• Home
• Articles Archive
• Features List

• Media Pack
• Contact Us
• Subscribe

REVOLUTION IN THE AIR

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 7, Issue 6 - September 2007

IBM'S Project ‘Big Green’ could see a massive 80% cut in data centre energy consumption. And other companies are equally intent on transforming their operations and the impact on the environment

By 2010, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative seeks to reduce global CO2 emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons per year, equivalent to the annual output of 11 million cars or 10-20 coal-fired power plants. The initiative's projected result is a 50% reduction in power consumption by computers by 2010, allowing for committed participants to collectively save up to $5.5 billion in energy costs.

The rising power consumption among data centres is exacerbated by the need to store data in the face of exponential growth and is also due in part to the trend towards centralising corporate computing functions. The last few years have seen double-digit growth in new servers and storage devices in the data centre. Add to that rising electricity costs, at the same time as processors themselves become more powerful, and it can be seen how the costs associated with running these 24/7 - while at the same time cooling them down - are staggering.

Finally, the data centre imperative to ensure 100% uptime often leads to overbuilding, over-provisioning of computing platforms, and over-investment in infrastructures such as cooling systems, all leading to what is a significant energy waste.

The Uptime Institute, in 'The Economic Breakdown of Moore's Law', lists virtualising servers among its top five recommendations for saving energy in the data centre. ONStor scalable clustered NAS systems, which are deployed across a broad range of demanding enterprise IT applications - including large-scale Windows server consolidation, Internet content delivery and digital imaging - virtualise multiple physical file systems across both ONStor virtual file servers and Windows file servers.

The resulting server consolidation exerts a smaller footprint on the data centre floor, inherently drawing less power and requiring far less cooling. ONStor's systems typically replace up to 10 file servers with a single NAS appliance that is only 1.75 inches high. Moreover, ONStor's advanced power management, standard on all units, uses only 160 watts of power per NAS appliance. Each NAS appliance draws a little over 1 AMP of power consumption - 55% lower than the industry standard.

ONStor's CEO Bob Miller states: "Green programmes that are sweeping the IT industry, such as The Climate Savers Computing Initiative and the EPA's Energy Star Program, validate what we've been offering our customers all along: high-performance storage solutions that cut down on unnecessary energy consumption, reducing costs and carbon dioxide emissions. By exceeding these ambitious energy-efficiency recommendations, we're excited to support our partners and our customers in their efforts towards reaching a common goal for the industry: to reduce energy waste and improve businesses' bottom line."

Meanwhile, in what is certainly one of the most significant transformations of its worldwide data centres in a generation, IBM is to consolidate about 3,900 computer servers on to some 30 System z mainframes running the Linux operating system. The company anticipates that the new server environment will consume approximately 80% less energy than the current set-up and expects significant savings over five years in energy, software and system support costs. Ultimately, the company plans to recycle the 3,900 servers through IBM Global Asset Recovery Services.

At the same time, the transformation will make IBM's IT infrastructure more flexible to evolving business needs. The initiative is part of Project Big Green, a broad commitment that IBM announced in May to sharply reduce data centre energy consumption for IBM and its clients. IBM, with more than 8,000,000 square feet of data centre space (equivalent to 139 football fields), operates the world's largest and most sophisticated data centre operations, with major locations in the UK, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Japan and Australia.

The company anticipates that the new global infrastructure, supporting more than 350,000 users, will serve as a powerful example of IBM's ongoing transformation toward cutting-edge data centre design for large enterprises around the world. Since 1997, IBM has consolidated its strategic worldwide data centres from 155 to seven.

"As one of the world's largest technology providers, IBM consistently assesses how our systems can be maximised to support our employees and clients," states Mark Hennessy, vice president and chief information officer, IBM. "A global account consolidation truly demonstrates that IBM is committed to driving stronger energy and technology optimisation, and cost savings."

Adds James Stallings, general manager, IBM System z mainframe: "The mainframe is the single most powerful instrument to drive better economics and energy conservation at the data centre today. By moving globally onto the mainframe platform, IBM is creating a technology platform that saves energy, while positioning our IT assets for flexibility and growth."

The news follows an impressive run for the IBM mainframe, which has posted five consecutive quarters of revenue growth and eight consecutive quarters of MIPs growth. In 2006, mainframe revenue outgrew platforms based on the Microsoft Windows operating system, according to IDC. The mainframe's ability to run new workloads - including Linux and Java applications - is a big reason for its continued success.

For its part, HP has announced enhancements to an extensive energy-efficiency portfolio for the enterprise, including a thermal zone map for data centres and new customers and partners of the HP Dynamic Smart Cooling solution. HP Thermal Zone Mapping enables customers to see a three-dimensional model of exactly how much and where data centre air conditioners are cooling. As a result, they can arrange and manage air conditioning for optimal cooling, increased energy efficiency and lower costs.

The capability is a patent-pending development from HP Labs, the company's central research facility, and is part of the HP Thermal Assessment Services offering. "HP's Thermal Assessment Services for the data centre help customers deal with the major challenge of driving energy efficiency to lower operational costs," says John McCain, senior vice president and general manager, HP Services. "Developed in conjunction with HP Labs, these services are another great example of how customers can use HP's expertise in planning and deploying IT infrastructures to accelerate growth, lower costs and manage risk."

Customers can reduce data centre cooling energy costs by up to 45%, it is claimed, by using Thermal Zone Mapping and Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC), an advanced hardware and software solution that continuously adjusts data centre air conditioning settings to direct where and when cooling is required. The DSC solution is based on real-time air temperature measurements from a network of sensors deployed on IT racks. HP is using Thermal Zone Mapping and DSC for its own data centre consolidation project.

HP has added two partners for DSC: Liebert Corporation and STULZ. The companies are integrating their cooling control components with DSC, allowing customers to integrate the solution with their existing air conditioning products.

ORCHESTRATED EFFORTS
Cisco has also announced a broad array of innovative new data centre products and solutions that will, it states, enable customers to better utilise their data centre resources, deploy more robust business continuance, build cost-effective storage area networks and enhance data security.

Moreover, Cisco has unveiled its vision for next-generation data centre, called Data Centre 3.0. The Cisco scenario entails the real-time, dynamic orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of virtualised server, storage and network resources, while optimising application performance, service levels, efficiency and collaboration.

"Cisco's success is built on listening to our customers and partners, and on understanding market transitions," says John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco. "Because the network is uniquely positioned within the data centre, we are investing in innovations we believe will help our customers to transform their data centres to achieve improved efficiency and increased business productivity."

Over the next 24 months, Cisco will deliver more new products, prog- rammes and capabilities as part of the process of helping customers to create next-generation data centres.

POWERING UP
Dell has entered into an agreement with Emerson Network Power to help customers dramatically lower their data centre power and cooling requirements, while increasing performance and implementing long-term energy-efficient IT strategies, it says.

The Dell and Emerson Network Power Energy Smart Solution combines Dell's PowerEdge Energy Smart servers with Liebert XD supplemental cooling technology and Liebert High Precision Air Conditioning cooling systems to deliver up to 80% in systems performance increase and up to 42% reduction in facility power, compared to previous generations of Dell servers.

"CIO's and facilities managers are consistently faced with the challenge of increasing computing capacity to meet growing business needs, while concurrently minimising energy costs," states Jeff Kimbell, vice president of marketing, Dell EMEA. "By reducing both operational costs and the carbon footprint for our customers, Dell is simplifying the way businesses can take advantage of energy-efficient programmes and technologies without compromising IT performance."

Dell is designing new 'Energy Smart Services' to help customers identify power and cooling inefficiencies, assess data centre infrastructure and systems capacities, develop recommendations for improvements to optimise computing capacity, reclaim data centre space and reduce energy usage, it adds. ST