admins get a handle on desktop waste. "The simple reasons for that is just numbers: the number of PCs there are compared to servers. It's at least a 10-to-1 ratio in the corporate space. If you start switching off a percentage of them, even just 30 percent, then the sort of savings you'll see are massive."
1E's Patch Management Pack includes NightWatchman, which admins can use to tailor policies for automatically powering down systems across the network when they're not in use.
Also part of 1E's package is SMSWakeUp, which includes WOL (Wake-On-LAN) technology to rouse systems from slumber when they need to be patched. Admins also can set systems to boot at specific times, meaning end-users will be able to sit down at their desks and start working when they arrive. Moreover, 1E's system is designed to save users' work before shutting down their systems, as well not to shut down if a system is running predetermined applications.
Among 1E's customers is Vision Service Plan (VSP), a supplier of eye care benefits in the United States with more than 2,300 PCs. According to 1E, VSP is using the Patch Management Pack to power down 85 percent of its workstations at night, reaping anticipated savings of $63 per PC per year. That's around $145,000 per annum -- plus the company also derives benefit of far more successful patch jobs.
User needs may vary
Common among these power management solutions are configurable policies, which admins can tailor for particular groups, or even individuals, to reflect their respective hours and needs. Policies also might be adjusted to ensure that a system won't take a snooze if specific processes are running in the background.
Implementing power management without disrupting users is key, which is, in part, where the flexible policies come in handy. Karayi and Bruce Twito, CTO and vice president of product development at Verdiem, both suggest that admins not get too rigid with policies, so as not to overly irritate users. For example, overly ambitious policies might result in the monitor or system powering down every 10 minutes while a user is trying to read an article or when a stats application is running a complex process.
"If people are very IT savvy, they're going to object to not letting them use their machines as fast as they want to," says Karayi. "You can still save a massive amount of power. There's around 9.5 hours in a workday. You still have the 14 hours to play with where machine can be off."
On the other hand, you might want to create stricter policies for the systems that rarely see use, notes Rob Meinhardt, CEO of KACE, which offers KBOX, essentially a plug-and-play appliance which offers, among other features, power management, configuration management and WOL capabilities. "At any given office, you could have literally hundred, thousands of machines in the building. And inevitably, there are machines on the periphery of use that aren't employed. You might have a QA lab where maybe 50 percent of the machines aren't in use. You can power them down."
Or, thanks reporting features, you may just find that some systems simply aren't getting enough use to justify having them around at all.
See your savings
Reporting features are critical to the success of these types of solutions, according to the reps I spoke with. Admins can use them to see how effective their policies are, what savings they're reaping, and where there might be opportunity or need for tweaks. "There's no point in saving power if you can't show how much power you're saving -- and showing how much compliance there is," says Karayi.
Verdiem, which offers a power management product called Surveyor, uses the reporting features at the beginning of the implementation process to help companies gauge just what kind of savings they might reap. "We go into their organizations and install the client on a smattering of machines, and we use it to collect information about how efficient their power management policies actually are. Given user behavior and their policies, we see how much opportunity there is to save energy, and what the ROI would be," says Twito.
One of Verdiem's customers is the Lake Washington School District (LWSD) in Washington state. It has 23,500 students, 48 schools, and more than 11,000 PCs. LWSD has reaped more than $200,000 in savings per year through power management.
The solution garnered praise from the LWSD techies. "Surveyor lets us easily schedule when to leave the PCs on to automate IT tasks, while saving energy and money when no IT work is needed. And to date, use of Surveyor has not resulted in a single help desk call, which is refreshingly uncommon when new software is installed," says Bob Siemers, senior network engineer for the district.
The value proposition of desktop power management is indeed quite evident, and the vendors are finding that it's no longer just the folks in the operations and facilities department -- those who pay the electric bills -- that are asking about them. Now that green is the black among IT companies, technology departments are keen on reducing energy consumption. "Our typical point of contact has been facilities manager because they're in control of the power bill. But in the last six months, IT management is beginning to contact us. They're the primary source of incoming leads now."
In addition to the companies mentioned above, Altiris offers a free Energy Saver Toolkit, built on the company's systems management infrastructure. Additionally, LANDesk announced power management utility last March, which can be used with the LANDesk Management Suite, Security Suite, and Patch Manager via LANDesk Updates.
For more information on desktop power management, check out Energy Star's Web site. You might also look to 1E's Energy Awareness Campaign site, which has interesting information and links.
For home PCs, consider Uniblue's LocalCooling tool, offered for free. I've found it pretty easy to use, plus it tracks your energy savings.
Posted by Ted Samson on June 14, 2007 03:00 AM
May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Less power hungry than their PC peers, thin clients are garnering greater attention for their green advantages
Verizon CIO John Hinshaw confirmed a juicy green nugget of data in a recent interview: He said the wireless giant has reduced energy consumption by 30% since replacing PCs with Sun Ray thin clients in the company's call centers.
That will translate to a savings of $1 million per year for Verizon, once the company rolls out thin clients (or some "desktop-less" variants) in its remaining data centers.
"Power consumption is more of a hot topic in the U.S. than it has ever been," says Klaus Besier, president and CEO of thin-client vendor Neoware. "What we see with many more customers today is when they look at thin clients, they're taking more into account power consumption and [related] savings."
With their relatively lower energy requirements compared to PCs -- not to mention other eco-advantages like longer lifespan and smaller form factor with fewer parts -- thin clients are worthy of some serious consideration from companies.
Or perhaps I should say "reconsideration." Thin clients, after all, certainly aren't new, and advantages such as easier administration (fewer admin visits to users' desks) and improved security (data's stored remotely) are pretty well recognized. But thin clients continue to mature, as do the essential technologies that make them all the more viable. That includes virtualization (as InfoWorld Chief Technologist Tom Yager has noted), Wi-Fi, embedded OSes, and software as a service.
Thin, trim, and healthy
Combine all those technologies with the very real concerns over power shortages, high energy bills, and global climate change, and it's no surprise that IDC foresees steady 20%-plus year-over-year growth in the thin-client space, with shipments expected to reach 7.3 million in 2011.
"We're expecting positive growth for thin clients based on all the factors you've laid out [i.e. advances of virtualization and 10G, and growing concern about power consumption], as well as ongoing concerns about security and PC management costs," says Bob O'Donnell, program vice president for clients and displays at IDC.
Neoware asserts that companies can save as much as 90% on desktop-computing energy costs by swapping out PCs for thin clients -- depending on what models of hardware you're extracting or implementing, of course. But as an example, a desktop PC consumes as much as 280 watts of power in the amount of time that the high-end Neoware e140 burns up 48. So a company with 1,000 desktops would be spending about $62,000 yearly on power (based on the national KWH rate of $0.0849.), compared to around $10,500 for the clients, according to NeoWare. Savings: Around 50 grand a year per one thousand systems.
For the visually-oriented, here's a chart provided by thin-client vendor Wyse, comparing energy consumption of some of its thin-clients to various PC configurations:
Of course, when you install thin clients, you need servers in the server room to act as their brains. But those power savings are still significant, as noted in a recent report titled "Environmental comparison of PC and thin client equipment" by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. "Consumption is at least twice as low, sometimes three or four times lower than the consumption of corresponding PC systems. This applies even with the proportionate offsetting of the energy required by the server and the cooling power required for this," the report says.
Lower energy consumption is one of the clear eco- and monetary benefits. Another green-oriented cost advantage: the life-expectancy of a thin client, compared to a PC. "Thin clients don't need to be upgraded frequently. With thin clients, an OS release does not cause an upgrade to the client, only to the server -- resulting in far less e-waste, since the client can continue to be used longer," says Subodh Bapat, vice president and distinguished engineer for Sun's System Level Energy Strategy, which offers a range of Sun Ray thin clients. "Upgrade cycles of eight to 10 years are common in the thin-client world, as opposed to three to fours years for PCs, with corresponding benefits to the environment in terms of less e-waste."
Speaking of e-waste, Neoware's Besier adds that "Without moving parts, such as a fan or disk drive ... thin clients help companies meet their sustainability targets by eliminating much of the overhead associated with computing."
According to the Fraunhofer study, thin clients also hold a form-factor advntage over PCs, making them less expensive to ship: "They are only 35-40% of the weight of a PC and only take up 19-30% of the volume."
Not just about the green
Green issues aren't the only drivers for thin-client adoption. Jeff McNaught, chief marketing office at Wyse, opines that the new and improved Terminal Services features forthcoming in Windows Server 2008 (i.e. the platform formerly known as Longorn) will be a boon a Windows shops running thin clients.
In a simiar vein, Travid Brown, product manager for thin client solutions at HP, credits Windows XP Embedded for more acceptance of thin clients. "Microsoft has come a long way in developing XP Embedded It's the same binary as XP Pro ... and the thin-client experience now looks very much like the desktop experience. It's a lot better than it was a couple of years ago."
Another boon for thin clients: the shift toward 64-bit computing, by companies like Microsoft and Citrix, will spur adoption by sweetening the TCO pot. "Instead 125 users, you can have 250, 300 users on that server, just by changing the software. That has changed the cost equation," says McNaught
Moreover, McNaught says that company's in 2006 had been waiting to gauge VMware's success on the desktop virtualization front, given it success in the realm of server consolidation, and the results look promising. "You take the existing PC, suck all the data off a hard drive and onto the back-end, pop that PC off the desktop, drop a thin client, and the user continues working."
(Test Center Analyst Randall C. Kennedy was fairly impressed by the beta version of VMware Workstation 6.0 -- especially compared to the competition.)
There's also the advancements thin clients have undergone since the late 1990s when they were overhyped, notes Wyse's McNaught. "In those days, thin clients didn't do multimedia. Screen-draw capability was good, but not amazing," he says. "Companies like Wyse have been working on technology that will dramatically improve the user experience with multimedia, with voice over IP, with USB peripherals. Users can work in a multiscreen environment."
But green fever and technological evolution alone won't necessarily reduce some company's resistance to thin clients. Thin client vendors acknowledge that there wares won't dethrone the PC anytime soon.
For one thing, the machines are well-suited for plenty of basic applications, such as call centers or other roles where users are continually using the same few apps (e.g. productivity and e-mail). But high-end apps are better left on the desktop. "You would not have a CAD/CAM application running through a thin client," says Besier. "It doesn't even make sense to try to solve that problem. The market is not large enough."
Another reason thin clients haven't seem greater adoption, many vendors say, is that companies are set in their ways insofar as purchasing that which is familiar -- in this case, PCs, despite the fact that most desktops generally run at around 3% utilization. "Today's barriers are more of a cultural nature rather than a technical nature," says Sun's Bapat.
But Bapat predicts that "with the lower energy use, lower administration costs, better security, and less frequent capital expenditure outlays for upgrades, we will see more and more organizations making the move to thin-client computing."
Posted by Ted Samson on May 24, 2007 03:00 AM
May 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
IT has the power to cultivate a greener world
Consensus continues to grow among political leaders around the world that global warming is a very probable threat that needs to be addressed. The latest evidence of this shifting mindset is the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report, released last week. The report is a major one, given its scope and number of countries involved, representing a large drop in a bucket of governmental studies and legislation aimed at addressing climate change.
Whether or not business leaders take seriously the threat of global warming, they would be well served to start finding ways to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions at their companies -- both in terms of their operations as well as their products. Acting sooner rather than later