Microsoft shows off Scry, Chicago data center video
This week I sat down with Microsoft’s Senior Director of Data Center services, Michael Manos at the 2008 Uptime Symposium to talk about Scry, the company’s data center analytics tool that they touted at AFCOM. According to Manos, this tool allows him to look at his data centers’ energy use, carbon footprint, power bill and more — all at an incredibly granular level. It also allows him to slice and dice data to make decisions, for example Microsoft can look at the energy consumption of an individual product like Hotmail. The program is especially slick in that it ties into Microsoft’s CMDB and assett management tools. Microsoft has been touting this tool at various conferences throughout the past few months, but it’s not likely to become a commercial product for other companies since so much of the tool was built around Microsoft’s specific homegrown internal software. But the main point of Manos’s data center road show is to prove to people that it can be done. Microsoft is measuring and improving its energy efficiency in the data center and Manos is not waiting for someone to hand down the perfect metric or the perfect tool. Check out the video below, where Manos outlines how he uses Scry and in the second video he talks you through a 3-D rendering of the new containerized data center being built in Chicago.
Posted: May 1st, 2008 under Data center power efficiency, Data center room design and site selection, Data center on the road, Data center user group news and info.
Nothing special on Microsofts part and I’m sure there are other companies out there that have already developed tools, similar to Scyr that haven’t been recognized. Anyone can write an application that determines what takes up less resources and what takes up less time.
Comment by Dalton Conley — May 1, 2008 @ 3:58 pm
Dalton, If you are so sure that other companies have such tools, why don’t you name them?
Comment by nospinzone — May 1, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
Thats a useful comment Dalton.
Comment by Bill — May 1, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
Mr. Cameraman, please buy a tripod. Watching this feels like the Blair Witch Project.
Comment by david — May 1, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
Other tools include APC’s InfraStruXure capacity manager which predicts and helps manage energy, cooling and cost.
Comment by Paul — May 1, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
Its the real-time cross-platform integration (CMDB, service desk, etc) that is what makes this unique. It’s more than a capacity management tool.
Comment by tjarcher — May 2, 2008 @ 6:57 am
Guys:
One of Microsoft’s enabling analytical tools is made by OSIsoft, and it’s actually a port of a system widely used in the manufacturing world. The product is a massive data collection and retrieval database whose primary index is time. M/S was one of the first data center operators to adopt it.
Comment by John — May 2, 2008 @ 7:56 am
Does Scry allow utility operators to monitor energy at data center sites? Utility EMS/SCADAs need to be able to match load at data center sites. MS Scry should connect to PI historian at Independent Service Operators (ISO) to allow grid managers to monitor data center demand.
CALISO is an excellent model for this system.
California Data Centers could coordinate power requirements during summer months to move computing to alternate sites during peak load periods - 4-7 PM (June, July, August).
California is dependent on hydropower from Washington, Oregon and BC. Data centers throughout the Western US could assist the grid by moving computing off the western grid during peak load periods.
Cartoon of Western Power Grid failure:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/RangerRick/11273
References:
http://cdiac2.esd.ornl.gov/cseqposter_web_pdf1.pdf
http://spectrum.ieee.org/jan05/2407
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2004/april/entergy.html
http://science-community.sciam.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300005637&messageID=300017361
http://usa.Siemens.com/energy
http://www.isama.net/download.html?table_id=news_board&key=6&realfile=HYPERSIM_presentation_2006.ppt
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel3/4657/13050/00599426.pdf?temp=x
EMC2 in Santa Fe is developing a Polywell fusion reactor for US Navy. This could be brought to the data center on a semitruck.
The reactor would decentralize the grid.
See Scratch slide show on Polywell Fusion:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/34906
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/77493
Polywell Fusion references:
References
http://www.emc2fusion.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell http://www.santafenewmexican.com/SantaFeNorthernNM/Robert_Bussard__1928_2007_Physicist_known_for_pursuits_into_fus
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
Comment by Henry Brown — May 2, 2008 @ 1:07 pm
1. what kind of product name is that?
2. another typical microsoft vaporware, someone just jumped in a untouched market share before them and now they are trying their usual run-after with speculation and fancy splash screens.
3. what kind of arrogant bastard is this self proclaimed powerpoint-engineer?
Comment by tim — May 2, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
Nice. It is encouraging to see more companies are bringing the information together and visual aspects always help. Now, just an example, you can do that with CA Unicenter (or other such tools). Take a peek for example (an example again) F1 pit screens you seen in TV during the race - same except they are monitoring cars and car computers.
Same thing has been around a long time, nuclear plants, broadcasting companies, even space flights - monitoring and visualizing. But anyway nice to see that MS is getting up to date!
Comment by Tuomo Stauffer — May 2, 2008 @ 10:48 pm