Mark Bramfitt - Utilities & IT

"First" DCIM ROI Calculator from Emerson Network Power

An announcement from Emerson Network Power hit my email box a week or two ago saying they were offering the first (and "only") data center infrastructure management financial evaluation tool, and I naturally was curious to see what they had come up with.

If the tool had solid calculations predicting energy efficiency gains, it might be suitable to support utility energy efficiency incentive program applications.

Sorry to say that I haven't yet gotten a good look at the tool, or been able to ask questions about the underpinnings of the program. (You have to contact Emerson to get an evaluation using the tool, and though I spoke with company representatives at Teladata"s Technology Convergence Conference last week, I neglected to ask them for a test drive.)

I'm guessing that utilities will still have to rely on actual before and after measurements of conditions in a data center where DCIM tools are implemented given the complex nature of the energy savings opportunities.

After all, DCIM technology can generate efficiencies in a half dozen or more ways, in combination with other measures.  For example, asset management features can lead an IT manager to distribute IT equipment more homogeneously on an electric load basis, allowing for lower airflow requirements and possibly less stringent environmental conditions.

DCIM can support the implementation of a host of airflow management solutions, from a simple re balance through tile management, to direct control of variable speed fans in CRACs or CRAHs.

Given that energy savings are likely to be a significant portion of making a case for DCIM projects, I'm sure Eaton's tool must make some assumptions. I know it must be part of the package as a screen shot of an opening window of the ROI calculator asks for the local energy price!

I'll be on the lookout for calculation tools that evaluate DCIM to see if any could seamlessly mesh with utility program requirements, but I expect that evaluation tools will make broad assumptions that would still require at-the-site metering and monitoring to qualify.

EULs for Data Center Power Equipment

A bit of utility energy efficiency program managers insider baseball, so skip if not of interest!

I collected a bit of useful data yesterday at the Technology Convergence Conference hosted by Teladata in Santa Clara yesterday in a presentation by Eaton, a big provider of power delivery and conditioning equipment for data centers.

Eaton posted a short list of the expected useful life for four classes of equipment. That's obviously useful for data center facility managers who have to anticipate equipment replacements, and even for accountants who have to set depreciation schedules. (Well maybe not for the accountants as I suspect the schedules are set by IRS policy, not reality!)

Here's the list:

UPS equipment: 12 years

Transmission switchgear: 12 - 15 years

CRAC units: 10 years

Circuit breakers: 12 years

It's a pity we don't have estimates for power distribution units and distribution transformers, and I wonder if there isn't quite a lot of variation for cooling units (how long to CRAHs last?), but there's something here for utility program managers as well as data center operators.

For the DC managers, I wonder if they really plan for equipment replacement based on these time frames. In particular, I've seen switchgear and circuit breakers that have lived several lives based on these numbers!

For utility program managers, the UPS and CRAC units figures could be a good basis for establishing Effective Useful Life (EUL) metrics for your energy efficiency programs. 

Let me explain that in layman's terms for non-program folks: If you approach a utility for an energy efficiency rebate for a UPS system that is say nine years old, they are likely to base the payment on the energy savings of a premium efficiency unit you might purchase, compared to a "standard" efficiency unit on the market today - not the difference between the unit you buy and the existing unit.

The premise is that at nine years old, you have to buy a new unit anyway, so the efficiency gain of buying a modern unit is a given. The utility will only reward you for going to a premium efficiency unit.

Now, if you replace a unit that is not close to the end of its EUL, the utility can provide more of an incentive because you are retiring the equipment early.

I'll look for more references to EULs for data center equipment out in the industry and pass them along as I uncover them.

 

Wholesale and Retail Colo Markets Blurring

According to Data Center Knowledge, wholesale colocation data center center company DuPont Fabros is dipping its toes into the retail market, with cabinet level leases available in New Jersey and northern Virginia.

DFT joins Digital Realty Trust in exploring this market - Digital began offering smaller space increments, now under the moniker of Turn Key Flex, some time ago.  Digital offers modular units that are a megawatt or more of IT power capacity, not rack scale units.

DuPont's focus on New Jersey makes obvious sense to me, with reports of something of a tech boom in the New York City metro region, and of course the always hopping financial services sector. Lots of small tech (and probably financial) firms opt for cabinet level colo, so they should have success there.

Northern Virginia lives off of the government and defense sectors in Washington DC, and it was my impression that customers were therefore much larger, requiring the wholesale space that is the bread and butter for both DFT and Digital.

Colos have been a difficult market for utility energy efficiency programs, and none more so than the retail sector. Most of the EE measures for data centers require the cooperation of whoever runs the rack, from selection of equipment and technologies, virtualization, and on to airflow management. When the cabinet manager is renting from the facility owner, the split incentives tend to stymie cooperation on efficiency.

But if these market moves mean new construction, utilities can still play a big role promoting economization and premium efficiency equipment (for cooling and power distribution).

As far as economic development, retail colo gets built near potential customers - they aren't built where is land is cheap and power almost free. So, good news for utilities in established colo markets, but not opportunity for those trying to attract data center development in non-traditional areas.

Optical Data Storage Returns!

I was really intrigued to see this report from Data Center Dynamics of an announcement by Facebook at the Open Compute Summit earlier this week regarding another data storage innovation.

Facebook has designed an optical data storage array using Blu-ray disk technology, delivering high data density, very low power use, and long storage life.

I remember talking to optical storage industry people back in 2005, when they were considering whether to try and get into the data center storage market (using DVDs). The upshot was that the industry focused solely on consumer products, and of course hashing out the next optical disc standards.

The prototype rack holds 10,000 Blu-ray disks in magazines, using mechanical means to access and read the disks, very much like a tape magazine system. The array holds a petabyte of storage, and uses eighty percent less energy than Facebook's other "cold storage" innovation, which is essentially a data center-scale MAID system.

(The data center-scale MAID system is a separate room for data "cold storage", where rarely-accessed data is saved on hard drives which are then shut off. You can get the data back, but with somewhat slower access times. By housing the equipment in dedicated rooms, the environmental conditions can be set far wider than for other data center IT equipment, delivering greater energy savings.)

There is other news from the conference this week that is of interest to data center energy efficiency junkies, but Facebook deserves lots of credit over the years for exploring data storage options. They made use of rack scale MAID systems years ago, and continue to lead the way with these new schemes.

I think there are real opportunities for utility energy efficiency program offerings in the data storage space, despite some challenges. At the very least, there is an opportunity to educate customers about energy efficiency options, and I think an incentive program could be developed to support the adoption of solid state, and now optical, data storage technologies.

The Return of...Magnetic Tape Data Storage?

Every quarter the Economist runs a special technology section that never fails to enchant, and the latest version in the November 30th, 2013 edition) didn't disappoint.

A story entitled "Magnetic tape to the rescue" caught my eye, and if the purported trend to revive tape storage in the era of "big data" holds true, it may have some interesting impacts on data center energy use.

First the article notes that the growth in stored data is marching at a much faster pace than the need for compute resources, doubling every two years. Compute growth has evidently slowed from a rate of doubling every five years to something like a ten percent annual clip.

But for all the talk of solid state storage systems taking market share from spinning disks, the inexorable decline of magnetic tape systems seems to have stopped, and use of the oldest storage technology may actually begin to increase.

Mag tape systems are still used for long-term archiving of data that is very rarely accessed. Basically you store info to tape and send it off to a repository somewhere, hoping never to have a need to retrieve it.

Its an excellent medium for this use, with great data density, low cost, long life, and next to negligible energy use (not much to record it, and not much to keep the store room cool and dry). So, for storage of "cold data", it really can't be beat.

Of course there are efforts afoot to make tape storage even more attractive by increasing storage density (35 terabytes on a single cartridge!).

I do wonder if the reintroduction of tape drives in data centers might have negative consequences on overall energy use. It was always conventional wisdom that the very tight environmental requirements that are still pervasive in the industry were relics of the days of punch cards and mag tape drives - especially the very narrow tolerances for humidity.

I expect that if mag tape drives still require special environmental conditions, they'll be housed in separate rooms in efficient data center designs, so that the "factory" machines (servers, com gear, and solid state and spinning disk drives) can sweat it out on the shop floor.

 

Server Room EE Program Guidance for Pacific Northwest Utilities

I recently participated in an effort sponsored by the Bonneville Power Administration to identify leading energy efficiency program measures suitable for delivery to the server room and small data center market in the Pacific Northwest. The overall project umbrella is named the Energy Efficiency Emerging Technologies, or E3 program.

The collaborative project was lead by the Wahington State University Extension Energy Program, pulling together a pretty heady roster of utility and industry participants.

The process included an initial identification of around fifty energy efficiency measures, which were whittled down to ten or so. After presentations on each of the technologies, the team chose a set of measures to pass along to BPA.

Narrowing down the measures to those that are suitable for server rooms and closets wasn't too difficult, but trying to score the measures based on their suitability for a prescriptive rebate program approach I think proved difficult for the team.

(A prescriptive rebate program offers a set financial incentive for qualified products or services - like offering $150 per server removed during a virtualization/consolidation project.)

However difficult the process might have been, I heartily agree with at least three of the four recommended measures: server virtualization, solid state drives, ongoing commissioning of economizers, and airflow management.

I continue to recommend that utilities offer rebate programs for server virtualization (really, for consolidation, and I prefer using virtualization/consolidation as the moniker) for the small data center market, as I'm convinced that market penetration there is still low. The measure captures the removal of unused but still deployed servers, the energy efficiency gains from the latest model servers, and the reduction of servers deployed through virtualization.

The solid state drive measure will need research work to develop program parameters, but I think it has lots of potential across all classes of data centers.

Commissioning of existing economizers was not a measure I supported, simply because most server rooms, and indeed enterprise data centers, don't have economizers. (The group passed on recommending an economizer retrofit measure due to installation difficulties and the looming ASHRAE regulations that would appear to mandate the installation of economizers in all new construction and for any data center upgrade projects).

Lastly, some utilities have had great success with what I call an airflow management retro-commissioning program, or "tune up". The program  pays for calculated energy savings based on on-site measurements before and after airflow management upgrades are installed, so it's not really a prescriptive program at all. Also, it is limited to server rooms and localised data centers with dedicated cooling systems, so addresses only larger facilities.

I would hope to see BPA and its member utilities take these recommendations to heart and deliver solid, consistent programs in the Northwest - there is scads of potential in this market and utilities can play a vital role in moving the market with these and other efficiency measures.

EPA Utility Data Center EE Program Guide Webinar Thursday

Our bi-monthly webinar providing an overview of the EPA's "Understanding and Designing Energy Efficiency Programs For Data Centers" is this Thursday at 1 pm EST.

Check here at the EPA's web site to register for the webinar, and to get a copy of the guide.

As I mentioned on the AESP webinar two weeks ago, this is a chance to get a rather more extended overview of the guide given that we have an hour instead of just twenty minutes.

Facebook's Open Compute Project Changing Equipment Industry

Facebook has taken a unique position in the data center industry by being completely open and transparent about their efforts to achieve optimum efficiency in their facilities, even establishing  the Open Compute Project, where partners share best practices.

Compared to many other players who build utility-scale data centers, Facebook not only talks about efficiency but runs established this collaborative effort with other partners to publish actual designs. This includes everything from data center schematics to IT equipment specifications.

Examples include how to design a data center that uses outside air with supplemental evaporative cooling, to "stripped down" servers that optimize airflow and can run at inlet temperatures of 85 degrees.

Bloomberg Businessweek has a nice summary of Facebook's project, with a few nuggets about how the big IT OEMs like Dell, HP, and Cisco are responding in the marketplace. (Disregard the bit about power overheads, which are somewhat unclear but imply that traditional data centers have a PUE of 3 or 4!)

We've known for some time that Google and other large server buyers spec their own equipment, but it appears that more and more they are bypassing the OEMs and having their equipment made by companies in Asia. The latest industry sales statistics show both HP and Dell losing a few points of server market share, with the "other" category, comprised of these contract manufacturers, gaining.

Dell and HP have both launched counterattacks - Dell with the approach of building to spec for large customers, and HP with their "Moonshot" project which will improve energy efficiency across their entire server product line.

So this is once again a story of the big players leading the way on energy efficiency, with kudos to Facebook for their open approach. I think it still leaves a large opportunity for utilities to promote energy efficiency to the enterprise market, and perhaps even more so for the server room and localized data center tiers, even for IT equipment measures.

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