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.”

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.

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.

We have all seen the headlines lately regarding the H1-B visas, with lobbyists testifying at Congressional hearings about the need to expand the number of H-1B visas and thus the number of qualified workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One of the leading proponents of expanding the program is Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, who testified to Congress about the need for more “innovation” in the United States.

“While America’s innovation heritage is unparalleled, the evidence is mounting that we are failing to make the investments in our young people, our workers, our scientific research infrastructure, and our economy that will enable us to retain our global innovation leadership,” said Gates. “If the United States truly wants to secure its global leadership in technology innovation, we must, as a nation, commit to a strategy for innovation excellence – a set of initiatives and policies that will provide the foundation for American competitive strength in the years ahead.”

Top on his list was strengthening educational opportunities for US school children. But next was “Revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, so that U.S. companies can attract and retain the world’s best scientific talent.”
However, Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at University of California – Davis, disagrees with the notion that foreign workers provide “innovation” to the United States. He recently published a study, H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest, arguing that foreign workers are “are people of just ordinary talent, doing ordinary work. They are not the innovators the industry lobbyists portray them to be.”

Other controversies surrounding the H-1B issue include fraud assessment, which has been spearheaded by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In 2007, Grassley partnered with Senator Dick Durbin (R-Ill.) on a bill to overhaul the H-1B visa program.

This controversy has been in the news for months, but what does this mean to you? Are you an IT professional who is having a hard time finding a good paying job, or are you a recruiter having difficulty filling positions? Do you think this is just anti-immigrant hype? Please share your thoughts.

SearchDataCenter.com ransacked Las Vegas last week, video camera in tow, to bring you the latest data center news from AFCOM’s Data Center World. We met with dozens of vendors and experts, and this is a summary of what we found:

Emerson rolls out new monster Liebert UPS
Emerson Network Power introduced a new uninterruptible power supply at AFCOM, the Liebert NXL, which comes in 250 kVa, 300 kVA and 400 kVa models. We spent some time at the Liebert booth checking out the NXL and going through the latest products with Fred Stack, the vice president of marketing at Liebert. We looked into the new monitoring tools, flywheel technology and more in the video below.

APC Capacity Manager Demo
We also met up with the folks at American Power Conversion Corp. and got a demo of the APC Capacity Manager, which won a Product of the year award in 2007. The tool is tied in with the company’s InfraStruXure rack, power and cooling platform and is able to calculate physical infrastructure capabilities as well as consumption of space and power to help users figure out how much data center capacity is available. Demo video below:

Stopping drive-by plug-ins
While we’re on the topic of knowing what’s in your data center, this really simple tool from the start up Agitan that locks down your power distribution units with plug shields. In this video, we talk to Agitan’s cofounder about the plastic power distribution unit (PDU) savers.

Rackable ICE Cube video tour
Now that Microsoft has signed on to building data centers out of trailers, the Rackable Ice Cube is going to get a lot more attention. Another Products of the Year award winner, the Ice Cube is a data center in a box, much like the Sun Blackbox. But unlike the Blackbox, I can actually fit inside this thing. Maybe if I bought a Blackbox, I’d lose a few pounds. The Ice Cube is roomier because Rackable uses its half-depth server form factor, leaving more room between the racks. You can see about 10 people stuffed into the Ice Cube in this video:

Raritan rolls out intelligent PDUs for power metering
Somerset, N.J.-based Raritan introduced a new power distribution unit, the Dominion PX. I met up with Raritan’s Henry Chan, and we talked about the new PDU. It’s super slick. Controlled remotely via a Web browser or command line interface, the Dominion PX meters, in real time, power at both the PDU level and outlet level and supports environmental sensors to monitor temperature and humidity at the rack. This is huge for data center managers trying to monitor energy use — the first step to managing energy consumption is measuring your usage.

Did you see anything extremely cool at AFCOM? Leave your feedback in the comments.

The people I speak with about virtualization projects always list the same reasons for going virtual; they don’t have enough space in their data center to add more physical servers, they can’t afford power and cooling bills, they want to consolidate physical machines, and they want to consolidate physical people.

That’s right; the majority of people I speak with - employers and employees alike - say nonchalantly that they deploy virtual machines to avoid deploying more IT staff. While this is great for corporations, it doesn’t sound so good for IT job seekers.

A few examples; I went to a VMware Inc. User Group meeting in Boston on March 27, and one user gave a presentation about the virtualization project he oversaw at the paper manufacturing company called SAPPi in Maine.

“One reason we wanted to virtualize is we needed to lower our IT headcount. We needed to get rid of high end support and just keep desktop support,” the systems engineer/presenter said.

Similarly, at the growing law firm Owen Bird Law Corp. in Vancouver, British Columbia, Stephen Bakerman, the sole IT staffer, went with Virtual Iron virtualization to avoid adding more physical servers and having to hire more staff to help him manage it all.

“The cost savings is probably $100,000, and the time savings for me are incredible. Once everything is virtualized, I can run everything from my desktop remotely from my office or at home. I don’t have to hire someone else, and I would have if we kept adding servers,” Bakerman said.

Another company called QualComm Inc virtualized 60% of its data center environment and saw a similar side effect. At the VMware Virtualization Seminar Series in Providence, RI Feb 26, VMware presented a case study of the wireless technology company showing how it started with 1,200 servers and consolidated down to 100 (12:1 ratio) physical servers, increasing data center space and cutting back on power and cooling. That’s great. And the cherry on top? They have not had to increase their IT staff at all in 2.5 years.

Sure, I get how cool virtualization is, and the benefits it brings from a savings and management stand-point, but is anyone else concerned those IT college kids who dream of days spent engineering systems won’t be able to find a job? or is anyone worried about those system administrators who might get consolidated from many to few along with their servers?

I’m interested in hearing from IT folks; is virtualization leading to a virtual job market?

ORLANDO - One session at the conference for Share, a user group for mainframe and other large systems users, compared building a data center out with Intel-based Linux servers with a mainframe architecture that has virtual Linux servers. Keep in mind that this was at the Share conference, so the bias was clear: Scale up beats scale out. But the number-crunching exercise was still interesting examine in terms of hidden costs you might not expect from scale out.

First, the session was by Mark Post, a technical support engineer for Novell who does a lot of work around Linux on System z. He spoke about a specific project he was involved in with a previous employer, which he didn’t name. He also stressed that Novell was not involved with this project at all. That company did consulting for a client looking to build out an Intel-based Linux infrastructure. He then compared that with an estimated build-out for a z9 mainframe. Here’s the 3-year breakdown:

The only issue I might take with Post’s assessment is software. Post mainly looked at database and operating system licensing costs, but didn’t compare other third-party software costs; for example, systems management software from CA or BMC. One of mainframers’ biggest complaint is third-party software costs, which can often run them millions of dollars depending on what they have.

Still, even if you’re talking a couple million more on the mainframe side, it still shows a savings over the Lintel build-out. For a more complete breakdown of the figures, check out Post’s presentation.

ORLANDO - Earlier today Share held a conference session updating attendees on the status of the event here in Orlando and of the group overall.

First off, Share President Martin Timmerman reported a good turnout of 1,145 attendees at the winter show, adding that most of the anecdotal feedback was positive.

But are there too many sessions? The group reported there were 901 technical sessions at the meeting, with about 50 canceled sessions. What that has led to is about one-third of the sessions have fewer than 20 people in them. So for its next meeting in San Jose, the group plans to run about 100 fewer sessions to see how that works.

The mainframe and other large systems user group is also working on revamping its website. The first phase of the change, which will improve the customer-facing side of the site, is slated for completion in the beginning of June. Other portions, such as member and volunteer areas of the site, are scheduled to be completed by the end of September. Some possible new features of the site could include social networking, an online magazine or newsletter, online chatting, and product reviews.

ORLANDO — The award for Best Session Title here at the Share large systems user group conference goes to one called “‘Pimping’ Your FICON Ride: How Advanced Cisco Features Enhance Your SAN.” Here’s the full description (funny emphasis by me):

Join the FICON team at Cisco to discover how you can pimp your FICON ride. We’ll show you how we can non-disruptively supercharge your current MDS chassis to 8Gbps, integrate FICON VSANs to isolate workloads, enhance your cascaded links with FICON port channels, initiate QoS for workload prioritization, and allow you to securely extend your FICON links over optical, dark fiber or FCIP. All this performance is nothing without control, and we’ve got the integrated dashboard and plush leather recaro seating to ensure your FICON ride is ready for the autobahn!

There is nothing more illin’ in this world than some hot, fierce I/O throughput. You know what I’m talking about, fo shizzle. Wait, I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Word!

The Green Grid technical forum in San Francisco this week was conclusive proof that the green fluff cycle is full blown. Despite trotting out three eco-aware end users, the vendor consortium blew its chance to prove that it’s more than vendor hype to data center managers seeking meaty advice.

The presentation started with a slick video parade of talking heads from the various member companies, talking about getting down to business and working together to come up with solutions!

It was an apt metaphor for the organization’s fundamental problem:

The public face of The Green Grid is a PR dog-and-pony show and all of the information sharing goes on behind a membership wall. And the real dirty work goes on behind an even more exclusive members-only barrier.

John Tuccillo, director of the Green Grid (and representative of American Power Conversion Corp.) kicked the event off by congratulating the organization for having accomplished so much in its first year. Um, wait a minute. I seem to remember Bruce Shaw from AMD hopping up on the podium at the Uptime Institute Symposium in April 2006 to announce the launch… but I digress.

The point is, compared to user driven conferences I’ve attended, this was a pale imitator. Not to take anything away from people like Bill Tschudi from LBNL (a highlight of the day), who made great presentations and talked about new things; but primarily the speakers were preaching to the choir.

I recognized 90% of the people in the room. We don’t need to go over the fact that we have a problem. We all know about the virtues of hot-aisle/cold-aisle and server virtualization. Let’s break new ground here!

The tedium was maddening. You could see it on the attendees’ weary faces. How long have we been talking about LEED data centers? I’ve been watching it since 2005. How much has changed since then? Nothing. There has been no movement on this issue.

What’s happened with the Power Usage Effectivenes PUE metric? Have we refined it? Publicized how to accurately measure it? No. We renamed it and flipped the ratio to be represented as a percentage — another debate raging since early 2006 that has pretty much gone nowhere.

We could be past this stuff already! But with so many organizations and companies fighting over who owns “Green IT”, it has prevented widespread adoption, and has stalled new ideas. There have been at least four different names for the equation that represents data center building power divided by IT equipment power. There are five alternatives to LEED in the data center under development by different groups.

These efforts are stalled because entrenched vendors and organizations are fighting over their fiefdoms and there is no transparency, no public comment.

I spoke to Mark Monroe, Director of Sustainable Computing from Sun Microsystems, at the event about my concerns and he brought up some good points. He explained that the Green Grid needs to grow its membership to be effective, and it needs to hold some information back to gain new members. But there is an imbalance between superficiality and new thinking. The end user community should have a role in deciding how these standards are built, to understand the arguments different vendors are making and to have an input on what is adopted.

So if the Green Grid is a bunch of hype, then why does this even matter? Because these vendors have the biggest microphone and they have a chance to make a difference. Almost every company is building a new data center this year, and significant numbers of them are going green. It’s time to give people some direction — it is a captive and receptive audience.

Miles Kelly, vice president of strategy at the San Francisco-based hosting giant 365 Main (a Green Grid end user member) spoke for the masses of data center pros when he took the microphone at the end one of the sessions and asked the panel for some guidance. “Give me something I can take back to my operations team. What is your prescription for a company like ours?” he asked.

The panel looked at each other in silence before essentially giving a non-answer as Kelly walked back to his seat.

What is your experience with The Green Grid? Leave your comments below.