Groves Green IT

130 posts to date, and taking a breather

To all of my colleagues - I've really enjoyed interviewing people for this blog over the last few years, and I've learned so much in the process. 

 

Most of the initiatives that I wrote about over the last few years were news - now they are more commonplace. I think that as a small niche, data center energy efficiency professionals have done an excellent job at monitoring, measuring, and solving inefficiency challenges.  Bravo!  I am going to take off a little time to see whether this blog shouldn't be re-directed at related content.  I am still concerned about the Water Usage Efficiency (WUE).  To my knowledge, nobody has named  the transparency of the supply chain to the datacenter - whether the electricity provided is driven by fossil fuels or not.  All other industrial businesses are tackling this project to include it in their carbon offset calculations.  Since the energy in other industries can also be embedded, the similarities are greater than the differences and we can and should calculate this.  More to do!  Thank you all for your continued readership, suggestions, and contributions.  I'll be in touch again soon.  Have a green day!

4th annual SVLG Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit at IBM Almaden

Last Friday's 4th SVLG summit on data center energy efficiency was decidedly quieter than in previous years. Anne Smart did a fine job with what resources she had at hand, but some industry innovators were missing from the line-up.

Fewer participants - possibly because of conflicts with other industry events might have contributed to this. Also the location was 30 minutes south of Santa Clara - definitely longer travel times to get to the event. 

Smaller sponsorships - two utilities and a few service providers, but less than the last two years.

It was a different mix of users, vendors, and sponsors.  From my perspective it was tame compared with earlier years where there was an edge to most of the presentations, showing something radically different and innovative.  I missed the presence and participation of the Data Center Pulse founders, that in previous years added excitement to the audience when hearing how their Chill-Off case studies turned out. 

The boldest idea came in the guise of a question from Mukesh Khattar at Oracle. After presenting some analysis, he concluded something like , "I am not convinced that aisle containment is a universal solution". Sorry if the quote isn't exactly accurate - I wasn't taking notes. Heresy! I hope this spawns more discussion because Mukesh quietly and politely questions a lot of assumptions in the industry, and always looks for a low cost no frills solution in his best practices recommendations.

I also liked the update presentation from OpenCompute.org. Four years ago I made a video about the attitudes surrounding the Summit, that innovative collaboration styles were taking place.  I see now that the video is twice the length it should be. But even today, it has some very valuable content that is worth hearing again.  Try to ignore the background music used to hide background noise, and remember that The Uptime Institute, not SVLG, underwrote the video production.

Rich Miller from Data Center Knowledge was there and covered the event.  Look for photos and commentary on his site later this week.

Change is inevitable, and I know it won't always be the same people doing the same things.  Ray Pfeiffer, KC Mares, Bill Tschudi, Dale Sartor, Zen Kishimoto, and Mark Bramfitt provided needed continuity this year. I hope that next year the Chill Off energy will return with a flourish and Dean's customary challenge!

Have a GREEN DAY!

 

 

The SVLG Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit was decidedly different this year - I miss the alignment with Data Center Pulse...

back online with a great CFRT meeting

Did you know that Fujitsu is the 3^rd largest IT services provider in the world? Me neither. Larger than Accenture and CSC, and smaller than HP and half the size of IBM. And 9^th largest global software provider, custom consulting for Asian customers.  That is what I learned when I attended the CFRT Technology Group’s September 15 2011 meeting hosted by Fujitsu Management Services of Asia Inc. This was my first foray back into the DC EE group since my return from travels earlier this summer. So good to see many of my peers who worked hard all summer to keep the data center energy efficiency industry on target. Maricel Cerruti, Marketing Director of Teladata, and near-founder of CFRT, chaired the meeting because Bruce Myatt, our traditional host was out of town.

 

Today’s program focused on Fujitsu’s fuel cell technology implementations at their Silicon Valley Data Center.  Richard McCormack, SVP, Enterprise Systems Fujitsu America Inc. and Ted Viviani, Building Operations Manager at the Silicon Valley Headquarters both talked about key enablers in their global data center and delivering change with Fujitsu products.

 

 

The Sunnyvale Data Center was officially launched on April 2010 opening as a tier 3 facility in support of the Richardson, Texas Fujitsu data center, with redundancy and enhanced services. The local data center receives electricity from through PG&E via third party provider, Constellation New Energy.  They implemented a fuel cell system to provide electric power in August 2007. Today the Sunnyvale data center covers 32k feet with 100 watts per square feet. It is designed for a 5.5MW maximum load,  and is cooled with 3 x 900 ton and 1 x 650 ton water based chiller with dual path cooling, in room ducted CRAH units with ceiling plenum return and roof-top air-side economizers.  The gem of the installation is a UTC fuel cell with 200KVA, with plans for a potential expansion of two additional 400 KW units later this fiscal year.  It uses only natural gas.  UTC has over 260 systems installed worldwide.

 

It reduces carbon dioxide of 500 tons per year. The fuel stack on the 200 is replaced every 5 years, and the 400 have to be replaced at 10 years.  Two hours for monthly and 8 hours  for annual maintenance are what gives the stats a 98% uptime. 

 

The hydrogen solution runs 7 x 24 – it is reliable power, it has low sound profile and ultra low emissions.  The design is scalable – you add 400kw units, it can be monitored remote, and PG&E offers a $2,250/kW rebate (they got a check for $500,000 from PG&E) and the IRS provides a tax credit up to 30% of the installed cost. This gave them a 3.3 yr payback with a 15 year lifecycle on their first 200kw implementation. Their 400KW units has been estimated at 4.0 to 4.2 years. (If you can’t use the excess heat your payback will go up to 7-8 years.)

 

Hydrogen fuel cells were first used in NYC in high rises at Verizon Communications  and at the First National Bank of Omaha in Nebraska.  Westin Hotel and a prison are the other fuel centers.

 

In contrast, solar needs batteries (3-5 year life cycles) to operate 7x24 which can result in hazardous waste dump.  Early 2006 estimates of cost ranged from $2.5 Mil to install a 150KW solar panel and was considered too costly by Fujitsu.

 

Co-generation has short-term advantages, but is loud (need a sound enclosure) and have a lot of moving parts that require maintenance.  They considered a lean-burn natural gas reciprocating engine resulting in 38 – 40% efficiency, unless you capture it to heat buildings and that enables you to reach 50% additional efficiency.

 

Fujitsu was able to calculate cost avoidance between Aug 2007 and June 2011 at $620,000 for  gas and electricity in their Sunnyvale (Silicon Valley) data center.

 

Interview with Bernd Becker of EuroCloud Deutschland

Last week at DataCentres 2011 in Nice, France, I was able to join other speakers in comparing the differences and similarities of data center management in Europe and in North America. I spoke about disruptions to data center design based on new technologies, and briefly about how I believe that cloud computing will directly affect demand for enterprise data centers. 

I heard Mark Leonard, EVP of Infrastructure Services at  Colt Data Center Services say that since implementing cloud best practices throughout the company over the past 12 months, Colt has reduced their energy use by 40%. 

Separately, Bernard Lecanu speaking on behalf of the EU Code of Conduct said that the data center co-location company Telecity saved L1 million (British Pounds) over the last two years by complying with the the C of C best practices.

So I asked Bernd Becker, EuroCloud Deutschland coordinator, who was another speaker at the conference, to tell me about the successes of Cloud throughout the EU. He provided some answers below:

1. Can you describe Eurocloud for my readers:  - how you are organized, where the penetration is greatest, and what you have already accomplished in your major markets?

 The idea of building a European Cloud Computing Network was born by Pierre Jose Billotte, who launched a press release in Oct. 2009 after having identified six 6 Fellows who conferred with the opportunity.

 In Germany,  we recognized this to be interesting and future oriented approach.  We met with Pierre and the eco board in Nov. 2009 and decided to join in, in Dec. 2009 we founded EuroCloud Deutschland as a legally independent association, organizationally closely linked to eco. In Jan. 2010, four month after the initial press release, we founded EuroCloud Europe as the parent organization with 12  formally established national EuroCloud associations.

 Today, the EuroCloud Network covers 25 European countries.

 Back in 2009, when the Cloud wave arrived in Europe, there was a broad fear among EU based IT providers, that due to the market reach  of the Mega Datacenters among global players, IT “made in Europe” may disappear or shrink significantly.  It was feared that Europe could become a consumer of “clouds” as we have seen in other technology fields already.

 EuroCloud Deutschland had their Kick off event in Feb. 2010, where more than 100 companies attended.  We recognized, that there is broad uncertainty among customers in the market on both, on the technical and legal aspects of Clouds.  

 With the votes of the Kick off participants the direction of Euro Cloud Deutschland was set to focus on the development of “trust in cloud”, we founded 4 expert groups:

•          Law and Compliance

•          Cloud Certification

•          Interoperability and Standards

•          Cloud Managed Services (operational framework for cloud services)

2.         What are the driving forces for and against cloud in Europe? In North America, for example, we hear frequently that privacy regulations in Europe will impede the growth of cloud computing there.

The most common customer reasons for Cloud Computing are the same in Europe as in the North America:

o          CAPEX to OPEX

o          Pay only for what you use

o          Flexibility

o          Business agility

 The overall view is, that if we are able to support customers trust in cloud, we will see the market moving fast.

•          Concerns in the marketplace are still quite strong. Large companies are already using cloud services in one or other way, they are preparing their overall cloud strategy.

•          However for smaller companies concerns about restrictions are holding back implementation.

•          The word “Cloud” already suggests something “foggy”, critical/negative press reports about missing or weak data privacy underlines this thinking.

•          As a cloud customer you may not know where your data resides in the Cloud and who may be able to access your data, specially when data is moved from one DC to another around the world.  Sensitive data must be stored within the EU by law. Law and compliance regulations require that customers know at what location their data is stored.

•          Compliance is not new to the business, but with cloud computing the compliance non-conformity impact may becomes much more critical

•          Our EuroCloud partners  across the EU have confirmed that this view is valid throughout Europe, while perhaps strongest in Germany. At least this explains, why EuroCloud Deutschland has focused in this area.

You can read more detail about what has been acccomplished here. I believe that more research within the EuroCloud community over the next 12 months will yield data that public cloud providers operate their data centers with greater energy efficiency than enterprise data centers based on asset utilization alone, all infrastructure being equal.  Savings may be even greater for additional reasons. Have a green day

 

 

 

Carbon, EE, Good Planning: Holding steady, moving forward, or sliding backwards?

 

I was re-reading old magazines and this DataCenter Dynamics Focus magazine from August/September 2009 caught my attention.

Mike Manos while he was at Digital Realty Trust, said in an interviw with James staten of Forrester Research, "Most people in IT and facilities have no idea what planning is. The day most enterprises realise they need more capacity is near, or actually on, the day they run out of capacity.  Integration of IT and facilities and understanding what planning looks like is key to the future of our industry. The burden moves to the software industry and the software industry is relatively ignorant of the data center. Why aren't we putting more pressure on the software industry.  I'm putting $50m into a facility so that I can run a $1m piece of software."

Has that changed in the last two years?

James Staten finished the panel interview by asking his guests for one simple action to drive efficiency. John Haas of Intel said "sub meter!", Mike Manos said "Plug the holes in your floor." Bill Mazzetti of Rosendin Electric said "airflow analysis", and Tim Furlong of Facebook said, "cooling - do the basic things."

Those bits of wisdom still sound useful.

In the June 2009 issue of the same magazine, an article about Carbon Tax begins with this paragraph about the UK:

"How quickly is the data center industry adapting to the looming carbon credit scheme which will impact businesses in early 2010? How will the scheme affect data center serice contracts? Will it drive data center investment overseas to countries with less stringent tax regimes?"  Further down on the page, the article author asks, "What this shows is that you can only know what you know--and right now, no one knows much apart from the fact that carbon tax is coming." (I can't see where the author is named, so consider it an editorial group-write from DataCenterDynamics.

I don't know the answer and it is a question I will be asking my colleagues next week at the Broad Group Data Centre 2011 conference in Nice, France. I didn't see a single presentation listed with the words carbon credits in the title on the agenda. What does that signify? It is obviously not top of mind...

Then I went way back to the "Design Recommendations for the High Performance Data Centers report of the Integrated Design Charrette hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute  on 2-5 February 2003. EIGHT YEARS AGO. On page 11 of the report you can read this: "The result of this charrette was a data center design concept that reduces energy demand by an order of magnitude (89%) compared to today's standard designs, while providing equivalent computing power and greater reliability." 

What percentage of our data centers in North America or globally have reduced energy demand by 89% since 2003?

It goes on to say "The charrette addressed several important issues:

1- Unnecessarily high energy bills (yes we've done that)

2- Unnecessarily high capital cost (yes we are doing that)

3- Grid Dependence (hardly: the charrete recommended utility grid as backup to onsite ultra-reliable power generation)

4- Utility distribution charges and delays: (still in its infancey based on my research earlier this spring)

As we know the world as changed significantly since 2003 and our energy resources are more precarious today than then.  We need another forward thinking RMI-convened Charrette with timetables attached. Can we afford not to?

Have a GREEN DAY!

 

 

 

Talking with Dr. Bob Sullivan about the Kyoto Cooling fan

I got to know Dr. Robert F Sullivan through several Uptime Institute events over the years and he was tremendously helpful to me two years ago when I was doing research on attitudes toward water conservation among data center operators.  I caught up with him recently and had the opportunity to talk about one of his favorite topics: the Kyoto fan. Dr Bob is best known for his Cold Aisle/Hot Aisle innovations.

Dr. Bob, tell my readers what the Kyoto fan is and why it is both a traditional and innovative product.  

Kyoto Cooling (named after the Kyoto Accord) is an idea created by four young engineers in The Netherlands.  The basic concept has been used in building and industrial air conditioning installations for over 60 years.  In building AC systems a heatwheel is used to precool hot air in summer and warm cold air in winter.  The key component of the system is an aluminum honeycomb wheel that absorbs heat in one airflow stream and dissipates it in another.

In the traditional configuration the system is set up to draw fresh air into the building, precondition the air to lighten the load on the HVAC system and then exhaust the air after it has passed through the building.

In a data center, this design is tweaked so that there are two isolated circulation paths, rather than an intake and exhaust path. The computer room is configured with an isolated hot aisle and the hot air is circulated, the heat is absorbed by the honeycomb wheel, and the cooler air is recirculated back into the computer room. 

The wheel is constantly rotating at low speed and the "hot" wheel rotates into a chamber where outside air is circulated through the honeycomb.  Outside air is returned to the ambient environment, carrying the computer room heat load with it.

This cooling technique is not only extremely efficient on its own but also isolates the computer room from the ambient environment and all the problems associated with bringing huge volumes of outside air into the data center.  This includes dirt, fine combustion particles, gasses, air with low or high dew point.  In this way the energy used or lost to contain these elements is minimized. 

Because of the inherent efficiency of the system and the isolation of the computer room and ambient air, this system works in cold climates, arid/desert climates, and the tropics.  For example, in north and south latitudes the mechanical efficiency (Mechanical load / I T load) may be as low as 0.04, to an efficiency of 0.08 in marine climates, and 0.25 in the dessert of the Middle East and tropics of Singapore.   KyotoCooling provides airside economizer cooling - without the air transfer.

How big is it? How little is it? What are the small and large parameters?

There are many installations in Europe using both the large wheels and the modules. 

The cooling technique is versatile with units as small as 90 kW of cooling capacity, deploying an 8' diameter wheel, a 300 kW using a 12' wheel, a 450 kW requiring  a 14' wheel, and the largest: a 600 to 850 kW system using a 20' diameter wheel. 

Where are some of them currently installed?

There are four installations in North America, one using 90 kW modules, two using 300 kW modules, and one using 450 kW modules.

I recently visited two installations in the US.  One in the northern latitudes of the US has three 300 kW-rated modular units installed.  During commissioning, at 28 F ambient conditions, they were able to achieve 1 MW of cooling with just two units operating, both at 50% capacity.  The second installation has two 450 kW units operating and were able to achieve 1.1 mW of cooling at 40 F ambient temperature without stressing the capacity of the units.  In both implementations, supplemental cooling was not required to achieve these cooling levels.

Tell me how acceptance in Europe has fared vs in the US. 

 There is more pressure to implement economizer cooling techniques in Europe than in North America.  Compliance with the EU rules, plus the higher cost of energy makes highly efficient cooling techniques essential there. In contrast, the drivers in north America are different with less regulation and a lower cost for energy. I’ve found the data center community in North America to be very conservative and risk averse.  There is a bias toward waiting for a "new" technology to be mature before it is considered.  My belief is that some of this is related to job protection – fear of losing one’s job if new technologies do not work.

Thanks Dr. Bob. See you at Symposium on May 11th in Santa Clara? Have a GREEN DAY!

 

16 Terrabytes on an iPad

Sometimes you go to presentation after presentation on supposedly innovative IT products, services, and you just wonder where the excitement is because you can't see it. And then twice a year, you sit in on presentations and your imagination starts to spin as you realize  you are listening to something that is so exciting you can't wait to tell someone about it. 

On February 23rd, Teladata hosted their 3rd all day conference and it was terrific. Since I was hosting a panel, I missed several other presentations but was able to catch the last one of the day with Makesh Khattar of Oracle, Bill Tschudi of LBNL, and Dave Shroyer of Netapp, moderated by Derek Schwartz of Green Data Center Alliance.  As usual Makesh analyzed data with a shrewd eye for what is most important, and his remarks were insightful. One of the first things he remarked was, and I agree, that PUE is most valuable as a tool to measure the progress in your own data center, not in a comparison with someone else. So when you hear bragging about a PUE of 1.02, what goes through your mind? My mind says something like, "I am from Missouri, prove it to me..." (although I am not from Missouri but that is an old saying). You can read a better synopsis of the conversation here, by Rich Miller in DataCenterKnowledge. Thank you also to my panelists who were terrific and offered up great examples of stakeholder engagement best practices: John Rodgers of Kaiser Permanente, Joyce Dickerson of Stanford University, and Ralph Renne of NetApp.  I think we provided valuable content to our audience.

Yesterday I attended the public day of The Green Grid's Technical Forum in Santa Clara, CA, same location as the previous Teladata conference. What most impressed me was the attention now given to water and carbon - which will earn their own WUE and CUE designations to accompany the PUE one we have come to know and abuse. (see above).The emphasis is now on resource efficiency,  not only energy efficiency.

Secondly I was glad to hear Dean Nelson discuss the DataCenter Pulse Chill Off!  results  - he had presented them also at Teladata but I didn't get to hear them.  I find their methodology and commitment to stringent research refreshing. Here is how Rich Miller captured it:

Nelson noted recent research from Data Center Pulse that identified potentially significant power savings from dynamically adjusting the clock speed of CPU processors to match IT workloads. The group’s testing suggests that overclocking and underclocking processors as workloads fluctuate can reduce a server’s energy use by as much as 18 percent.

“There are huge potential reductions (in energy usage) available,” Nelson said. “Why can’t we have control over that chip? Why can’t we have the controls to give us a gas pedal, so that we can throttle up and throttle back?”

Recently released Intel chips already enable that, which brings me to how I spent this morning at a SGI briefing to large customers (NASA, EBay, Facebook, etc.) and what they had to say about  clock speed.  SGI with technology from former innovative companies Rackable and Copan (companies they acquired), has storage and compute intellectual property that is impressive.  But in addition, they are introducing a dashboard called "The SGI Management Center" that allows you to cap power (for demand response applications, and adjust clock speeds in their supercomputing applications where you want to conserve energy as well as provision or patch servers 1000 at a time.  This presentation made me remember why I was mesmerized about IT a long time ago - because there was strategy, implementation, vision, and magic all  in one two-hour presentation. When CTO Dr. Eng Lim Goh, CTO, logged into his data center from the podiu, using his iPad and started a computation that demanded 16 terrabytes of processing power, the audience just laughed with pleasure at the beauty and the simplicity of the example - and it worked too.  When do we need terrabytes and 1000 processors for speedy analysis in real life? The US Post office uses that kind of compute power to sort mail daily and had an ROI in months by identifying fake digital stamps. When I departed, my mind was buzzing with the possibilities of terrabytes of data at my fingertips and the many ways it might be used by each of us to investigate possibilities.  By the way, SGI has a strong sustainability philosophy inherent in their product design. Have a green day!

 

Planning for 2011

Our Silicon Valley Data Center Drinks pals met together Jan 13th, 2010 in Palo Alto - this event sponsored by Schneider Electric (thanks Finn!) and 1E (thank you Michael L!) It is a great event because 50% of the people who show up are regulars and 50% are new to me.

Just hot off the press  (hahaha!- another metaphor that our children won't understand as traditional printing succumbs to the web) Rich Miller's blog with predictions for 2011.

As I state in the above blog, I perceive the data center industry is in disruptive transition today, now that energy efficiency is driving new products, not only innovative best practices. To understand the magnitude of the change, here are two upcoming events you might consider registering for:

February 23 in Silicon Valley, the Teladata conference features four tracks and several case studies. I will be moderating a panel on stakeholder engagement.

May 9 - 12 in Silicon Valley you can catch the Uptime Institute Symposium - without traveling to New York City and paying 5th Avenue prices for hotdogs! Unfortunately Santa Clara can't boast Central Park but maybe next year again, who knows. So look here. And register for earlybird discounts. I'll see you all there.

Stay nimble! Have a green day!

 

2010 SVLG DC EE videos online: see here and Olivier Sanche

In a previous post I discussed the presentations at the SVLG Data Center EE Summit on October 14th. With so many people in town for the event, I took the opportunity to interview a few of them on camera, courtesy of Brocade. 

If you'd like to watch a short video where I I interviewed Mark Hydeman of Taylor engineering, go here.  If you'd like to watch a short video where I interviewed KC Mares, go here.  If you'd like to see my video with Bill Tschudi of LBNL, go here. PDFs from the event can be accessed here.

If I were to summarize the videos, there is a sense of confidence in the strides being made to tackle data center energy in-efficiency.  Nice to capture as people say it!

And now to a reminder that life is fleeting. Read a beautiful tribute to Olivier Sanche here, written by colleague Mike Manos. Olivier could create controversy but not enemies. He was too genuine and welcoming to people throughout the industry.  He will be sorely missed by our small cadre of data center energy efficiency folks, for the quality of his mind, and his way of making everyone present feel included. I can't claim him as a friend, just a wonderful colleague that I had looked forward to seeing at events and conferences because, well, he just made me feel welcome.  Condolences to his family and dear friends for our loss.