Yesterday I went to an Aperture-sponsored event in downtown Chicago that Andrew Fanara from the federal Environmental Protection Agency spoke at. Much of it was information that he has spoken about before and that we’ve reported, all of it around the data center energy efficiency issue that the EPA has gotten more involved with in the past couple years.

A major focus of the event was measurement. Leaders in the industry say that data centers must learn to measure how much power they’re consuming in order to reduce it. Then they can have before-and-after accounts of their Power Usage Effectiveness number, which is an efficiency metric dividing your total facility load by the IT load.

Your PUE number is like golf — the closer to 1, the better. At least that has always been the common wisdom. The goal, says experts, is to reduce your PUE. But sometimes an IT energy efficiency project can play games with that number.

Steve Yellen from Aperture said a virtualization project can temporarily hurt your PUE number. Take this example: You have 10 megawatts coming into a facility, and 5 of them are taken up by the IT load. You virtualize and consolidate servers, thereby reducing your server footprint, and thereby reducing your IT load. So now your IT load is only 4 megawatts even though your facility load is still 10 megawatts. So your PUE would go from 2 to 2.5.

Presumably there would be an adjustment. You would see that the IT load had decreased, and so you would adjust your facility load accordingly. According to Yellen, everything would be hunky dory again, right? Wrong. Your PUE would still take a hit. Let’s take the same example:

• Your facility load is 10 megawatts and your IT load is 5 megawatts, so your PUE is 2.
• You virtualize and consolidate so that your IT load becomes 4 megawatts, a one-megawatt reduction. Your PUE is now 2.5. Uh-oh.
• So you adjust, reducing your facility load by one megawatt to match with the IT load reduction. So now your facility load is 9 megawatts while your IT load is 4 megawatts. Your PUE is now 2.25, which is still worse than the PUE of 2 you had before you virtualized and consolidated. Still uh-oh.

In fact, the more energy you save with your virtualization/consolidation project, the worse it could be for your PUE. Say your project reduced your IT load by two megawatts instead of one. So you reduce your facility load by two megawatts as well. That means the facility load is 8 megawatts and the IT load is 3 megawatts, yielding a PUE of 2.67. Uh-oh.

Taking it a step further, any project that improves your IT load alone will yield a worse PUE. If you buy those new super-duper efficient servers, that could make your PUE worse. If you install blanking panels and move perf tiles around the right way, that will improve your PUE.

Let’s not panic here, because there is a good side to this. If I consolidate servers, I have fewer servers to cool. That presumably means that I’ll be able to reduce my facility load further because I might be able to shut down one of the cooling units. And maybe fewer servers means I can get rid of one of my uninterruptible power systems (UPS) units. In the end, it might all even out, but it may just leave you with a zero-sum game instead of an improved PUE number, which is what you think it would do.

In the end, what’s most important is reducing your overall power load, and if you can document how it all happened, all the better.

As a managed hosting company, Contegix by necessity has to contend with every major operating system. But to run its own business, Contegix is an open source shop. “We run Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” said CEO Matthew Porter, “and we use Hyperic as the core of our management and monitoring systems.”

From its St. Louis data center, Contegix uses Hyperic’s open source HQ management tool to monitor its own applications, and customers can use the system to get their own metrics, even if “they run any operating system on the planet,” Porter said.

Initially, Porter balked at the prospect of installing Hyperic because he didn’t want to put an agent on every machine. However, Porter also wanted the ability to do in-depth monitoring of applications, and not just take stock of the network. The other tools that did both application-performance and network monitoring were SNMP-based, Porter said. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with SNMP, but our network engineers would have to become experts in it,” Porter said. “We made a financial decision to go with Hyperic and install agents because it was expensive to train our engineers.”

Some customers with servers that were three-to-four years old needed more RAM to run agents, and Contegix provided them with the memory they needed. Contegix now collects 25,000 metrics per minute via Hyperic and provides its managed services customers with the ability to set their own thresholds and parameters.

 Trends in data center power was the topic at AFCOM New England Chapter’s meeting this week, and apparently it’s a subject that resonates with members—at least judging by the nearly 100 attendees who showed up. (As the New England chapter enters its third year, President Rocko Graziano, whose real job is manager of infrastructure operations and services at L.L. Bean, said this was the largest meeting yet). Two speakers gave the audience their take on the some emerging trends they see taking shape.

Rudy Kraus, CEO of Validus DC Systems, a provider of direct current (DC) power infrastructure for data centers and telecommunications facilities, naturally sees a bright future for data centers powered by DC rather than AC-based electricity. Kraus cited a number of statistics from the likes of the Uptime Institute and McKinsey outlining just how much power data centers can save by switching to more efficient DC power. If data centers in the United States converted only 10% of their capacity to DC power, that would eliminate $1 billion in electric bills. The co2 emissions for a 10 megawatt data center with 17,500 servers would drop from 99,776,400 pounds to 59,865,840 pounds. Kraus invited members of the audience to do their own comparison by visiting an online calculator offered by Intel that analyzes facility-level efficiency of AC and DC servers.

The other speaker, Brian Ouellette, of J.S. Fleming Associates, a provider of power and cooling systems, spoke about the five power trends heading to a data center near you. The top trend, that energy efficiency is gaining importance, is pretty self-evident. The other four trends centered on ways to make data centers more efficient: New ways to scale UPS architectures into adaptive models that can adjust to changing power requirements; two-stage power distribution that reduces restrictions to cooling air flow, among other benefits; increasing use of monitoring with tools such as smart power strips (that monitor in-rack power) and branch circuit monitoring (that monitor each PDU output circuit). Ouellette also pointed out that data centers don’t have to go high-tech in order to become more efficient. When Ouellette asked the audience whether they use blanking panels in their data centers, only five people raised their hands. “Blanking panels are a great way to get the air where you need it,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll get cross-contamination of air from your hot aisle and cold aisle.”

Since the announcement by Microsoft at AFCOM that they would be using containers like Rackable’s Ice Cube in their new data centers, much attention has been focused on the container-based set-up. Sun led the way with their Blackbox, and now Dell is releasing their own containerized data center.

But not everyone in the world of data centers think that these boxes are the cat’s meow. I asked Pete Sacco, President of PTS Data Center Solutions, Inc. for his thoughts. He referred me to his blog post on the topic, “Reflections on the Data Center in a Box”, and shared some additional comments:

Many data center-in-a-box providers only offer a homogenous data processing environment, which for most users won’t fly. Even those that are equipment neutral are available but have not sold well (e.g., APC’s Data Center on Wheels). The facility limitation of a data center-in-a-box hamper their adaptation. Access to sufficient power and chilled water (a heat rejection source) has always been, and will remain a primary cost driver of data center development. Therefore, the savings are not as dramatic as portrayed. Besides, due to form-factor and other attributes they are a lower availability solution than a traditional brick-and-mortar data center. In my opinion, their use will be limited to large enterprise and fringe applications at best.

Sacco succinctly points out the criticisms that were levied at Microsoft’s adoption of the concept in Computer World’s article. But beyond Sacco’s points about cost and flexibility, the CW article also picked at specific design flaws that some interviewees perceived existed. These were responded to in a thorough post from Mike Manos.

With Dell jumping into the pool with Sun, Rackable, and Verari, and IBM planning a container using it’s iDataPlex server, one must ask the question: Are all these companies making the right move? Competition is key to a market economy, but is market saturation going to occur? If the uptake on containerized systems isn’t going to be widespread, are these companies taking too big a risk in developing their own container systems?

Ron Hughes, President of California Data Center Design Group pointed out that the container approach is in fact, nothing new:

They’ve been making these for at least 10 years. Like everything else, they have their place. In the right setting, for the right client, they can be very useful and they work very well. We typically see them as either a short term solution until a data center can be built, or as a permanent solution if building a data center is not an option. The upside is speed to market, potentially energy efficiency and portability. The downside is cost and capacity.

I’m not convinced that it will be a widespread solution due to the high cost and limited server capacity. The solutions also vary as to whether they require separate infrastructure support systems or not. I haven’t seen any cost comparison to a standard data center, but for a medium to large application, I doubt that it is cost competitive. It will be interesting to see how these play out long term.

For an end-user company like Microsoft that is in need of large amounts of servers, the plug-and-play and interchangeability of the containers is attractive. But for other data centers, this solution may cost too much or be too large for their limited needs.

What do you think? Are containers here to stay — are we looking at the future of data center technology? Or is it just one tool in the toolbox?

At the beginning of this year, Redmond Magazine announced its Editors’ Choice Awards, handing VMware ESX the trophy for being “most reliable.” In second place? The IBM mainframe.

Why am I mentioning it now when the awards were handed out in January? Well, because I didn’t know of them. A couple colleagues were down at a VMware virtualization forum in New York City recently, and VMware was touting its awards from the magazine, and specifically noting how ESX beat out the mainframe in reliability.

Please keep in mind that this is a magazine focused on the Microsoft IT community, not the IT community as a whole. So for the mainframe, which doesn’t run Windows (yet), to even make it on this list is something. I’m pretty sure the mainframe was the only non-Microsoft related product that placed in any category. Anyway, here are Redmond Magazine’s descriptions for each.

On VMware ESX: “The least stable part of ESX is usually the administrator. The code is virtually bomb-proof.“

On the mainframe: “They’ve been running for more than 50 years, and probably will for another 50.”

Not everyone thinks ESX is “bomb-proof.” On the other end of the extreme spectrum, John Toigo said during a speech last year that ESX was “shoddy” and full of bugs. So the truth is probably somewhere in between. More reliable than the mainframe? That’s questionable, although maybe understandable coming from a Microsoft-focused magazine.

The latest version of Opalis Software Inc.’s flagship IT process automation server software was released a couple weeks ago. Among the enhanced features of the Opalis Integration Server 5.5 is a customizable executive dashboard designed to give high-level IT and other managers the ability to drill into graphs and get at the service data behind them. “The idea is to add value at all levels of IT from administrators, operators and up to senior managers,” said Charles Crouchman, the chief technology officer at Opalis. The executive dashboard, he added, is designed to provide senior IT managers who are responsible for managing the effectiveness of service delivery with relevant data.

Executive dashboards for IT process automation? Sounds a lot like business intelligence for the IT operations set.

Actually, executive dashboards aren’t that new to IT process automation in particular and systems management in general, according to Rich Ptak, an analyst with Ptak, Noel & Associates. “Most infrastructure management solutions have some sort of dashboard — executive or otherwise — that ships with the product,” he said. “What is important is the engine underneath the dashboard.” In the case of Opalis, things like powerful supporting analytics, strong report-generation capabilities, and the ability to correlate and compare data make its executive dashboard stand out.

As Ptak sees it, the emphasis that Opalis places on executive dashboards is beneficial to IT managers, who have often been reluctant to proactively build tools that demonstrate what they do and how it affects the business. “For too long, the game was to collect as much data as possible and throw that data and analytic tools at the end user,” he said. “Today the vendors are taking more responsibility for helping IT and their customers to get real information in understandable formats.”

Gabriel Consulting Group, based in Beaverton, Ore., has finished its annual survey of Unix users, and found that IBM narrowly topped Hewlett-Packard in customer satisfaction.

Last year, IBM had a little more breathing room. But Dan Olds, a principal at the consultancy, said that Big Blue and HP are practically in a dead heat, with IBM leading in technology factors but HP winning on system quality and overall data center issues. That represents a decent jump for HP, which had slipped into third place behind Sun Microsystems last year on customer satisfaction.

The Gabriel survey quizzed 290 users in the fourth quarter of 2007 on dozens of Unix issues such as system performance, ease of integration, and operating system quality. Some findings from the survey:

• IBM won 14 categories and tied five, doing best in “Overall Technology,” “Raw System Performance,” and “Processor Performance.”
• HP won 10 categories and tied five, winning on topics such as “Easiest Integration,” “Best Initial Quality,” and “Operating System Quality.”
• Users picked Sun as being the most committed to Unix and driving Unix innovation the most.

Olds said that although Sun came in third, they did beat IBM and HP on topics such as customer loyalty and energy efficiency.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program is trying to collect information from anyone with a data center to help the EPA get a sense of what’s happening nationally with data center energy consumption. In this video from the Uptime Institute Symposium, the EPA’s Andrew Fanara discusses how data center managers can participate in the program, by measuring their energy efficiency in a standardized way.

You can download the forms for the National Data Center Energy Efficiency Information Program from the EPA’s data center Web site.

Three Hewlett-Packard user groups — Encompass, ITUG (International Tandem Users Group), and HP-Interex — are consolidating into one big one called Connect.

The groups announced their intention to merge earlier this year, and just recently the membership of all three voted to do so. The new merged group will have more than 50,000 participants and will be led by Nina Buik, who was the former president of Encompass. The launch of Connect will take place at the HP Technology Forum & Expo in Las Vegas next month.

At least one of the reasons for the merger is to have a larger voice.

“One of the issues that’s at the top of the minds for all of our members is advocacy,” Buik said in an interview earlier this year. “You tend to get heard a lot more when your numbers are greater. When you go to HP or your vendor partners, they’re going to listen.”

That’s not to say they haven’t been listening; Buik said HP and other vendors have thus far been supportive of the merger.

“It can be looked at from two standpoints,” said Scott Healy, the former president of ITUG. “It can provde greater value because HP really does want to know what users are thinking.”

Buik said that IT folks in the trenches can no longer hunker down in the confines of the data center; they will also need new, non-technical skills, which Connect aims to help them obtain. “IT people really have to know how to pitch ideas to high-level business people,” Buik said. It goes without saying that communications skills free of technical jargon are increasingly required, as are project management skills and the ability to make oneself more visible to an organization’s decision-makers.

Through local, regional and national meetings, one of Connect’s primary goals is to educate members in regard to the brave new world of IT. For Buik, one of her personal interests is to help members safeguard their careers by engaging in some “recession-proofing” practices. “Yes, you should have green IT and virtualization current in your skills,” Buik said. “But don’t emphasize your technology knowledge; instead show how your skills can help reduce costs.”

Buik added that she didn’t think there would be a lot of overlap between the three groups, saying that each catered to different sets of HP customers. The groups’ board members will also be able to learn and share from one another — Encompass, for example, has conducted some webinars, while ITUG has more experience running shows internationally. The combined group will look to increase its online presence and add forums so that HP users can log on and talk to each other about IT issues they’re dealing with.

Features Writer Megan Santosus contributed to this report.

Last week at the Uptime Institute Symposium, I met with Ken Ostereich of Cassatt and we chatted about the need for a radical change in data center design and operations in order to achieve the Uptime Institute’s challenge for end users to reduce energy consumption in the data center by 50% over the next 36 months. Ostereich observed that the proposed solutions are so incremental, a 50% reduction isn’t likely.

Christian Belady, Principal Power and Cooling Architect at Microsoft, actually compared the level of innovation to the movie Groundhog Day, 1993 Bill Murray classic where he has to repeat the same day over and over again.

In the video below, Ostereich calls on the data center industry giants like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to serve as a “Data Center Space Program” helping best practices and new technologies trickle down into the more traditional companies. Ostereich has an excellent rundown of the week’s events on his blog, Fountainhead.

While the pace of change can be painfully slow, I argue that the innovations Ostereich and Belady are calling for are already happening.

Microsoft is exposing its internal operations to the public, and while they might not be giving away the secret sauce, if you’re paying attention you can still see the shape of what they’ve got under the sheet. They’re proving it can be done.

I too have heard the cries for metrics, hot-ailse/cold-aisle and virtualization ad nauseum at every conference over the past two years. But end user panelists at companies like Ford Motors and Boeing are talking about using cloud computing for non-critical applications and shutting down servers during the off hours.

Granted, many companies are putting blanking panels in their racks, virtualizing a few servers and calling it the best they can do, but those companies likely won’t be running data centers at all in five years. Google and Microsoft will be running their IT for them.