Mapping the Green Road (9-Aug-07)
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MI Summary
Full article: Mapping the Green Road (9-Aug-07)
In the third quarter the industry should see documents from the Green Grid addressing data collection, there will also be a data centre efficiency baseline market study identifying the key factors that drive companies to take action on data centre power consumption. At the end of the year development will begin on a database focused on data centre characteristics and performance that organisations may ultimately benchmark themselves against.
The aim is to enable the collection of data that will be needed on a real time basis; this will provide guidance for the design of future data centres and operations of existing ones.
There are a number of areas where data centre efficiency could improve, including cooling techniques and a move to things being on a lower power state so they can be brought on when they are needed as opposed to the current state of data centres being “always on”.
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The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, provided its technical roadmap during a web cast today, putting some dates on deliverables.
This quarter, the industry should see documents from The Green Grid that address data collection, including a study that documents existing standards and metrics for data center energy efficiency and identifies coverage gaps, as well as an update to its earlier study on efficiency, focusing on workload classification through data center segregation models.
In the area of data assessment, the third quarter also will bring a data center efficiency baseline market study, to identify key factors driving companies to take action on data center power consumption and the challenges in doing so. Also expected this quarter is a study on power distribution options for the data center.
Before the year is out, The Green Grid also promises a study that identifies the requirements for collecting and aggregating data center power consumption data; one on operational best practices that focus on right-sizing the data center including how best to adoption virtualization and consolidation technologies; and one on cooling options.
It will round out the year by beginning development work on a database focused on data center characteristics and performance schema, that organizations may ultimately benchmark themselves against, as well as with an initial technology roadmap. This will provide an initial assessment of existing and emerging technologies affecting data center efficiency and performance, taking into consideration both return on investment and risk to the end user.
What’s that all add up to? “Data center managers today are working with some but not a complete set of the information they need to actively manage their facilities for efficiency,” said Dell technology strategist John Pflueger, who is a member of the Green Grid's technical working group. “We are going to enable the collection of the sort of data you will need on a real time basis, as well as pool collective experience, to provide guidance as to designing for future data centers and the operation of existing ones.”
As data center managers get the ability to measure what’s going on in the data center in real time, it will become possible for them to measure the value of a large number of changes, the consortium says.
But given the pressure CIOs are under to meet performance requirements, do they care that much about data center efficiency—particularly if that introduces a performance risk? The short answer, the Green Grid says, is yes.
“There was a time you talked to facilities and IT people and they didn’t’ talk to each other,” said Jon Haas, Energy Efficiency Programs Manager, Intel, also a technical committee member of The Green Grid. “Now we see them together. In the past they were isolated and now they are not--and that is coming from a top-down direction.”
The closer relationship is particularly noticeable in certain regions of the country — that is to say, the east and west coasts, where companies are running up against serious issues of energy availability for given facilities. The Green Grid says that these companies may be dealing with utilities who are telling them they’ll have to work within an energy cap, and in that situation, getting the most productivity out of the data center for a given power budget becomes extremely important.
What technologies are going to come to the rescue? That’s all still under review, but Pflueger says that virtualization tops most organizations’ lists. Still, it has a few pitfalls.
“When you look at where energy is consumed in a data center that you might be able to avoid, certainly," he says. "Systems that aren’t being heavily utilized are leaving some performance on the table. Virtualization is a great tool to help address that but it’s not a panacea. Anyone looking at consolidation exercises has to be aware of what they should and shouldn’t do.”
Some options may harness some decidedly low-technology (think Mother Nature) when it comes to cooling, which is where a big chunk of power is consumed.
“We know that can be improved for the new data center, the question is how much,” said Pflueger. “We see a lot of innovative approaches to cooling with respect even to bringing in fresh air in the data center in those regions where you can do that.”
Another potential big win: shutting down certain servers for a certain length of time when possible. It seems obvious, but doing so is a little more difficult than it sounds.
“The always-on data center needs to move to always available, meaning moving things to a low power state and bringing them on when they’re needed. But they have to be ready to go,” said Haas. “Going from low power to semi-low power to completely on states — to take the greatest advantage of things like virtualization — is one of the technical items on the agenda going forward. It holds a lot of promise.”
- Source: Enterprise IT Planet.com
