Mark Bramfitt - Utilities & IT

Facebook Has Moved From MAID, to well...MAID

In my courses on data center energy efficiency, we touch, too briefly, upon data storage technologies that can reduce energy use. I say too briefly because data storage growth rates vastly exceed compute growth, and in my mind not enough attention is paid to the half dozen or so energy efficiency measures and best practices.

One of my more enjoyable anecdotes was to talk about MAID storage. The technology was pioneered by Copan about five years ago, and despite a similar offering from Hitachi, it hasn't seemed to gain any traction in the market.

MAID systems are really all about controlling disk drives - a software front end determines whether the data to be stored will be accessed often or rarely.  The rarely-accessed data is stored to disk drives that are then shut down - you can get the data again, though it takes a little longer to get to it as the drive has to be spun back up.

A brilliant system and very easy to see the efficiency gain: in Copan's system no more than a quarter of the drives could be on at any time, so energy savings was 75% compared to normal cabinet full of drives.

The anecdote was that Facebook was an early adopter of the technology, so that meant that the profiles of unpopular people were being sent to the idle disks, while popular people had profiles on live disks. Funny! Of course in reality Facebook was probably simply saving older posts to the idle disks, as people don't really search back very far in profiles.

Now comes word through DatacenterDynamics Focus (page 64 of the current issue, subscribe here) that Facebook has brought the MAID concept in house, though in a new way. Facebook now sends little-accessed data to "cold storage" - disks that are turned off, but also housed in a separate data center. 

The use of a separate data center makes a lot of sense when you think about it. There is no need for backup power for the cold storage racks; no UPS, no generators. The racks likely need far less cooling capacity than "standard" storage or compute racks too.

Will this approach work for enterprise data center operators? I don't think so - it's a pretty customized solution that will work for large-scale operators like managed services and cloud computing sites, but I doubt many enterprise users will be able to justify dedicated data storage sites. And again, it doesn't look like the MAID solution has any traction at all.

I expect that solid state storage solutions will be the primary go-to for enterprise applications, along with data management measures (deduplication, compression, thin-provisioning, etc.).

Now let me get back to reworking that anecdote...

 

GSMI Green Data Center Conference Presentation Deck

I took a quick trip to the outskirts of Dallas last week to deliver one of two keynote addresses at the GSMI Green Data Center Conference, focusing my remarks on the intersections of the data center and utility industries.

My remarks covered not only the utility and energy factors inherent in making a siting decison for a new data center, but why energy issues will be increasingly important for IT managers even for existing operations.

The concluding theme was that the IT industry and utilities have more to do with each other than ever, and that there are opportunities to partner on energy efficiency and perhaps load management and self generation. And for the big players, a need for them to help guide and influence energy policy and regulations, given the importance of the grid in supporting their business vision.

ASs I noted in an earlier post, it was gratifying to get insightful questions about energy policy in the final few minutes of my time slot, as well as good one-on-one discussions afterwards!

Here's a copy of the deck:

Download GSMI GDCON Dallas 6 2013

Sabey Spills Power Cost in Eastern WA

I stopped in at the Uptime Institute Symposium this week in Santa Clara and visited the Sabey booth in the exposition hall (Sabey received a GEIT award at the event). I was impressed by the fact that they touted the energy efficient design and operation of their colocation data centers alongside notes on how cheap the power is feeding the ones in Washington State.

For example, their data center under development in Quincy is fed with hydroelectric power from the adjacent Columbia River, at the stunningly low cost of 2.25 cents per kWh. That's wholly clean power that is less expensive than the lowest prices I've seen quoted in the South (just over three cents per kWh, and mostly sourced from coal-fired plants).

The Quincy data center uses air-side free cooling with evaporative back-up, and you have to praise a company for making that investment when the power prices are so very low.

I thought Quincy took the cake and may very well meet Sabey's claim of the lowest energy price anywhere in the world, but their own information on their Columbia data center in central Washington beats it at 1.96 cents per kWh! The LEED Gold-certified 438,000 square foot facility features free cooling that operates over ninety percent of the year.

Most of Sabey's data centers are in Washington State, but their latest is the conversion of the old Verizon switching center in Manhattan, a high rise with 40 megawatts of power coming from redundant transmission voltage feeds from Consolidated Edison.

Sabey doesn't make any claims for low energy prices in New York, but says that they get a "25% to 30% discount" from ConEd. Utilities generally offer lower rates for customers who take primary or transmission voltage service, but I've never seen discounts that high, so I wonder what the deal is.

Utility Economic Development Teams Target DC Attraction

So we have a story from the always excellent Data Center Dynamics (subscribe here) about another utility that is focusing economic development activities to attract data centers to their service area. This time it is Appalachian Power, a unit of American Electric Power, serving Tenessee, West Virginia, and parts of Virginia.

The utility appears to be doing all of the "right" things to make their service area attractive to new DC development - in particular identifying specific locations where power capacity is available and can be quickly provided for new projects. (It appears that AEP is offering this service across its portfolio of utilities.)

This is similar to what Dominion Power in Virginia offers: they have a crack team that coordinates all aspects of utility service planning for data centers and have also pre-identified locations that they can serve quickly.

I also know that AEP has at least a modest track record in offering energy efficiency programs, and has an effort underway at one of their units to specifically tackle the data center market. (By contrast, Dominion is almost proud of the fact that they don't offer energy efficiency programs.)

The optimist in me would challenge Appalachian Power and AEP to think about offering an energy efficiency service for new data centers, making sure that the facilities they attract are industry-leading in terms of efficient design and operation.

Utilities like Silicon Valley Power, serving the City of Santa Clara, have shown that this is a great value proposition: they too have a great team that makes siting your data center there a seamless and painless process, which is why over half of their load comes from data centers (yes, well over half). But they have also offered robust energy efficiency programs for their data center customers for many years.

And then there is the cynical view. Utility scale data centers are locating in Virginia and environs for one reason only: the power is dirt cheap, because it comes from dirty coal. Energy efficiency incentives, or for that matter the offensive tax breaks that states offer to "compete" in attracting what are acknowledged to be facilities with few employees, really don't matter in the siting decision calculus. 

In a just environment, states and localities would not engage in a race to the bottom, competing to offer breaks to companies that simply don't need them, at the expense of reasonable tax revenues that fund the provision of shared services. 

And as for efficiency, other states need to follow California's lead and enact reasonable energy efficiency standards for new data center construction, so that these facilities don't "value engineer" features out because they don't pencil in the face of sub-four-cent-per-kWh power rates.

New Classification: "Street Server"?!

Caught this on a walk through San Francisco yesterday.

There is something of a tradition in the City to place unwanted furniture out on the sidewalk, hoping that someone will find use in it. It generally works for everything other than IKEA case goods, which usually don't make it structurally from the move to the street.

Well, what do we have here, leaning up against the lamp post, behind a chair?

Why, it's a server! I was pretty surprised, as I have often been told that there is a solid recycle/reuse industry in place that takes old data center and telco equipment back. 

In fact, in California, there is a consumer electronics recycling program in effect that pays a redemption amount for PCs, printers, televisions, and the like, which is why you don't see too much gear on the sidewalk (there are collection events where you can drop off the equipment for free).

Just a note from the utility energy efficiency program perspective: several key IT efficiency measures result in equipment replacement, and utilities are loathe to think that their programs contribute to improper disposal.

Utilities are also leery of "trade-in" incentives (i.e. paying customers to turn in outdated monitors when they buy efficient LCD units), because they fear paying for equipment that has already been relegated to the dark corners of garages or IT graveyards in company storerooms.

Let's hope that this unit was replaced by a new, premium efficiency model at least. Doesn't look like it was decommissioned as part ov a virtualization project, or there would be a stack of them on this corner!

DCs Could Confound Building Benchmarking

I've been watching with interest as regulators and legislators have started mandating that building owners "benchmark" their energy use.

Typically this involves entering in some rudimentary data about the building (area, location, age, use) and coupling that with energy use to come up with a rating or score, usually on a scale of one to one hundred.

Utilities have had to wrestle a bit with these initiatives, because of course building owners turn to them for historical billing information to complete the benchmarking tool.

Generally that means setting up some type of automated process where building owners can log into a system, prove who they are, and retrieve usage information in a useable format. In California, PG&E has a system that seems to work pretty smoothly.

But if you want to test out a worst-case scenario for these initiatives, look to New York City, where local utility Consolidated Edison has to cope with a huge customer base, and the complications of sorting out building owners, operators, and tenants.

The New York Times describes how the process is going so far, with indications that there are wide varieties in energy efficiency for large buildings, with age and hence construction type the likely variable.

One thing that bears consideration for benchmarking commercial buildings is whether there are data center uses intermingled with office and other commercial space. If the benchmarking tool doesn't appropriately account for the energy intensity of data center use, the building as a whole may receive an inappropriately low score.

With enterprise data centers designed for energy densities of fifty to a hundred times that of commercial office space, this can be a real issue. (Add in server closets, and for that matter commercial kitchens, as other confounding effects.)

I know of a commercial office building in San Francisco for example, where the energy use of thirty-two stories of office space is only a third of the use for the building, with the balance going to an enterprise data center that occupies less than one full floor.

 

 

Intel vs. ARM from The Economist

I've posted before about the potential use of ARM-designed chips in servers as an energy efficiency play. This article from The Economist focuses on the potential market battle between Intel and the ARM cluster of companies, noting that energy efficiency is the basis of the competition.

In a nutshell, ARM chips dominate mobile electronics applications, which of course means that energy efficiency is a prime design attribute (to maximize battery life). Intel dominates in desktops, laptops, and data center gear, and their processors bring awesome computing capability to bear at increasing energy efficiencies. (Disclosure: Intel is one of my clients.)

It's been posited that ARM-like designs would be applicable to Intel's markets on the basis of energy efficiency - a server running ARM chip sets could use as little as a tenth of the power of an Intel-based model, according to HP (HP has a project to develop ARM-based servers called "Moonshot"). ARM chips might also be suitable for PCs - certainly in the laptop, tablet, and new "ultrabook" categories.

The article points out many of the barriers that would prevent one side from gaining traction in the other's turf: the PC market is stagnant (so why bother), Intel has developed the Atom processor which has efficiency on a par with comparable ARM products, ARM designs likely lack the performance needed for server workloads, and the whole issue of whether software companies and other industry players will support new platforms.

I'll raise just two issues.

First, it has always appeared to me that issue of server energy efficiency is mooted by the incredibly low average utilization rates in most applications. Even the best internet-focused companies with largely homogeneous workloads only report rates in the twenty percent range, and enterprise users are lucky to see rates over ten percent. So efficient power supplies or even comparative advantages in processor efficiency simply don't make the difference that improved utilization would. 

Second, the PC market is relatively stagnant, but there are tremendous opportunities to drive efficiency through refresh and power management. The latest generation of Intel processors are far more efficient than cores made just three years ago, and coupled with power management, desktops use just a little more energy than a late generation laptop.

Which is why I counsel utilities to promote server virtualization and consolidation and desktop power management as their primary programs in these markets. Yes, there are discussions at some utilities about designing programs that reward the purchase of premium efficiency desktops and servers, but that will drive marginal energy savings compared to these two measures.

As to the ARM/Intel foray - battling over energy efficiency is a great thing!

 

Speaking At: AESP's 22nd National Conference in San Diego

I'll be delivering a paper presentation on Wednesday February 8th in San Diego at the Association of Energy Service Professionals 22nd National Conference, which runs Monday through Thursday.

We'll post the paper, which I wrote with Alan Rose at Intel, after the event. The title is Opportunities for Desktop Computer Energy Efficiency Programs, and here is the abstract:

There are proven technologies that dramatically improve the energy efficiency of desktop computing infrastructure, but poor market adoption calls for the engagement of utilities and their service providers to employ program approaches to stimulate the three large user markets of large businesses and institutions, small and medium businesses, and consumers. Although there are challenges in delivering programs that will deliver cost-effective, defensible results, the opportunities for dramatic energy efficiency accomplishments are too large to ignore. This paper makes recommendations for program approaches that leverage vendor support, meet regulatory requirements, and that benefit consumers. 

 

 

Video: NetApp on Data Center Efficiency

Thought I'd dig through some of my files and clean up directories, and came across a couple of videos I thought I'd share. (Don't you just hate watching yourself - or even just hearing a recording of your voice? It never matches the image you have of yourself somehow.)

Here's a video I helped NetApp with some time ago:

  

Great Site For Guidance On Data Storage

Here's a great site for those of you interested in developments in the data storage world.

The three Davids (Vellante, Floyer, and Butler) behind this effort have perfected a great model for sharing industry insight and developing and delivering high-quality content. They have a real interest in the energy efficiency attributes of storage technology, so this is the place to gather information on that subject.

I recommend signing up and enrolling in the subscription service, and watching out for regular webinar briefings. I sat in on one this week which clued me in to the move to solid state storage in data center applications, which utilities and data center operators should be watching with keen interest.

(It's clearly time that I develop a resource links section on my landing page - I'll get right on it!)