Register now for June 26 event: SVLG emerges from stealth mode

http://svlg.net/events/datacenter0626/ds2008_agenda.pdf

I first wrote about this event (see blog on May 21, 2007).  It is going to be the hottest ticket in town at $295. on June 26, 2007. you can register here.

These are my reasons for why I think the SVLG Data Center Energy Summit 2008 is important:
1 - many of these pilots have not been performed before so they add value to the state of the art
2 - it takes "proof" out of the labs and into commercial data centers: this will be reassuring for data center operators.
3 - the pilots were created to add content to the EPA report on data center energy efficiency, and the results are calibrated to a document that many, if not most data center operators, are familiar with.
4 - a unique collaboration style resulted in these pilots. Many players who weren't part of the vendor landscape joined together to facilitate a difficult process.  This, to me, demonstrated an unswerving categorical grassroots effort to reduce GHG emissions and global warming solutions.

The catalysts for this event go back five or more years to people who aren't directly involved in the June 26 unveiling of results.  They set the stage and defined the problems and many of the solution sets.

Amory Lovins pushed for a meeting of utilities, university researchers, physical and mechanical engineers and facilities experts back in 2003 at the now famous "Charrette" that provided key stakeholders a foothold on the extent of the problem and possible solutions.

Prof. Jon Koomey wrote his server energy usage projections in a report while he was at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. It was published in early 2007 but he had been researching energy efficiency on servers for the previous several years. 

Andrew Fanara of the US Environmental Protection Agency had been compiling data on energy usage by data centers since 2006.  When he published his draft findings for comment by the industry in early 2007, the urgency of the matter garnered national interest. The staggering rate of speed with which the energy consumption in data centers was growing surprised almost everybody.

Magnus Herrlin, Bruce Myatt and Charles Krieger have all been working on solutions since 2003 to facilitate uptime in a small San Francisco Bay Area networking group called Critical Facilities Roundtable. 

In addition, Bill Tschudi at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory had been at work on several very significant experiments that were funded by the California utility companies, among them three separate trials with air conditioning alternatives as well as testing for particular matter in the filtered air circulated in data centers using fresh (outside) rather than recycled air conditioned air.

On June 26, at the Sun Microsystems campus in Santa Clara, 16 case studies will be presented. The companies who provided technologies include APC Cassatt, IBM, Liebert, Modius, Power Assure, Powersmiths, Rittal, Spraycool and SynapSense. The pilots took place in working enterprise class data centers at Netapp, Oracle, Sun, a US Post Office location, Yahoo, and a Digital Realty Trust co-location site. Teresa Tung of Accenture has spent countless hours analyzing and consolidating the data into a cohesive report.

Different and related pilots will continue under a similar program into 2009. Contact cbiver@svlg.org after the June 26 event to announce your interest in participating. 

 

In my opinion, this event at Sun Microsystems is a tipping point in global warming responses. It displays what can be done when an industry , not only individual companies, create a vision of success for itself, and invests in a new project to find out "what happens if".  The Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and very specifically, Ray Pfeifer, showed leadership.  He had early support from Pacific Gas & Electric, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Silicon Valley Power, and some very early corporate sponsors. Have a green day!