7 steps for a green data center

How is your data center in state? Most data center managers do not foresee an increase in electricity prices because they do not regularly view electricity bills. However, they can see the symptoms of sudden changes in energy needs .

High-density servers are creating hot spots in data centers that cost more than 30KW for each price. So data center managers are realizing that they cannot have enough power allocated for prices on a floor. Some other problems are that they cannot provide even more power for the whole building that is installing the system: They have consumed the maximum capacity that can be allowed in the distribution of power in that location.

This problem was taken care of by Mallory Forbes, senior vice president and mainframe technical manager of Regions Financial Corp, Birmingham, Ala. ' Every year, when we review the standards and energy requirements seem to increase again ,' Mallory Forbes said. He added: ' It creates a big challenge in managing data centers because you constantly have to add energy '.

Energy saving is absolutely possible. A watt saved in data center energy consumption can be achieved through cooling. IT managers, who have carefully observed the reinvestment issue, have mentioned receiving energy-consuming devices more efficiently. While security security issues and service delivery capabilities are of prime importance, organizations must focus on energy issues more than before. Green data centers not only save energy but it also reduces the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades related to increased energy and cooling needs. Some organizations are starting the next steps and are considering data centers comprehensively according to the environmental context.

The following steps will help data center managers solve this problem.

1, Merge servers

Existing data centers can make significant savings with some fundamental changes and consolidation of servers into one location, Ken Brill, executive director of Uptime Institute, an advisor In Santa Fe, NM said so. He studied this problem for a few years. He also said: ' In many data centers there are about 10% - 30% of servers have expired and may be in an unused state .'

It is estimated that cost savings by removing physical servers can reach up to $ 1,200 in energy costs for servers each year. ' With a server, you will save between $ 300 - $ 600 per year on energy. In addition, you save $ 300 to $ 600 in annual costs for cooling systems , 'said Mark Bramfitt, senior program manager for customer management at PG&E Corp.

When idle servers are removed, data center managers need to consider translating server applications into virtual servers in a viable way. That allows to substantially reduce the number of physical servers needed while increasing the efficiency of the servers being maintained.

Most physical servers today run only between 10% and 15% of performance. When an idle server consumes 30% of the energy it consumes, it costs a lot of money to increase the efficiency level, Balkansky said.

VMware Inc is working based on a new feature that is combined with Distributed Resource Scheduler, this schedule will locate the work flow dynamically between physical servers used as a resource center separately. Distributed Power Management will squeeze virtual machines into physical machines so that the power consumption of the server decreases when they are not in the used state. The system makes dynamic adjustments when there is a change of work flow. That way, workflows can be merged during the night time and then repositioned through multiple physical servers in the morning.

2, Use power management department

Although power management tools are always available, today's administrators often use them in an inefficient way. ' In a typical data center, electrical energy efficiency rarely changes, but IT loads vary with a factor of 3 or more. That shows you that we are not properly implementing additional capacity management . ' Amory Lovins, president, a scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute (Center for Energy Research and Sustainability at Snowmass, Colo.)

Take advantage of the power management features and turn off unused servers that can cut the data center's power requirements by 20%, he added.

That is not being done in many data centers today because administrators only focus on most performance and time issues, while IT staff still do not fully understand public management tools. rates are on the market, says Christian Belady, a technician at Hewlett-Packard Co. He argued that using power management could increase reliability and time by reducing the burden on data center capacity and cooling systems.

Firms can also make more reasonable measures to use capacity management features, said Brent Kerby, Opteron's product manager at Advanced Micro Devices Inc server group. AMD and other chip makers are adding new power management features, 'in Microsoft Windows, this support is inherited but you have to adjust the energy chart to use it effectively. he said. Kerby said that these features need to be turned on by default.

The potential for power saving through power management with the latest microprocessor sets is significant. The latest design of ADM will reduce the voltage and frequency on each chip core and will reduce the memory consumption. ' With 50% of CPU utilization you will save 65% of capacity. Even if CPU usage is up to 80% of performance, you will save 25% of capacity 'just turn on power management, Kerby said. Other chip makers are also working on similar technologies.

In some cases, capacity management may cause some problems, says Jason Williams, technical director at DigiTar, a provider of news reports in Boise, Idaho. He ran Lunix on Sun T2000 servers along with UltraSparc multi-core processors. ' We use a lot of Lunix and [power management] can cause some strange manifestations in the operating system, ' he said. ' We feel like problems happen in the nucleus randomly. Some systems seem to run Lunix well when using ACPI without using other components. It's really hard to predict, so we turned it off with another power management component . '

ACPI is an advanced power and configuration interface, a co-technical detail between HP, Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and other prestigious members in the industry.

3, Upgrade to energy-saving servers

The first generation of multi-core chip designs has shown a reduction in energy consumption.

' Intel's Xeon 5100 has provided twice the performance, which consumes 40% less capacity '. Lori Wigle director of server technology and market initiatives at Intel. Switching to these designed servers will increase energy efficiency.

However, they still seem to have many limitations. Sun Microsystems Inc., Intel, and AMD have all said that they expect their server power consumption to be maintained at a stable level in the near future. AMD's current processor products range in power from 89 W to 120 W. ' That's what we're holding ,' said Kerby of AMD. As for Wigle, it is not expected that Intel's next-generation products will repeat the effectiveness of 5100. ' We will look at newer elements in 45 nm products .'

Many chip manufacturers are also incorporating memory controllers, I / O into one platform. Niagra II of Sun includes a high-speed peripheral Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and floating point functions in a single chip. ' We created a true chip server ,' said Rick Hetherington, a chief architect and engineer at Sun.

However, such integration does not really reduce chip server power consumption, an engineer at IBM's System x platform group said. Above all, he said, the consumption of network capacity will not change. ' Increasing integration . is the space provided by faster and newer cross connections such as PCIe Gen2, CSI or HT3, FBDIMM or DDR3 ' he added.

4, Combined with high efficiency power supply

Sources are a good example of a lack of focus on the total cost of the owner in the server market because inefficient components are still used for many servers today, making energy consuming. more than the other data center components, John Koomey, a microprocessor adviser at Stanford University and a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He gave a dedication to developing server energy management protocol.

The process of designing improvements has been slow. ' Power supply efficiency has increased by 0.5% a year, ' Intel's Wigle said. Newer designs give significantly more efficiency, but in the server market, they are still not popularly added because the price is too expensive.

Many commercial servers show inefficiencies in power supply problems, peak performance typically falls in 70% to 75% compared to 100% performance drop in practice to only 65% ​​to 20% - and the average server load is about 10% to 15%. That means taking up nearly half of the power consumption is not effective. The problem with the actual need to provide additional cooling power for the whole system.

These power supplies now achieve 80% or higher efficiency - even at 20% load - but they are costly. High-efficiency power supplies increase efficiency by up to 15% - 20%, Lakshmi Mandyam, market manager at ColdWatt Inc. said Austin.

Switching to highly efficient energy sources will reduce both cost and cost. 'If it costs up to $ 20 per source [energy efficiency], you will save $ 100 in costs for cooling and infrastructure equipment ', Lovins of RMI said. Any feed that does not have a distribution efficiency of about 80% will be considered unacceptable, he added.

To solve the problem, Sun's Hetherington said that the server manufacturing facility had to deliver the capacity needed, choosing a 600W power supply for the server that really needed only 300W.

' If you are designing a server, and do not want to fall close to the peak level. So you have to find a suitable level on which to specify the source. At that level, it can only cost 300W, but if you have a 650W power supply it will be less efficient in this system. It is one of the biggest errors in the field of energy causing waste, 'he said.

All major server companies say they have made or are planning efficient sources of power in their servers.

HP is in the process of standardizing a single source design for its servers. Paul Perez, vice president of infrastructure, network and storage, said in a recent seminar: ' The feed given this summer will be much more effective '. In addition, HP is trying to increase its efficiency by up to 90%. Belady of HP says all of his employees' servers use at least 85% efficient power supply.

Smart power management can increase usage efficiency. For example, HP's PowerSaver technology allows shutting down some of the C-class 6-source power supply when the total load is low; This saves energy and increases device efficiency.

An address that can be used to effectively identify that feed is 80Plus.org. The program grants this certificate created by electronic utilities, listing the sources that achieve 80% efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% loads.

Koomey of Stanford University said that Google Inc. has implemented an innovative method to improve the power supply performance in its server systems. The power supply design requirement is that many outputs are required at different DC voltage levels. ' While done with the motherboard . they went into the power issue,' We don't need all that DC output, we just need a 12V voltage ', By just needing one level 12V DC output voltage, Google has saved a lot of money in designing towards creating high performance power supply. 'Those are essential things,' he said.

5, Remove the corporate barriers inside

While IT is often concerned with performance and time issues, most IT organizations cannot calculate energy efficiency due to the separation of IT functions between groups. Initially there were more downloads and then electricity bills, Brill of Uptime Institute said.

Removing barriers is very important to understand the challenges - providing a financial benefit for change. Better inter-group communication is also necessary, such as cooling from simple room-level air conditioning systems to targeted cooling systems.

The problem between favorable conditions and the IT responses in data centers is becoming unclear. ' Solutions will not happen without people in different offices or different groups ', Lovins said.

Information loss problems have hurt many IT equipment vendors, Lovins said. Engineers are now specialized, often designing components in a separate unit without observing the entire system. What is used for the formal design process to optimize a comprehensive multi-benefit system must be broken down into small pieces, he said, for an expert it is' designing a component or optimizing a component for single benefits '.

6, Obey the standards

Some initiatives can help users identify and purchase the most energy efficient IT equipment.

Including the 80Plus program for power supply, Energy Star certification program for servers. Under the mandate of the parliament, the environmental protection organization is working with Lawrence Berkeley laboratories to study ways to increase energy efficiency for servers. Technical details will be introduced in the next section.

Companies that estimate benchmark performance (SPEC) are also working on Watt performance benchmarks for servers that must provide a basic boundary line for energy efficiency comparisons. Technical details have been planned for release this year. When completed, the standard will be useful for making comparisons through platforms, says Klaus-Dieter Lange, chair of SPEC and Executive Committee SPEC. Groups will have to work on many standards. Milestones will test energy efficiency at different load levels, he added.

7, There are policy changes

IT equipment manufacturers will not design for energy efficiency issues unless users require it. Joseph Hedgecock, senior vice president and head of data and platform center at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, said his company is lobbying with firms on highly efficient server designs. ' We are trying to boost the efficiency of the source and the system itself, ' he said.

Yale of Vanguard Group said that his company was also attracted to Green Grid and other industrial organizations to boost energy efficiency. ' We are becoming its members and I have been attracted to various information organizations, ' he said. ' This is a topic that the industry is discussing and we are trying to work with manufacturers. '