I was on Data Center Knowledge this morning reading about Greenpeace putting Apple's new data center in their crosshairs for not being Green enough. Isn't this Facebook all over again? Based on the data I have seen, it sure smells like it.
Can someone please point me to an energy product and a company that Greenpeace actually endorses? This rock throwing and shit stirring is old. I would love to see how many people use iPads at Greenpeace vs. charcoal on birchbark from fallen birch trees to read, write and comment on stories they post online.
It's easy to throw rocks and shir the shit pot, but not so easy to develop, test, market, and put your brand on a product or set of products that people want to use. To hide behind the fact that making things is not your business and provide no solution is another version of a whiny child, not a business. And therein lies the rub - Apple is a business. They have Shareholders - Greenpeace is an activist organization and has supporters. Shareholders use their money to give to a company to increase the value of the shares they own by making something useful. Greenpeace doesn't worry about having a bad quarter. Apple does. Greenpeace's currency is emotion, Apple's is cash.
So while Greenpeace has a vested interest in stirring up shit to create emotionally charged situations (that's how they make more 'currency' and stay relevant) Apple has a responsibility to make more money and if they care to engage in emotionally charged debates, they exchange their currency (money) for Greenpeace's (emotion). Since most people don't pay bills with emotion, it's a slippery slope for Apple to engage in currency speculation in these situations in my opinion.
I hope Apple points this out - that they are a business - not an emotion based activist organization, and have a responsibility to their shareholders. Period. And from what I can tell based on their cash position, they are being very responsible to their shareholders. As for building a data center that isn't green? Until there is a source of energy generation developed (by Greenpeace or someone else) that can produce an equivalent unit of power that burning coal does, or change the regulations in the United States to foster the research and development for said source, go back to your birchbark and charcoal.
And one more thing... How many Apple shareholders rely on Greenpeace for their retirement?
Showing posts with label Green Data Centers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Green Data Centers. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Google's Data Centers use 26 Megawatts - What's the fuss?
In the past 24 hours there has been a ton of press about Google's announcement that they use 26 million watts of electricity. Put another way, that is 26 Megawatts, and put another way, what is all the fuss about over 26 megwatts?
Is it that they ONLY use 26 Megwatts?
It it that Google is so efficient that they run this gigantic brand on such a small amount of electricity?
That has to be it, because folks, 26 megawatts in the data center business is a medium size operation.
Just for comparison's sake, Vantage data centers is building a campus twice that size in Santa Clara. Digital Realty Trust has a project in Dallas that is 4 TIMES that size to service clients. Bytegrid Holdings LLC has a 9.6 megawatt facility about one third the size of Google's entire operation. Just sayin'.
What I also have yet to review fully is the carbon footprint. It was mentioned in another, better, article that they get 25% of their electricity from renewable sources. Not LOW CARBON sources, but renewable sources. The thing I have paid attention to for years is what I call the carbon chain - what is the carbon footprint from start to finish on a project, and then the impact on an ongoing operational basis. And I'm sorry buying a carbon credit doesn't count. That's like buying recycled paper with Monopoly money.
It mentions that Google builds their own facilities. What about the carbon it takes to manufacture the steel, the concrete, the copper, and other raw materials used in a facility? Then there is the transportation. How many trucks filled with diesel are trucking in heavy loads of new equipment that was produced from scratch and had to source the raw materials, and you get the picture.
Why not re-use a facility as a rule vs build new? Why not cap the radius of transport of newly manufactured goods to 100 miles or less? Why not look at the whole impact and subsequent carbon footprint and measure and improve that? Just sayin'...
Still, great numbers by Google.
And a side note to Noah Horowitz at the Natural Resources Defense Council who '...cautioned that despite the advent of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing tools, electricity use at data centers was still rising, as every major corporation now relied on them. He said the figures did not include the electricity drawn by the personal computers, tablets and iPhones that use information from Google’s data centers.
“When we hit the Google search button,” Mr. Horowitz said, “it’s not for free.”
Trying to link energy usage of other corporations, personal computers, and iPhones to Google's numbers is like blaming a person's alcoholism on the fermentation process. It's a stretch at best. And what are you going to do to stop this reckless usage of the most efficient data center footprint on the planet, stop Googling? Didn't think so. Me neither.
Nothings free, but this is data that shows if we are going to search and want to be green about it, Go Green, Go Google.
Is it that they ONLY use 26 Megwatts?
It it that Google is so efficient that they run this gigantic brand on such a small amount of electricity?
That has to be it, because folks, 26 megawatts in the data center business is a medium size operation.
Just for comparison's sake, Vantage data centers is building a campus twice that size in Santa Clara. Digital Realty Trust has a project in Dallas that is 4 TIMES that size to service clients. Bytegrid Holdings LLC has a 9.6 megawatt facility about one third the size of Google's entire operation. Just sayin'.
What I also have yet to review fully is the carbon footprint. It was mentioned in another, better, article that they get 25% of their electricity from renewable sources. Not LOW CARBON sources, but renewable sources. The thing I have paid attention to for years is what I call the carbon chain - what is the carbon footprint from start to finish on a project, and then the impact on an ongoing operational basis. And I'm sorry buying a carbon credit doesn't count. That's like buying recycled paper with Monopoly money.
It mentions that Google builds their own facilities. What about the carbon it takes to manufacture the steel, the concrete, the copper, and other raw materials used in a facility? Then there is the transportation. How many trucks filled with diesel are trucking in heavy loads of new equipment that was produced from scratch and had to source the raw materials, and you get the picture.
Why not re-use a facility as a rule vs build new? Why not cap the radius of transport of newly manufactured goods to 100 miles or less? Why not look at the whole impact and subsequent carbon footprint and measure and improve that? Just sayin'...
Still, great numbers by Google.
And a side note to Noah Horowitz at the Natural Resources Defense Council who '...cautioned that despite the advent of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing tools, electricity use at data centers was still rising, as every major corporation now relied on them. He said the figures did not include the electricity drawn by the personal computers, tablets and iPhones that use information from Google’s data centers.
“When we hit the Google search button,” Mr. Horowitz said, “it’s not for free.”
Trying to link energy usage of other corporations, personal computers, and iPhones to Google's numbers is like blaming a person's alcoholism on the fermentation process. It's a stretch at best. And what are you going to do to stop this reckless usage of the most efficient data center footprint on the planet, stop Googling? Didn't think so. Me neither.
Nothings free, but this is data that shows if we are going to search and want to be green about it, Go Green, Go Google.
Monday, January 10, 2011
More on Site Selection - Where is the Holistic View?
I got a requirement sent to me on Friday afternoon for a site selection on a large requirement >50Mw. Based on what I know about users looking for sites in the marketplace I would bet an Egg Nog Latte that it was the requirement for the Social Security Administration's data center project that has gone sideways.
The Office of the Inspector General OIG issued a report back in April of 2010 about the criteria and process that put a smile on my face:
Why is this humorous to me?
The things that were excluded - cost of power and telecom infrastructure were cited. Hello? The two most important criteria for a selection were overlooked? Wow. Who was doing the selecting? Was the 'highly sophisticated' criteria designed to mask breathtaking incompetence?
As a result the requirement (if it is the requirement) is back on the street for round 2. If you are involved with the site selection process for the SSA (or any other organization) I am happy to give you my site selection criteria checklist. It's simple, I have used it myself for years, and it works. Email me - bytegrid@gmail.com and I will send you a copy. Free. Yes free. I look at it as an investment of goodwill to keep my taxes down paying for a project that is big, expensive, and uses MY money to pay for it.
The other interesting thing to have noted in the requirement which I laughed out loud over was that Economic Incentives were weighted as high as power and telecom infrastructure in the selection criteria. Folks, Economic incentives go away after a few years. Data centers stay around for 15-30. Economic incentives help in the short term, but how many elected officials stay in office 15-30 years? That is a lot of election cycles and political agendas to factor in.
There is also the mandate from Vivek Kundra issued in February of 2010 that they will need to factor into their decision. This entails highly efficient, green powered facilities that will be flexible enough to handle the IT changes in virtualization, the inclusion of legacy applications and hardware, and CIO agendas. It's a tall order, however it's so damn simple when you focus on the lowest common denominators. The same ones they overlooked in the first requirement.
The Office of the Inspector General OIG issued a report back in April of 2010 about the criteria and process that put a smile on my face:
"While the reviewers concluded that the agency had developed a "highly sophisticated" list of site-selection criteria for the project expected to cost more than $800 million, they found the process for narrowing site properties down to a short list to have been problematic.
Mandatory selection criteria the agency developed could also have excluded too many locations.
"In particular, when developing the mandatory selection criteria, it does not appear that consideration was given to the serious fiscal impact that exclusions would have in the electrical power cost arena over the life cycle of the data center," summary of the inspector general's report read.
Information was also limited in evaluation of telecommunications criteria.
It was not clear from the report's summary whether one or several location had been identified. The agency did not release the document in its entirety.
Why is this humorous to me?
The things that were excluded - cost of power and telecom infrastructure were cited. Hello? The two most important criteria for a selection were overlooked? Wow. Who was doing the selecting? Was the 'highly sophisticated' criteria designed to mask breathtaking incompetence?
As a result the requirement (if it is the requirement) is back on the street for round 2. If you are involved with the site selection process for the SSA (or any other organization) I am happy to give you my site selection criteria checklist. It's simple, I have used it myself for years, and it works. Email me - bytegrid@gmail.com and I will send you a copy. Free. Yes free. I look at it as an investment of goodwill to keep my taxes down paying for a project that is big, expensive, and uses MY money to pay for it.
The other interesting thing to have noted in the requirement which I laughed out loud over was that Economic Incentives were weighted as high as power and telecom infrastructure in the selection criteria. Folks, Economic incentives go away after a few years. Data centers stay around for 15-30. Economic incentives help in the short term, but how many elected officials stay in office 15-30 years? That is a lot of election cycles and political agendas to factor in.
There is also the mandate from Vivek Kundra issued in February of 2010 that they will need to factor into their decision. This entails highly efficient, green powered facilities that will be flexible enough to handle the IT changes in virtualization, the inclusion of legacy applications and hardware, and CIO agendas. It's a tall order, however it's so damn simple when you focus on the lowest common denominators. The same ones they overlooked in the first requirement.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Data Center Modularization - The new New Thing?
Recently I have followed a number of discussions, articles, and presentations about modularization of the data center. First was virtualization and next seems to be modularization. Is this cloud all over again? Repainting existing technology approaches as new?
I saw a video that was at Data Center Knowledge this morning introducing us to Dell's new approach to 'modularization'. I commented on the video and wanted to expand on my thoughts here.
Dell talks about their solution - as do others - as being able to deploy compute and storage resources quickly. Plug and play if you will. Dell says they can deploy within 30 days at a 'ready site'. The issue is that you still need to have a site/building to put them in that is ready to go. By ready to go I mean water infrastructure, electricity, fiber/telco, and security in place. And it all has to be redundant. The other distinction that needs to be publicized is that the Dell solution is NOT a mass production offering. It is a design and deploy offering, not an off the shelf offering.
This to me is not modularization, it is layout-ization. You are controlling the layout of the data center floor and in other cases the data center itself. What this 'new' approach does not address is the more difficult tasks of finding sites that have the infrastructure available - power substations that are accessible with capacity, necessary water for cooling, no less than 5 telecom/carriers accessible, and risk profile lowering physical security - not in flood plains, not in flight paths, 40 miles from population/city centers, 18 miles away and not downwind from nuclear power plants, and the list goes on. Once these requirements have been met, then you need to look at permiting in localities, which is not an easy process. Then construction schedules, budgets, and finally breaking ground around the weather.
Most of the 'new' approaches are for single tenant facilities. This is an important distinction because with a single tenant facility, there is one set of policies, rules, and group of decision makers to satisfy. In essence you only need to satisfy the requirements for one customer - the internal one. You can argue that there are multiple customers, however at the end of the day, it is one company's budgets and one cpany's policies and needs that drive decisions.
In a multi tenant facility, you have potentially hundreds of customer's requirements and decision processes and policies to contend with making the challenges numerous and all over the map. Densities vary, what phase of power, AC or DC, which telcos are important, circuit management, cabinet hardware, cage or no cage, private suite, and cooling these various deployments. What has happened is that the multi tenant facilities design facilities that work in their business model and for the potentially greatest number of tenants and the greatest number of requirements. Customers either find what they want in the facilities or keep shopping until they do.
Layout-ization can help with this because they can buy or build facilities with the requisite infrastructure, finish it off the way customers want it and create the win-win. However, this assumes that the other pieces are in place (permits, sites, etc.). The other issue is that when a data center operator buys a facility, it is a 20 year asset and technology changes many many times in 20 years. Raised floor vs slab, 50 watts/ft vs. 200 watts/ft, blades vs. pizza box, gig E vs. 30 gig, Tier calssifications that are the 'must have' Tier classification. You get the picture.
So what is the solution?
I think that the data center operators who 'get it' will adopt new deployment models for their facilities themselves and the layouts inside them. Watts per square foot don't matter as much after the short list is made by customers, only whether or not an operator can deliver to the customer requirements now and in the future. Tier classifications are being restructured, and existing space gets harder and harder to come by every week. This means that choices for customers will be made by what is available, vs. what is right for the customer.
There is a small window of opportunity here for investors to create the next model with data center operators who saw what has happened over the past 20 years and know it needs to be different for the next 20, and are willing to team up and build it.
I saw a video that was at Data Center Knowledge this morning introducing us to Dell's new approach to 'modularization'. I commented on the video and wanted to expand on my thoughts here.
Dell talks about their solution - as do others - as being able to deploy compute and storage resources quickly. Plug and play if you will. Dell says they can deploy within 30 days at a 'ready site'. The issue is that you still need to have a site/building to put them in that is ready to go. By ready to go I mean water infrastructure, electricity, fiber/telco, and security in place. And it all has to be redundant. The other distinction that needs to be publicized is that the Dell solution is NOT a mass production offering. It is a design and deploy offering, not an off the shelf offering.
This to me is not modularization, it is layout-ization. You are controlling the layout of the data center floor and in other cases the data center itself. What this 'new' approach does not address is the more difficult tasks of finding sites that have the infrastructure available - power substations that are accessible with capacity, necessary water for cooling, no less than 5 telecom/carriers accessible, and risk profile lowering physical security - not in flood plains, not in flight paths, 40 miles from population/city centers, 18 miles away and not downwind from nuclear power plants, and the list goes on. Once these requirements have been met, then you need to look at permiting in localities, which is not an easy process. Then construction schedules, budgets, and finally breaking ground around the weather.
Most of the 'new' approaches are for single tenant facilities. This is an important distinction because with a single tenant facility, there is one set of policies, rules, and group of decision makers to satisfy. In essence you only need to satisfy the requirements for one customer - the internal one. You can argue that there are multiple customers, however at the end of the day, it is one company's budgets and one cpany's policies and needs that drive decisions.
In a multi tenant facility, you have potentially hundreds of customer's requirements and decision processes and policies to contend with making the challenges numerous and all over the map. Densities vary, what phase of power, AC or DC, which telcos are important, circuit management, cabinet hardware, cage or no cage, private suite, and cooling these various deployments. What has happened is that the multi tenant facilities design facilities that work in their business model and for the potentially greatest number of tenants and the greatest number of requirements. Customers either find what they want in the facilities or keep shopping until they do.
Layout-ization can help with this because they can buy or build facilities with the requisite infrastructure, finish it off the way customers want it and create the win-win. However, this assumes that the other pieces are in place (permits, sites, etc.). The other issue is that when a data center operator buys a facility, it is a 20 year asset and technology changes many many times in 20 years. Raised floor vs slab, 50 watts/ft vs. 200 watts/ft, blades vs. pizza box, gig E vs. 30 gig, Tier calssifications that are the 'must have' Tier classification. You get the picture.
So what is the solution?
I think that the data center operators who 'get it' will adopt new deployment models for their facilities themselves and the layouts inside them. Watts per square foot don't matter as much after the short list is made by customers, only whether or not an operator can deliver to the customer requirements now and in the future. Tier classifications are being restructured, and existing space gets harder and harder to come by every week. This means that choices for customers will be made by what is available, vs. what is right for the customer.
There is a small window of opportunity here for investors to create the next model with data center operators who saw what has happened over the past 20 years and know it needs to be different for the next 20, and are willing to team up and build it.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Do Watts per Square Foot Even Matter Anymore?
I think about this question a lot, and it is one I am asking more as well to customers and peers in the industry. There are hundreds of facilities that were built 20-30 years ago and a few dozen that have been built in the past 10 (remember the .com bubble?) and I am being conservative. They were built with a solid approach for 20 years ago - build a building using a watts/ft metric to calculate costs, density, and ultimately capacity. Remember that Wang, Digital/DEC, and IBM mainframes were the systems of choice. Then the PC came on the scene, and drastically changed the dynamic of computing. Client/Server, new network protocols, ARPA, TCP/IP and http - the evolution was on.
So too were manufacturers evolving - building smaller footprint, higher capacity machines. These machines were 2-3x as powerful as their predecessors, taking up half the space. Companies could consolidate their huge footprint monlithic systems inside their data centers and make room for more. Or could they?
Today, to me it seems like deja vu all over again.
The computing world has shifted again by using virtualization, and those smaller more powerful servers, just got smaller (so small you can't touch or see them), went virtual, and companies are embracing the next evolution with gusto. They are also hitting the wall that IT managers who are retired or dead hit decades ago - power.
Why is this happening again? In a word - heat.
These smaller machines draw more power, and generate a lot more heat for their footprint. Ask a multi tenant data center operator who services the retail market on a cabinet by cabinet basis and they will tell you that cabinets full of gear that draw 4.8Kw are going in next to cabinets with 10-14 Kw. The higher density cabinets generate a lot more heat that needs to be removed from the floor so all the densities of the servers with their heat signatures can be maintained properly.
What is intrinsic of a 20 year old facility that makes it better to satify growing densities, evolving computing applications and hardware, and whatever comes down the pike? How does the colocation market evolve at the same time? When do we hit the wall, or do we hit the wall? Can you simply throw more air conditioners/handlers on the floor? Can we just continue to push utilities to increase generation and distribution? What happoens to the cost models?
I am starting to think that we are at a crossroads. Why do I believe this? Because data centers are starting to evolve. Containers, modular buildings, more flexible options. Until the hardware manufacturers get together with data center operators and do some R & D in a meaningful way, share roadmap, do testing together, we will continue to build the way we have, and not the way we must.
Want to play together - ping me. I want to figure this out...
So too were manufacturers evolving - building smaller footprint, higher capacity machines. These machines were 2-3x as powerful as their predecessors, taking up half the space. Companies could consolidate their huge footprint monlithic systems inside their data centers and make room for more. Or could they?
Today, to me it seems like deja vu all over again.
The computing world has shifted again by using virtualization, and those smaller more powerful servers, just got smaller (so small you can't touch or see them), went virtual, and companies are embracing the next evolution with gusto. They are also hitting the wall that IT managers who are retired or dead hit decades ago - power.
Why is this happening again? In a word - heat.
These smaller machines draw more power, and generate a lot more heat for their footprint. Ask a multi tenant data center operator who services the retail market on a cabinet by cabinet basis and they will tell you that cabinets full of gear that draw 4.8Kw are going in next to cabinets with 10-14 Kw. The higher density cabinets generate a lot more heat that needs to be removed from the floor so all the densities of the servers with their heat signatures can be maintained properly.
What is intrinsic of a 20 year old facility that makes it better to satify growing densities, evolving computing applications and hardware, and whatever comes down the pike? How does the colocation market evolve at the same time? When do we hit the wall, or do we hit the wall? Can you simply throw more air conditioners/handlers on the floor? Can we just continue to push utilities to increase generation and distribution? What happoens to the cost models?
I am starting to think that we are at a crossroads. Why do I believe this? Because data centers are starting to evolve. Containers, modular buildings, more flexible options. Until the hardware manufacturers get together with data center operators and do some R & D in a meaningful way, share roadmap, do testing together, we will continue to build the way we have, and not the way we must.
Want to play together - ping me. I want to figure this out...
Monday, July 26, 2010
New Use for Data Centers...
I got the idea from watching the marijuana dispensaries start to pop up across the country and given my line of work in the data center business I had an 'A-Ha' moment.
Grow pot in old data centers
There is adequate power
Raised floors could support water lines for irrigation
The temp and humidity are already controlled so the infrsastructure is there
The facilities are secure
The biggest expense would probably be putting in the right kind of lights
Maybe someone already of this and I am half as smart as they are. Either that or I just figured out a way to make use of the Federal Consolidation of Data Centers without having big empty facilities mothballed.
Grow pot in old data centers
There is adequate power
Raised floors could support water lines for irrigation
The temp and humidity are already controlled so the infrsastructure is there
The facilities are secure
The biggest expense would probably be putting in the right kind of lights
Maybe someone already of this and I am half as smart as they are. Either that or I just figured out a way to make use of the Federal Consolidation of Data Centers without having big empty facilities mothballed.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Fuel Cells and Green Tech in the Data Center
An industry peer, Ken Jamaca from Silverback tech gave me a heads up on an article whose subject is one of great interest to me - Fuel Cells in the data center.
One reason it is of great interest is that the current electricity grid in the US is resilient, barely, and has been for some time. Adding load to it does not help the problem, and given the lack of a US Energy policy generation is hard to come by and getting new power plants approved are even more difficult. Not great news to folks looking to construct new data centers as data centers are about access to power. Period. The other reason is that I am embarking on a new data center venture that will bring a new data center platform to the market.
Wind has generated the most buzz and been deployed the most in the US as a solution to increasing generation capacity and giving us more electrons to consume in a 'green' way. Wind is great - so long as the wind is blowing and since it is inconsistent (unreliable) as a power source, and it's expensive to store the electricity, it is used as a mix of total power available to customers. Solar is also a solution that has generated a lot of buzz however the land area required to put PV panels up is so large to be meaningful to a data center that many solar installations on roofs of large data centers and commercial buildings only provide enough electricity for parking lot lights and ambient lighting in hallways and common areas.
Fuel cells are getting more attention and the technology seems to be advancing as fast as it ever has. Bloom Energy has garnered the majority of the buzz in the market, and UTC (United Technologies) to a lesser extent, and there are some new entrants that have reached out to me to discuss their approaches and solutions.
As I have gotten into the nitty gritty of designing a system that is reliable, off grid, and can support a multi megawatt installation, some interesting things have popped up that have nothing to do with the technology, but have to do with a 100 year old set of policies, tarriffs, and agreements that make it difficult for a company to adopt the technology, especially a data center that wants 5 nines. Let me explain a little...
One major factor is utility costs per kWh and kW. Many utilities have 'demand charges' and 'stand by' charges that will impact the economics of the approach and drive design of a fuel cell system. Some also use what is called a ratcheted rates or tariffs. Should the data center need to transfer from fuel cell to the power grid/utility for backup, the demand charge is the charge per month for the next 12 months.
So say you’re paying $5,000/mo demand charge every month for 500 kW for a computer room. Then the fuel cell system trips off for even a few seconds, the full kW demand of the facility is now the current demand for the next 12 months. So say that 500 kW goes to 2,500 kW at $10.00/kW the new monthly charge is now $25,000 for the next 12 months. Ouch.
Developers need to play close attention to the tariffs and the structure of where they build these systems. The utilities clearly do not want onsite power in many cases and write the tariffs deliberately to keep out self generation. In some smaller municipal utilities they may welcome exporting excess power to the grid as a peaker during the summer months to help carry load on the grid for when every home turns on air conditioning during a heat wave. In other cases they may not want these solutions in their service area due to the adverse impact on transmission capacity on the local circuits and upgrade costs to meet the need should the facility go down.
So a word to the States, counties, towns, and municipalities looking to attract data centers, jobs, and tax revenues: Electricity matters more than anything.
The ability for a facility to generate power for themselves, especially low to zero carbon footprint power, and still be served by a utility as back up vs. primary power flips the 100 year old electricity business model on it head. This creates a threat for the utilities, because there are now competitive technologies made by companies that aren't restricted by a 100 year old business model, and will serve customers faster.
While the cost is still high for these newer 'greener' systems, the price comes down as adoption prolifererates. The confluence of technology, its incresing reliability, and the ultimate development of an alternative electricity ecosystem will seismically shift the models and markets.
I don't know about you, but after 100 years, I am ready to try something new.
One reason it is of great interest is that the current electricity grid in the US is resilient, barely, and has been for some time. Adding load to it does not help the problem, and given the lack of a US Energy policy generation is hard to come by and getting new power plants approved are even more difficult. Not great news to folks looking to construct new data centers as data centers are about access to power. Period. The other reason is that I am embarking on a new data center venture that will bring a new data center platform to the market.
Wind has generated the most buzz and been deployed the most in the US as a solution to increasing generation capacity and giving us more electrons to consume in a 'green' way. Wind is great - so long as the wind is blowing and since it is inconsistent (unreliable) as a power source, and it's expensive to store the electricity, it is used as a mix of total power available to customers. Solar is also a solution that has generated a lot of buzz however the land area required to put PV panels up is so large to be meaningful to a data center that many solar installations on roofs of large data centers and commercial buildings only provide enough electricity for parking lot lights and ambient lighting in hallways and common areas.
Fuel cells are getting more attention and the technology seems to be advancing as fast as it ever has. Bloom Energy has garnered the majority of the buzz in the market, and UTC (United Technologies) to a lesser extent, and there are some new entrants that have reached out to me to discuss their approaches and solutions.
As I have gotten into the nitty gritty of designing a system that is reliable, off grid, and can support a multi megawatt installation, some interesting things have popped up that have nothing to do with the technology, but have to do with a 100 year old set of policies, tarriffs, and agreements that make it difficult for a company to adopt the technology, especially a data center that wants 5 nines. Let me explain a little...
One major factor is utility costs per kWh and kW. Many utilities have 'demand charges' and 'stand by' charges that will impact the economics of the approach and drive design of a fuel cell system. Some also use what is called a ratcheted rates or tariffs. Should the data center need to transfer from fuel cell to the power grid/utility for backup, the demand charge is the charge per month for the next 12 months.
So say you’re paying $5,000/mo demand charge every month for 500 kW for a computer room. Then the fuel cell system trips off for even a few seconds, the full kW demand of the facility is now the current demand for the next 12 months. So say that 500 kW goes to 2,500 kW at $10.00/kW the new monthly charge is now $25,000 for the next 12 months. Ouch.
Developers need to play close attention to the tariffs and the structure of where they build these systems. The utilities clearly do not want onsite power in many cases and write the tariffs deliberately to keep out self generation. In some smaller municipal utilities they may welcome exporting excess power to the grid as a peaker during the summer months to help carry load on the grid for when every home turns on air conditioning during a heat wave. In other cases they may not want these solutions in their service area due to the adverse impact on transmission capacity on the local circuits and upgrade costs to meet the need should the facility go down.
So a word to the States, counties, towns, and municipalities looking to attract data centers, jobs, and tax revenues: Electricity matters more than anything.
The ability for a facility to generate power for themselves, especially low to zero carbon footprint power, and still be served by a utility as back up vs. primary power flips the 100 year old electricity business model on it head. This creates a threat for the utilities, because there are now competitive technologies made by companies that aren't restricted by a 100 year old business model, and will serve customers faster.
While the cost is still high for these newer 'greener' systems, the price comes down as adoption prolifererates. The confluence of technology, its incresing reliability, and the ultimate development of an alternative electricity ecosystem will seismically shift the models and markets.
I don't know about you, but after 100 years, I am ready to try something new.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Green IT shell game
I was doing research for an RFP yesterday about carbon footprints as they related to PUE, Data Center Operations, and IT resources in general. What I realized was that IT still looks at itself in silos, not systems. Let me explain...
This morning I got my copy of eWeek and on the cover was a pointer to Green IT Solutions - The Real Deal - on page 16. I'll admit I didnt spend a lot of time on the article because it was just like 100 others I have read the past few months that follow a simple formula:
Virtualization = Green
Um, not exactly...
Let me take you through a systems view of carbon in the data center operations:
The PUE of most data centers is 2.0 or higher. This means that for every dollar spent on powering servers, an additional dollar is spent on common facilities electricity to support systems. In the container model. The PUE is 1.2 which means 80 cents of every dollar captured for common facilities/infrastructure is saved. For a 500 KW deployment with a $0.10 per Kwh charge it means that in a data center with a PUE of 2.0, the cost is $73,000 for electricity. With a PUE of 1.2 the cost is $43,800. Savings per month of $29,200, and all of the electricity is green.
To produce a Kw of electricity from coal, 2.3lbs of carbon are produced (see http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html), so for a 500Kwh environment, multiplied by 2.3 lbs per Kwh is 839,500 pounds or 419 tons per month. Since wind eliminates 98% of carbon emissions, the net carbon footprint per month drops to 8.4 tons per month (see http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf)
When I look at a virtualization = Green example I see some major gotchas:
1. New equipment will likely need to be purchased. The manufacturing process is not carbon-light.
2. This means more mercury and other nasty stuff in the new equipment plus the old equipment. recycling gets you a couple of brownie points.
3. If a new data center is constructed, or leased, or expanded there is the cost of manufacturing, transporting, and assembling all of the components. If it's still powered by coal - you gained nothing
My point being Virtualization is NOT/KINDA Green and has a measureable but not significant reduction in carbon footprint. My personal stance is that you are far better off getting your utility to get wind energy into your data center and cut carbon by the boatload. Better yet, get wind produced power, use an existing data center someplace cool and open the windows when you can.
The other thing I found very amusing in my research was the data center with a LEED Platinum rating and was powered by multiple 50+ year old coal plants. It's like tinting mercury pink to make it 'safe' isn't it?
This morning I got my copy of eWeek and on the cover was a pointer to Green IT Solutions - The Real Deal - on page 16. I'll admit I didnt spend a lot of time on the article because it was just like 100 others I have read the past few months that follow a simple formula:
Virtualization = Green
Um, not exactly...
Let me take you through a systems view of carbon in the data center operations:
The PUE of most data centers is 2.0 or higher. This means that for every dollar spent on powering servers, an additional dollar is spent on common facilities electricity to support systems. In the container model. The PUE is 1.2 which means 80 cents of every dollar captured for common facilities/infrastructure is saved. For a 500 KW deployment with a $0.10 per Kwh charge it means that in a data center with a PUE of 2.0, the cost is $73,000 for electricity. With a PUE of 1.2 the cost is $43,800. Savings per month of $29,200, and all of the electricity is green.
To produce a Kw of electricity from coal, 2.3lbs of carbon are produced (see http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html), so for a 500Kwh environment, multiplied by 2.3 lbs per Kwh is 839,500 pounds or 419 tons per month. Since wind eliminates 98% of carbon emissions, the net carbon footprint per month drops to 8.4 tons per month (see http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf)
When I look at a virtualization = Green example I see some major gotchas:
1. New equipment will likely need to be purchased. The manufacturing process is not carbon-light.
2. This means more mercury and other nasty stuff in the new equipment plus the old equipment. recycling gets you a couple of brownie points.
3. If a new data center is constructed, or leased, or expanded there is the cost of manufacturing, transporting, and assembling all of the components. If it's still powered by coal - you gained nothing
My point being Virtualization is NOT/KINDA Green and has a measureable but not significant reduction in carbon footprint. My personal stance is that you are far better off getting your utility to get wind energy into your data center and cut carbon by the boatload. Better yet, get wind produced power, use an existing data center someplace cool and open the windows when you can.
The other thing I found very amusing in my research was the data center with a LEED Platinum rating and was powered by multiple 50+ year old coal plants. It's like tinting mercury pink to make it 'safe' isn't it?
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Why Cisco needs to buy Verari, and why Dell IBM, Rackable, and HP will fight for it
I have been covering the Verari story for the past several weeks, talking with folks close to the situation every other day. I keep coming back to Why Cisco Needs to buy Verari:
1. Protect IP
2. Support the brand
3. Have a container play in the market
4. Maintain a level of credibility in a market they said they were entering - servers
The other reason they should make an offer is because they have a financial backer who will do the deal with them and pony up 50-60% of the cash.
So why would Cisco want to protect the IP? The technology is solid, Verari has customers, and if they don't Cisco must now go after another hardware manufacturer to secure solid (and deployed) server technology to make good on its announcement that it was going after HP's server business to get market share inside the data center.
There is also being in a position to address what a data center is since the move is clearly going towards modularity and container deployments in very key areas. If Cisco doesn't have a story, their competitors craft deals so Cisco can't play. Ouch.
Support the brand - Verari, when it comes out of the ashes, will be recapitalized with Carlyle, Citibank, Sierra Ventures and others out of the picture. In other words the company has a running head start in that it has customers, a pipeline, a brand, production, the whole nine yards supporting the brand. Cisco believed in it enough to do an OEM deal, now they get to put a Verari server in a pillow case for a data center technology beat down of the competition.
Have a container play in the market. For people who follow this blog and colleagues in the data center industry know I have been a strong proponent of containerized data centers for about two years - since before there was a lot of buzz about them anyway. Having a container play is absolutely crucial - why? Because companies who offer high performance computing, serve civilian and defense agencies, are in the oil and gas business, and cloud computing companies are all looking at and/or purchasing them. There was a question on Linked In a few weeks ago - 'why havent we heard about all these container deployments?' and there are a couple of answers both of which point back to 'we could tell you but then we'd have to kill you'. People don't want their strategic advantage broadcast to the world. Nor does the military. So containers are crucial - not for companies who need a couple of cabinets, but for companies who need hundreds of cabinets - containers are cheaper and more secure hands down.
Maintain a level of credibility - this one is crucial. I cannot and do not see companies today making large announcements that create seismic events in certain markets, pull back after a few months and say - Ha! Just kidding!. Cisco could buy Sun's server business and let Oracle ravage the software side, and that's about it. There are slim pickens for proven server technology out there where ther companies don't already have a relationship with IBM, Dell, and HP - Cisco's partners and in many circles now - the enemy.
Cisco solves a lot of problems for short money with this deal. On the flip side Cisco's competitors can create a lot of problems for Cisco for short money - real and in the press - by buying Verari. They keep Cisco out of the Server Hardware Club for a few more months, which is a lifetime in this business. and with the tech refreshes that need to happen in the next 12-24 months, a misstep or delay means a few hundred million are at stake.
This one will be fun to watch...
1. Protect IP
2. Support the brand
3. Have a container play in the market
4. Maintain a level of credibility in a market they said they were entering - servers
The other reason they should make an offer is because they have a financial backer who will do the deal with them and pony up 50-60% of the cash.
So why would Cisco want to protect the IP? The technology is solid, Verari has customers, and if they don't Cisco must now go after another hardware manufacturer to secure solid (and deployed) server technology to make good on its announcement that it was going after HP's server business to get market share inside the data center.
There is also being in a position to address what a data center is since the move is clearly going towards modularity and container deployments in very key areas. If Cisco doesn't have a story, their competitors craft deals so Cisco can't play. Ouch.
Support the brand - Verari, when it comes out of the ashes, will be recapitalized with Carlyle, Citibank, Sierra Ventures and others out of the picture. In other words the company has a running head start in that it has customers, a pipeline, a brand, production, the whole nine yards supporting the brand. Cisco believed in it enough to do an OEM deal, now they get to put a Verari server in a pillow case for a data center technology beat down of the competition.
Have a container play in the market. For people who follow this blog and colleagues in the data center industry know I have been a strong proponent of containerized data centers for about two years - since before there was a lot of buzz about them anyway. Having a container play is absolutely crucial - why? Because companies who offer high performance computing, serve civilian and defense agencies, are in the oil and gas business, and cloud computing companies are all looking at and/or purchasing them. There was a question on Linked In a few weeks ago - 'why havent we heard about all these container deployments?' and there are a couple of answers both of which point back to 'we could tell you but then we'd have to kill you'. People don't want their strategic advantage broadcast to the world. Nor does the military. So containers are crucial - not for companies who need a couple of cabinets, but for companies who need hundreds of cabinets - containers are cheaper and more secure hands down.
Maintain a level of credibility - this one is crucial. I cannot and do not see companies today making large announcements that create seismic events in certain markets, pull back after a few months and say - Ha! Just kidding!. Cisco could buy Sun's server business and let Oracle ravage the software side, and that's about it. There are slim pickens for proven server technology out there where ther companies don't already have a relationship with IBM, Dell, and HP - Cisco's partners and in many circles now - the enemy.
Cisco solves a lot of problems for short money with this deal. On the flip side Cisco's competitors can create a lot of problems for Cisco for short money - real and in the press - by buying Verari. They keep Cisco out of the Server Hardware Club for a few more months, which is a lifetime in this business. and with the tech refreshes that need to happen in the next 12-24 months, a misstep or delay means a few hundred million are at stake.
This one will be fun to watch...
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Containers/PODS/Data Center in a box - the ultimate hedge?
There has been a ton of stuff going on in the world of technology this summer and I thought it was about time I shared the sum of my discussions this summer and see what other folks are thinking about.
I just spoke to a good friend of mine who is headed to work at Stratus Technologies - the ultra high availability server company and we were chatting about the electricity issues companies are faced with as they virtualize their infrastructure.
Cabinet draws increase when you virtualize - especially with blades - which means electricity USE increases as well. If you use and need more of anything than what you have, you will have a shortage unless you get more. Duh. You can have a 100,000 square foot facility but if it has 5MW available and your new virtualized design requires 10MW, even though you can now put the entire data center into 100 cabinets - doesn't matter the size of the glass my friend - when you take the last sip you take the last sip.
Other topics that have been fun to watch...
Markey-Waxman bill HR2454 that got passed in the House and is up for debate in the Senate next session. Talking about taxing carbon footprints of companies. I am sure taxing carbon profiles of humans is around the corner - especially when they see the tab for Social Security, but I digress...
The Waxman-Markey bill is 1400 pages. I have read a fraction of it. It lays out a cap and trade program whereby companies get an allocation of carbon they can emit, and anything over that they pay a HUGE tax on, or go out to a soon to be created public market (Goldman Sachs is the lead developer) and buy other companies' carbon surplus.
So if I am a data center operator and I like coal and diesel generated electricity because it is reliable and cheap but dirtier than a mud wrestling prostitute, then I will get a hefty tax bill because I emit more carbon than the government thinks I should. OR if I can find an organic, wind, methane, gerbil wheel generating source of electricity data center that emits a tablespoon of carbon each year, I can cut a deal with them to buy their surplus of carbon allowance and keep right on chugging with my diesel and coal.
This, like many other government programs is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic - there is no real change to the outcome, but we can feel good about appearing to have addressed the outcome.
The other side of this is the cap program. Reduce your carbon footprint period. No trading credits/surplus/etc. reduce your emissions or we will tax you out of business. This has legs, in my opinion and speaks to what is good business, will drive innovation, and help the East Coast and Europeans have cleaner air. If we can get China and India to help out - sweet!
The other discussion I had more than a few times was around data center inventory and the lack of it. It has been leading to higher prices in a down economy, the fact that there is little inventory in the wholesale space - 20,000 square feet and up, and that there will be a tightness felt over the next few years until debt markets can open up, get financing flowing for new projects and space becomes available.
The last discussion area that has heated up even more in the past 60 days has been around containers. There is a LOT more activity out there as people come to realize how slick this solution is, and why it's a hedge against carbon tax (efficiency goes up with power consumption), you can get them quick, so when budgets open up, you can wait to buy as long as possible and get another few dozen petabytes of storage or a few thousand cores up and running in 2 months, and if you pl,ug them into green power and grey water - well, now you're talking extra credit.
The one thing that I am watching closely is based on a question I heard on a recent call - 'Whay are these container deployments fire drills every time?' to which I responded, 'Because they can be deployed faster than a traditional data center EVERY time. Customers know this, it's the data center companies that need to step it up and have inventory ready or the process in place to deploy it more quickly than they are used to.
There is also the issue of zoning too - cities and towns don't know what to make of the containers, especially the ones outside. They see them as 'occupied temporary structures'. To me that definition is a refrigerator box with a schizophrenic uncle and his three imaginary friends in it, not a standard container that there are several thousand of in Newark and Long Beach. Aside from the fact that they are 'occupied' maybe 2 days a year, if that.
Anyway, containers are getting much more street cred and are the ultimate hedge against taxes, portability, density, with the upside of efficiency gains and fast depreciation.
I just spoke to a good friend of mine who is headed to work at Stratus Technologies - the ultra high availability server company and we were chatting about the electricity issues companies are faced with as they virtualize their infrastructure.
Cabinet draws increase when you virtualize - especially with blades - which means electricity USE increases as well. If you use and need more of anything than what you have, you will have a shortage unless you get more. Duh. You can have a 100,000 square foot facility but if it has 5MW available and your new virtualized design requires 10MW, even though you can now put the entire data center into 100 cabinets - doesn't matter the size of the glass my friend - when you take the last sip you take the last sip.
Other topics that have been fun to watch...
Markey-Waxman bill HR2454 that got passed in the House and is up for debate in the Senate next session. Talking about taxing carbon footprints of companies. I am sure taxing carbon profiles of humans is around the corner - especially when they see the tab for Social Security, but I digress...
The Waxman-Markey bill is 1400 pages. I have read a fraction of it. It lays out a cap and trade program whereby companies get an allocation of carbon they can emit, and anything over that they pay a HUGE tax on, or go out to a soon to be created public market (Goldman Sachs is the lead developer) and buy other companies' carbon surplus.
So if I am a data center operator and I like coal and diesel generated electricity because it is reliable and cheap but dirtier than a mud wrestling prostitute, then I will get a hefty tax bill because I emit more carbon than the government thinks I should. OR if I can find an organic, wind, methane, gerbil wheel generating source of electricity data center that emits a tablespoon of carbon each year, I can cut a deal with them to buy their surplus of carbon allowance and keep right on chugging with my diesel and coal.
This, like many other government programs is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic - there is no real change to the outcome, but we can feel good about appearing to have addressed the outcome.
The other side of this is the cap program. Reduce your carbon footprint period. No trading credits/surplus/etc. reduce your emissions or we will tax you out of business. This has legs, in my opinion and speaks to what is good business, will drive innovation, and help the East Coast and Europeans have cleaner air. If we can get China and India to help out - sweet!
The other discussion I had more than a few times was around data center inventory and the lack of it. It has been leading to higher prices in a down economy, the fact that there is little inventory in the wholesale space - 20,000 square feet and up, and that there will be a tightness felt over the next few years until debt markets can open up, get financing flowing for new projects and space becomes available.
The last discussion area that has heated up even more in the past 60 days has been around containers. There is a LOT more activity out there as people come to realize how slick this solution is, and why it's a hedge against carbon tax (efficiency goes up with power consumption), you can get them quick, so when budgets open up, you can wait to buy as long as possible and get another few dozen petabytes of storage or a few thousand cores up and running in 2 months, and if you pl,ug them into green power and grey water - well, now you're talking extra credit.
The one thing that I am watching closely is based on a question I heard on a recent call - 'Whay are these container deployments fire drills every time?' to which I responded, 'Because they can be deployed faster than a traditional data center EVERY time. Customers know this, it's the data center companies that need to step it up and have inventory ready or the process in place to deploy it more quickly than they are used to.
There is also the issue of zoning too - cities and towns don't know what to make of the containers, especially the ones outside. They see them as 'occupied temporary structures'. To me that definition is a refrigerator box with a schizophrenic uncle and his three imaginary friends in it, not a standard container that there are several thousand of in Newark and Long Beach. Aside from the fact that they are 'occupied' maybe 2 days a year, if that.
Anyway, containers are getting much more street cred and are the ultimate hedge against taxes, portability, density, with the upside of efficiency gains and fast depreciation.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
It's about the power...
http://www.cio-today.com/news/Blade-Servers-Are-Energy-Hogs/story.xhtml?story_id=1230080ZP1RO
This article today finally backed up what I have been blogging about which is that Blades (heavily used in Virtualization deployments) are power hogs. So while you just freed up 5,000 sq feet in your data center, you doubled your draw and D'oh! you ran out of power and can't cool the shiny new virtualized environment.
The closing quote in the article:
If new blade servers crash because the data center overheats, that's not very efficient, is it?
Is the least of my worries. How to Justfy a 7 or 8 figure purchase that you can't light up and run key apps on is a bigger problem, no matter how efficient it makes IT.
Glad to see someone else paying attention to this...
This article today finally backed up what I have been blogging about which is that Blades (heavily used in Virtualization deployments) are power hogs. So while you just freed up 5,000 sq feet in your data center, you doubled your draw and D'oh! you ran out of power and can't cool the shiny new virtualized environment.
The closing quote in the article:
If new blade servers crash because the data center overheats, that's not very efficient, is it?
Is the least of my worries. How to Justfy a 7 or 8 figure purchase that you can't light up and run key apps on is a bigger problem, no matter how efficient it makes IT.
Glad to see someone else paying attention to this...
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Are you Green? Are you REC-less?
I have been looking into renewable energy sources for data centers a lot lately. Why? Because it is responsible, necessary and a way to stimulate the changes that must occur in the nation's electricity grid that is up to 100 years old in places.
The whole Virtualization movement got me thinking about this a couple of years ago, because I noticed that when my customers deployed blades and other high density solutions to support virtualization a funny thing happened - electricity draw to the cabinets almost doubled.
So the footprint shrinks but the electricity (and cooling) goes up dramatically. So I asked the next question which was - if I double my energy draw and that energy is not green (wind, biomass, nuclear, etc.) how am I reducing carbon? Hmmmm. Maybe I'm not. Oh but wait, my utility lets be purchase RECs - Renewable Energy Certificates so I am all set.
Next question - aren't REC's like putting a 'save the earth' sticker on a Hummer? It's feel good green - not measureable green.
So What is the answer? How do you get truly green? How do you move beyond the 'we print on both sides of the paper' and 'we turn off the lights at the diesel refinery' feel good green into actual, 'I am doing something that is not only measurable but so green it's almost black' when looking at our IT infrastructure?
Stay tuned for more. There is a way, using 'off the shelf ' technology and sources of power to do this. And it will save you roughly $6,000/year per cabinet/rack on electricity alone, let alone what the carbon reduction is. Can you say FAT bonus?
The whole Virtualization movement got me thinking about this a couple of years ago, because I noticed that when my customers deployed blades and other high density solutions to support virtualization a funny thing happened - electricity draw to the cabinets almost doubled.
So the footprint shrinks but the electricity (and cooling) goes up dramatically. So I asked the next question which was - if I double my energy draw and that energy is not green (wind, biomass, nuclear, etc.) how am I reducing carbon? Hmmmm. Maybe I'm not. Oh but wait, my utility lets be purchase RECs - Renewable Energy Certificates so I am all set.
Next question - aren't REC's like putting a 'save the earth' sticker on a Hummer? It's feel good green - not measureable green.
So What is the answer? How do you get truly green? How do you move beyond the 'we print on both sides of the paper' and 'we turn off the lights at the diesel refinery' feel good green into actual, 'I am doing something that is not only measurable but so green it's almost black' when looking at our IT infrastructure?
Stay tuned for more. There is a way, using 'off the shelf ' technology and sources of power to do this. And it will save you roughly $6,000/year per cabinet/rack on electricity alone, let alone what the carbon reduction is. Can you say FAT bonus?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Data Center Containers - a black licorice product?
I sincerely hope Tier 1 does a Data Center Transformation Summit twice a year. The one I was at yesterday was excellent and was topped off by dinner with the rock stars over at Horizon Data Center Solutions in Reston, VA. Then this morning our press release hit the wires which was great to wake up to.
One theme I saw again and again was people either 'get' containers or they dont. Chris Crosby over at Digital Realty Trust doesn't like them. Nor does the CTO at Equinix, Dave Pickut. Chris had a presentation that was full of inconsistencies that I will attribute to DLR being a REIT vs. a data center owner/operator. REITs view the container as competition - it's not real estate so they're not interested because they can't sell it. Given Mike Manos' move over there and his work in deploying containers for Microsoft makes me wonder if DLR will shed its REIT status and broaden its offerings. Nah. A REIT is a REIT and they have a lot of customers who rely on them for space.
Equinix (and others) don't like them, I believe, for two reasons -
1. They house high density equipment, up to 27 Kw per cabinet. The standard is 4.8 Kw, which means you need to allocate more floor space for air flow and that's floor space you cant sell to the 4.8 Kw cabinet customers.
2. The data centers they are in can't support them from a deployment perspective. Something new they can't support.
Here is why I believe they cannot ignore the data center container (DCC) market - the efficiency is unprecedented for the draw, the footprint, and the cost. You will save $6,000 per cabinet per year putting it in a container on the PUE gains alone (Power Utilization Efficiency). When all you need is a 600 AMP feed and a 4" water pipe connected to a water source of 65 degress, you're done.
So what's holding the proliferation back?
Basically 18 months ago before the economy really tanked, companies refreshed a lot of servers and other IT gear. They bought a lot of VMWare, and stood up a lot of new stuff. New stuff that was leased. On a 36 month lease. We are 18 or so months into a lease cycle for a lot of companies that have their hands tied and can't move to a DCC if they wanted to.
So what I see starting to happen is that companies are giving DCCs a look because bonuses are being tied to reducing carbon emissions, consuption, and doing more with renewable energy sources. DCC's will give them a healthy bonus. That tied with being able to lease extreme density gear self contained and from PO to plug in of 10 weeks tops - look out.
So right now the DCC's are a black licorice product - you either love em or you hate 'em. I believe more people will be loving them in the next 18-24 months because it's green ($) for them to do it.
One theme I saw again and again was people either 'get' containers or they dont. Chris Crosby over at Digital Realty Trust doesn't like them. Nor does the CTO at Equinix, Dave Pickut. Chris had a presentation that was full of inconsistencies that I will attribute to DLR being a REIT vs. a data center owner/operator. REITs view the container as competition - it's not real estate so they're not interested because they can't sell it. Given Mike Manos' move over there and his work in deploying containers for Microsoft makes me wonder if DLR will shed its REIT status and broaden its offerings. Nah. A REIT is a REIT and they have a lot of customers who rely on them for space.
Equinix (and others) don't like them, I believe, for two reasons -
1. They house high density equipment, up to 27 Kw per cabinet. The standard is 4.8 Kw, which means you need to allocate more floor space for air flow and that's floor space you cant sell to the 4.8 Kw cabinet customers.
2. The data centers they are in can't support them from a deployment perspective. Something new they can't support.
Here is why I believe they cannot ignore the data center container (DCC) market - the efficiency is unprecedented for the draw, the footprint, and the cost. You will save $6,000 per cabinet per year putting it in a container on the PUE gains alone (Power Utilization Efficiency). When all you need is a 600 AMP feed and a 4" water pipe connected to a water source of 65 degress, you're done.
So what's holding the proliferation back?
Basically 18 months ago before the economy really tanked, companies refreshed a lot of servers and other IT gear. They bought a lot of VMWare, and stood up a lot of new stuff. New stuff that was leased. On a 36 month lease. We are 18 or so months into a lease cycle for a lot of companies that have their hands tied and can't move to a DCC if they wanted to.
So what I see starting to happen is that companies are giving DCCs a look because bonuses are being tied to reducing carbon emissions, consuption, and doing more with renewable energy sources. DCC's will give them a healthy bonus. That tied with being able to lease extreme density gear self contained and from PO to plug in of 10 weeks tops - look out.
So right now the DCC's are a black licorice product - you either love em or you hate 'em. I believe more people will be loving them in the next 18-24 months because it's green ($) for them to do it.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Is a Green Data Center even possible?
This was the question running through my mind this weekend, and assuming it was, who would build it, what makes it green, and is it a standard? Yes, my mind was quite active this weekend…
The question came up after a chat I had with Austin Energy and the State of Michigan last week about wind power projects – both current and future. Why wind you might ask? Because right now it is fashionable, generates more electricity than solar on the same footprint, and it works. In the data center world however, you plan for the crazy what if’s, in this case no wind for a month, so you do need to have back up at the ready, preferably Natural Gas. T. Boone Pickens has studied this extensively.
So let’s consider that we have access to wind generation, the issue that I have seen is that the grid, at least the ERCOT one, is not designed to have more generation that it has today. So you can generate thousands of megawatts from May-October during the windy ‘tornado’ season but because the transmission grid can’t do anything with the capacity being generated you turn off the generation capability so you don’t bring down the entire US power grid. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Given how much electricity data centers consume and need to sustain growth, it seems there should be a louder voice out there telling utilities to upgrade their power systems. There isn’t though. Why? Money. If I own a utility that gets a lot of electricity generated by wind (inexpensive), then any upgrades I make to my power system are going to help my competition more than me (potentially). So they don’t get done.
So while there is all this effort out there being spent on building generation, until we give the Grid an upgrade it will be the equivalent of watching high definition TV over dial up. There will be a lot more content (electricity) than availability to deliver (bandwidth).
I believe this is what ultimately will hold back expansion the most, of both data centers AND the proliferation of getting green energy to some of the largest consumers of power out there. Your friendly, stark, neighborhood data center.
The question came up after a chat I had with Austin Energy and the State of Michigan last week about wind power projects – both current and future. Why wind you might ask? Because right now it is fashionable, generates more electricity than solar on the same footprint, and it works. In the data center world however, you plan for the crazy what if’s, in this case no wind for a month, so you do need to have back up at the ready, preferably Natural Gas. T. Boone Pickens has studied this extensively.
So let’s consider that we have access to wind generation, the issue that I have seen is that the grid, at least the ERCOT one, is not designed to have more generation that it has today. So you can generate thousands of megawatts from May-October during the windy ‘tornado’ season but because the transmission grid can’t do anything with the capacity being generated you turn off the generation capability so you don’t bring down the entire US power grid. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Given how much electricity data centers consume and need to sustain growth, it seems there should be a louder voice out there telling utilities to upgrade their power systems. There isn’t though. Why? Money. If I own a utility that gets a lot of electricity generated by wind (inexpensive), then any upgrades I make to my power system are going to help my competition more than me (potentially). So they don’t get done.
So while there is all this effort out there being spent on building generation, until we give the Grid an upgrade it will be the equivalent of watching high definition TV over dial up. There will be a lot more content (electricity) than availability to deliver (bandwidth).
I believe this is what ultimately will hold back expansion the most, of both data centers AND the proliferation of getting green energy to some of the largest consumers of power out there. Your friendly, stark, neighborhood data center.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Microsoft and Google - Are they really ceasing data center expansion?
With the numerous reports of Google, Microsoft, and others halting data center builds you would think the data center business was caving in on itself like a dying star.
Town governments as well as the state Governments where the builds are halted are groaning. Sure they gave up tax breaks (their revenue) and the payroll tax that was supposed to come won’t, but I have to wonder why they are they that concerned. Data centers have a lot of servers in them, not a lot of payroll taxes in them, so at the end of the day they are out what they would have been out anyway which is the revenue on the construction and sales tax.
So the governments are feeling what the companies are – a contraction in the economy, driven by lack of access to capital in the credit markets. So things contract.
I can’t help but wonder though, with green technology evolving quickly AND the emergence of containers to house servers and their inherent improvement in efficiency, are they really thinking and retooling for the long term?
Both are smart companies, and I learned a long time ago that smart companies will take a strategic look inside their four walls when things slow down to retool and improve for when things do expand again.
I was in a meeting today discussing PUE of containers with an organization considering a build of a new data center. If you can make a data center TWICE as efficient, for 1/5 the cost, and shift the capex to almost 100% opex - wouldn’t you do it?
I think Microsoft and Google are simply rethinking how they want to deploy computing horsepower. Containers are a very modular, very fast and very economical way to deploy horsepower. I realize fully that those of us in the traditional data center realm are looking at containers and scratching our heads, however I for one believe that they are the future of data centers – which at the end of the day house servers with CPU and memory and give us resource pools or clouds.
If that computing resource pool can be deployed at massive density, double efficiency, and at a fraction of the cost – who in their right mind wants to defend the position of paying twice as much for something half as good?
Me neither…
I am working on publishing a white paper that explores the cost and efficiency of containers vs traditional data centers and will post the link when it's done in a few weeks. If you care to share data - please do. I will change the names of the innocent if needed - I just want to make sure I put out real data.
Town governments as well as the state Governments where the builds are halted are groaning. Sure they gave up tax breaks (their revenue) and the payroll tax that was supposed to come won’t, but I have to wonder why they are they that concerned. Data centers have a lot of servers in them, not a lot of payroll taxes in them, so at the end of the day they are out what they would have been out anyway which is the revenue on the construction and sales tax.
So the governments are feeling what the companies are – a contraction in the economy, driven by lack of access to capital in the credit markets. So things contract.
I can’t help but wonder though, with green technology evolving quickly AND the emergence of containers to house servers and their inherent improvement in efficiency, are they really thinking and retooling for the long term?
Both are smart companies, and I learned a long time ago that smart companies will take a strategic look inside their four walls when things slow down to retool and improve for when things do expand again.
I was in a meeting today discussing PUE of containers with an organization considering a build of a new data center. If you can make a data center TWICE as efficient, for 1/5 the cost, and shift the capex to almost 100% opex - wouldn’t you do it?
I think Microsoft and Google are simply rethinking how they want to deploy computing horsepower. Containers are a very modular, very fast and very economical way to deploy horsepower. I realize fully that those of us in the traditional data center realm are looking at containers and scratching our heads, however I for one believe that they are the future of data centers – which at the end of the day house servers with CPU and memory and give us resource pools or clouds.
If that computing resource pool can be deployed at massive density, double efficiency, and at a fraction of the cost – who in their right mind wants to defend the position of paying twice as much for something half as good?
Me neither…
I am working on publishing a white paper that explores the cost and efficiency of containers vs traditional data centers and will post the link when it's done in a few weeks. If you care to share data - please do. I will change the names of the innocent if needed - I just want to make sure I put out real data.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sun's new data center
I just read a story about Sun Microsystems' new data center in Broomfield, CO. There were some interesting highlights in the blurb.
Reduced Electrical Consumption: By 1 million kWh per month, enough to power 1,000 homes in Colorado
While this is a great stat, where did the savings come from? What is the PUE? Sun rolled out the Blackbox product last year - Containers/Pods are the next wave of computing as far as I am concerned - and I'll bet the container is still more efficient and the power saved in a Blackbox would power 1,000 homes on the cooling alone. You double the cost and draw of electricity in cooling a data center so unless the environment is optimized to support heat dissapation and optimize cold air flow, you don't gain much.
Reduced Raised Floor Datacenter Space: From 165,000 square feet to less than 700 square feet of raised floor datacenter space, representing a $4M cost avoidance.
I used to walk through a raised floor data center every week in a previous job and I always wondered why they were all the rage. The amount of cold air under the floor that didn't do anything was astounding. I know the electricians had a better environment to work in, but at the end of the day, no one ever asked me 'What am I paying for my share of idle cold air?'. Cooling is a necessary evil, and an expensive one. Looking not at cooling but how heat is removed is the key.
Enhanced Scalability: Incorporated 7 MW of capacity that scales up to 40% higher without major construction
What the **** does that mean? Are they using high octane diesel in their Caterpillars? Funny car fuel? A four barrel carbuerator?
Superior Cooling: The world’s first and largest installation of Liebert advanced XD™ cooling system with dynamic cooling controls capable of supporting rack loads up to 30kW and a chiller system 24% more efficient than ASHRAE standards.
I love Lieberts - they work, they're reliable, and they mask poor design. In this series of Lieberts it appears that their offering is more modular, and more deployable into trouble/hot spots than its other offerings. That is great, however they do not put the draw into the technical documentation. Efficiency is great, but if it takes 30% more power to generate 10% cooler air in the same footprint, I don't see the value.
Greener Architecture: Including flywheel uninterruptible power supply (UPS) that eliminates all lead and chemicals waste by removing the need for batteries, and non-chemical water treatment system, saving water and reducing chemical pollution.
I wonder when someone will actually have the stones to say, Green is great until it doesn't work or it costs 1.5x what traditional (proven) technology can deliver. Case in point: I wonder what the carbon output of manufacturing a wind turbine is compared to the .3 megawatt it generates. The steel manufacturing (they don't use woodstoves or solar to melt metal), the wiring manufaturing (people dressed in hemp clothing, using bamboo shovels don't find wiring deposits), the lubricants, the shipping fuel... Blindly going green because it's trendy may not be the answer. Yet. Did you cut down to one square of toilet paper to save a tree? Me neither.
Overall Excellence: Recognized with two Ace awards for Project of the Year from the Associated Contractors of Colorado, presented for excellence in design, execution, complexity and environmental application.
But not efficency? How can give an award for data center design without efficiency being the most weighted category for judging it? It is like giving out an award for best dessert without tasting it.
I love that companies like Sun are pushing the envelope and I hope it continues. I just hope that common sense enters the equation and that an actual yardstick is used to measure what matters.
Reduced Electrical Consumption: By 1 million kWh per month, enough to power 1,000 homes in Colorado
While this is a great stat, where did the savings come from? What is the PUE? Sun rolled out the Blackbox product last year - Containers/Pods are the next wave of computing as far as I am concerned - and I'll bet the container is still more efficient and the power saved in a Blackbox would power 1,000 homes on the cooling alone. You double the cost and draw of electricity in cooling a data center so unless the environment is optimized to support heat dissapation and optimize cold air flow, you don't gain much.
Reduced Raised Floor Datacenter Space: From 165,000 square feet to less than 700 square feet of raised floor datacenter space, representing a $4M cost avoidance.
I used to walk through a raised floor data center every week in a previous job and I always wondered why they were all the rage. The amount of cold air under the floor that didn't do anything was astounding. I know the electricians had a better environment to work in, but at the end of the day, no one ever asked me 'What am I paying for my share of idle cold air?'. Cooling is a necessary evil, and an expensive one. Looking not at cooling but how heat is removed is the key.
Enhanced Scalability: Incorporated 7 MW of capacity that scales up to 40% higher without major construction
What the **** does that mean? Are they using high octane diesel in their Caterpillars? Funny car fuel? A four barrel carbuerator?
Superior Cooling: The world’s first and largest installation of Liebert advanced XD™ cooling system with dynamic cooling controls capable of supporting rack loads up to 30kW and a chiller system 24% more efficient than ASHRAE standards.
I love Lieberts - they work, they're reliable, and they mask poor design. In this series of Lieberts it appears that their offering is more modular, and more deployable into trouble/hot spots than its other offerings. That is great, however they do not put the draw into the technical documentation. Efficiency is great, but if it takes 30% more power to generate 10% cooler air in the same footprint, I don't see the value.
Greener Architecture: Including flywheel uninterruptible power supply (UPS) that eliminates all lead and chemicals waste by removing the need for batteries, and non-chemical water treatment system, saving water and reducing chemical pollution.
I wonder when someone will actually have the stones to say, Green is great until it doesn't work or it costs 1.5x what traditional (proven) technology can deliver. Case in point: I wonder what the carbon output of manufacturing a wind turbine is compared to the .3 megawatt it generates. The steel manufacturing (they don't use woodstoves or solar to melt metal), the wiring manufaturing (people dressed in hemp clothing, using bamboo shovels don't find wiring deposits), the lubricants, the shipping fuel... Blindly going green because it's trendy may not be the answer. Yet. Did you cut down to one square of toilet paper to save a tree? Me neither.
Overall Excellence: Recognized with two Ace awards for Project of the Year from the Associated Contractors of Colorado, presented for excellence in design, execution, complexity and environmental application.
But not efficency? How can give an award for data center design without efficiency being the most weighted category for judging it? It is like giving out an award for best dessert without tasting it.
I love that companies like Sun are pushing the envelope and I hope it continues. I just hope that common sense enters the equation and that an actual yardstick is used to measure what matters.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Computing Greenness at a Data Center
I recently read through an interesting White Paper on evaluating the Greenness of a data center put out by the Uptime Institute, written by John R. Stanley, Kenneth G. Brill, and Dr. Jonathan Koomey. You can get it here.
The report outlines four metrics which are designed to help us quantify energy consumption and they present some interesting formulas which I present below:
SI-POM (Site Infrastructure Power Overhead Multiplier) which tells us how much power is consumed to run the DC facilities vs. to run the gear inside it.
SI-POM=
Data Center Power consumption at the meter / total hardware consumption at the plug
They suggest that a Tier 4 Data Center will peg out at 2.2
H-POM (Hardware Power Overhead Multiplier) tells us how much power is wasted on power supply conversion, loss to fans, etc. rather than power going to run the components of the gear.
H-POM=
AC hardware load at the plug / DC Hardware compute Load
They suggest that a data center with a 2.2 SI-POM will peg out at 1.33 on this exercise.
Deployed Hardware Utilization Ratio (DH-UR) is the metric that helps quantify the deployed equipment that is drawing power but is comatose; menaing not running an application, but is left on.
DH-UR=
Number of servers running live applications / Total number of deployed servers
For Storage:
Number of Terabytes of storage holding data / Total terabytes actually deployed
Deployed Hardware Utilization Efficiency (DH-UE) helps us quantify the opportunity for servers and storage to increase utilization by virtualizing. This conceptually gives us another way of looking at why we would want to consolidate servers at 25% load to run at 50% load in a virtual and scalable framework.
DH-UE=
Minimum number of servers necessary to handle peak compute load / Total number of servers deployed
I will spend more time, as I get it, to play around with some numbers to get some real world computations. Feel free to leave your own in the comments section too. The tide raises all boats in our sea of knowledge.
The report outlines four metrics which are designed to help us quantify energy consumption and they present some interesting formulas which I present below:
SI-POM (Site Infrastructure Power Overhead Multiplier) which tells us how much power is consumed to run the DC facilities vs. to run the gear inside it.
SI-POM=
Data Center Power consumption at the meter / total hardware consumption at the plug
They suggest that a Tier 4 Data Center will peg out at 2.2
H-POM (Hardware Power Overhead Multiplier) tells us how much power is wasted on power supply conversion, loss to fans, etc. rather than power going to run the components of the gear.
H-POM=
AC hardware load at the plug / DC Hardware compute Load
They suggest that a data center with a 2.2 SI-POM will peg out at 1.33 on this exercise.
Deployed Hardware Utilization Ratio (DH-UR) is the metric that helps quantify the deployed equipment that is drawing power but is comatose; menaing not running an application, but is left on.
DH-UR=
Number of servers running live applications / Total number of deployed servers
For Storage:
Number of Terabytes of storage holding data / Total terabytes actually deployed
Deployed Hardware Utilization Efficiency (DH-UE) helps us quantify the opportunity for servers and storage to increase utilization by virtualizing. This conceptually gives us another way of looking at why we would want to consolidate servers at 25% load to run at 50% load in a virtual and scalable framework.
DH-UE=
Minimum number of servers necessary to handle peak compute load / Total number of servers deployed
I will spend more time, as I get it, to play around with some numbers to get some real world computations. Feel free to leave your own in the comments section too. The tide raises all boats in our sea of knowledge.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Virtualization Hosting Dependencies
I mentioned that there were a few dependencies around virtualized hosting which in my opinion are not that dramatic, unless of course you own a data center that needs to be refurbished...
Power is the biggie, with cooling right up there as well. Most cabinets/racks draw 4KW a rack (42U cabinet) if you through a loaded Blade rack in the data center, you are looking at 7KW, essentially double. So what, right?
You will need to have the ability to do high density hosting which means 200W a square foot vs. the standard 100W a square foot.
For cooling you will need/want special tiles in the floor that increase airflow around the cabinets. For safety's sake you'll probably want to drop another CRAC in for sites with seasonal spike in utilization and corresponding heat signature(s).
If you want a green angle on the cooling, look North my friends. The smart data centers are using mother nature's inherent cooling capabilities to keep gear cool. They shut down several CRACs and use an exchanger to draw very cold dry air into the facilities, reducing the carbon footprint of that data center through reductions in power usage and cooling.
Depending upon the age of data centers this will vary from extremely difficult/expensive/not worth it to a few weeks of refitting.
Power is the biggie, with cooling right up there as well. Most cabinets/racks draw 4KW a rack (42U cabinet) if you through a loaded Blade rack in the data center, you are looking at 7KW, essentially double. So what, right?
You will need to have the ability to do high density hosting which means 200W a square foot vs. the standard 100W a square foot.
For cooling you will need/want special tiles in the floor that increase airflow around the cabinets. For safety's sake you'll probably want to drop another CRAC in for sites with seasonal spike in utilization and corresponding heat signature(s).
If you want a green angle on the cooling, look North my friends. The smart data centers are using mother nature's inherent cooling capabilities to keep gear cool. They shut down several CRACs and use an exchanger to draw very cold dry air into the facilities, reducing the carbon footprint of that data center through reductions in power usage and cooling.
Depending upon the age of data centers this will vary from extremely difficult/expensive/not worth it to a few weeks of refitting.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Actual ROI of Virtualization
As I look ahead to 2008 and pay attention to what my customers are asking me about and what we are discussing, One of the top 2 things is virtualization which ties into the bigger picture of Infrastructure Management. The other is reducing the cost of Email management.
The top reasons companies are talking about it are:
1. Cost savings
2. It is considered green
3. It is a way to create space in a full data center
The cost savings moved the discussions along from ‘What is this virtualization thing everyone is talking about’ to ‘How do we build a plan to virtualize parts of our infrastructure?’. I will say that in my personal experience, the impacts were pretty dramatic in a data center move I was a part of. Here are the numbers:
Overall Consolidation ratio: 20:1
1,000 Wintel boxes into 50 Sun Blades running VMWare
8,000 square feet to ~200 Square feet
Cooling is 1/10 of what it was
Power is 1/10 of what it was
For a couple of large accounts that I work with, I will take you through the back of the napkin math we did on a whiteboard to quantify the ROI of Virtualization:
100,000 physical Wintel servers collapse into 5,000 Sun Blades
Power is reduced to 1/10
Cooling is reduced to 1/10
Floor space in two data centers 10:1 reduction in footprint
The assumptions were that the costs (they are leased machines) were a wash on the hardware:
• The Wintel boxes draw was 230 Watts at 50% Utilization so 23,000 KW per month
• @ $0.35/KW multiplied by 730 Hours in a month comes out to ~$6M per month on power costs to run machines and cool them.
• Did not include facilities costs
Virtualization costs:
• 5,000 blades draw 3900kw*730*.35= $900,000/mo (6 to 1 reduction)
• Add in costs of VMWare - $5,000 per instance * 5000 = $25M
• 5 month payback w/license inclusion
Are there dependencies? Yes, and in the next entry, I will explore some of the dependencies, which are negligible IMHO.
The top reasons companies are talking about it are:
1. Cost savings
2. It is considered green
3. It is a way to create space in a full data center
The cost savings moved the discussions along from ‘What is this virtualization thing everyone is talking about’ to ‘How do we build a plan to virtualize parts of our infrastructure?’. I will say that in my personal experience, the impacts were pretty dramatic in a data center move I was a part of. Here are the numbers:
Overall Consolidation ratio: 20:1
1,000 Wintel boxes into 50 Sun Blades running VMWare
8,000 square feet to ~200 Square feet
Cooling is 1/10 of what it was
Power is 1/10 of what it was
For a couple of large accounts that I work with, I will take you through the back of the napkin math we did on a whiteboard to quantify the ROI of Virtualization:
100,000 physical Wintel servers collapse into 5,000 Sun Blades
Power is reduced to 1/10
Cooling is reduced to 1/10
Floor space in two data centers 10:1 reduction in footprint
The assumptions were that the costs (they are leased machines) were a wash on the hardware:
• The Wintel boxes draw was 230 Watts at 50% Utilization so 23,000 KW per month
• @ $0.35/KW multiplied by 730 Hours in a month comes out to ~$6M per month on power costs to run machines and cool them.
• Did not include facilities costs
Virtualization costs:
• 5,000 blades draw 3900kw*730*.35= $900,000/mo (6 to 1 reduction)
• Add in costs of VMWare - $5,000 per instance * 5000 = $25M
• 5 month payback w/license inclusion
Are there dependencies? Yes, and in the next entry, I will explore some of the dependencies, which are negligible IMHO.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Inaugural Post
Welcome to my third blog and the inaugural post.
I have decided to augment the other areas of IT I cover at IdentityStuff and PCIStuff with something that I consider to be a game changing catalyst of IT Management - Virtualization. I will explore new technologies, tried and true technology application as well as some topics related to making IT Greener.
I am working with some clients right now that are yielding some breathtaking numbers around truly quantifying the ROI of Virtualization. I will share those numbers when I am done crunching them.
Welcome, and as always, feel free to let me know if I am full of it - good or bad...
I have decided to augment the other areas of IT I cover at IdentityStuff and PCIStuff with something that I consider to be a game changing catalyst of IT Management - Virtualization. I will explore new technologies, tried and true technology application as well as some topics related to making IT Greener.
I am working with some clients right now that are yielding some breathtaking numbers around truly quantifying the ROI of Virtualization. I will share those numbers when I am done crunching them.
Welcome, and as always, feel free to let me know if I am full of it - good or bad...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
