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Uptime: Companies Gaming PUE Numbers

Uptime Institute executive director Ken Brill said yesterday that some data center operators are manipulating or manufacturing Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) numbers. In an online seminar, Brill said this is putting pressure on other data center managers to match these PUE ratios. Matt Stansberry has a summary at Data Center Facilities Pro:

Brill said he’s seen companies talking about a PUE of 0.8 — which is physically impossible. "There is a lot of competitive manipulation and gaming going on," Brill said. "Our network members are tired of being called in by management to explain why someone has a better PUE than they do."

The Uptime Institute is familiar with what can happen when data center operators play fast and loose with competitive benchmarks.

Posted by Rich Miller August 15, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 11, 2008

Tier IV Costs $15,400 to Support $2,500 Server

Spending $2,500 on a server really means spending between $8,300 and $15,400 (at Tier IV standards) in facility capital to house and power the server. That factoid is among the data outlined by Ken Brill of The Uptime Institute in a piece today in Forbes. An excerpt:

We are currently in the biggest data center construction boom in history. At the same time, this boom is dramatically weakening the future flexibility and financial performance of information technology.

Brill calls upon companies to merge their IT and facilities departments and "dramatically improve cost knowledge within IT."

"Servers aren't as cheap as they first appear!," Brill concludes. "But this doesn't mean we should stop buying servers. We merely need to assure all relevant costs are included when making investment decisions." One other thing: turn off those obsolete and unused servers, and you can save hundreds of millions of dollars in the next 10 years and defer new data center construction.

Posted by Rich Miller August 11, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 07, 2008

RagingWire: Monitoring As A Customer Magnet

Energy monitoring systems may not be the most exciting part of a data center tour. But as a growing number of enterprise customers seek granular management of their energy usage, the availability of detailed data on power is emerging as a selling point.

“We’re seeing monitoring as a key (business) enabler for us,” said James Kennedy, Facilities Manager for RagingWire Enterprise Solutions in Sacramento, Calif. “We have every branch circuit monitored. We bill some clients on actual power utilization on conditioned power. Our data has been used to justify virtualization projects.”

RagingWire isn’t the only provider to bill customers based on actual usage, rather than flat monthly fee. CRG West has also adopted this approach, which provides an incentive for customers to be energy efficient, which can in turn allow providers to get more mileage out of their utility power.

Kennedy described RagingWire’s approach to its data center operations in a presentation Wednesday at the Next Generation Data Center conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. RagingWire was founded in May 2000 by several veterans of Photronics Inc., and is privately held. The company has been in the Inc. 500 and has reported 16 consecutive profitable quarters, with revenue growing from $9.7 million in 2003 to $25.7 million in 2006.

Posted by Rich Miller August 07, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

July 28, 2008

Need Hydro Power? Russia's Got It

Hydro power is perhaps the quickest route to a green data center, particularly if it's a greenfield (ground-up construction) project. Hydro power is affordable, available and scales to the multi-megawatt needs of the modern data center (which remains a challenge for solar and wind power). The availability of clean, cheap hydro power was the driving force behind the development of Quincy, Wash. into a data center hub, and is the reason that major players are sniffing around Manitoba and other locales with excess hydro capacity.

Om Malik has picked up on Dave Ohara's mention of the vast hydro power resources coming online in Russia, where RusHydro is building 5 gigawatts of new capacity and has plans to add another 20 gigawatts. "Russia’s natural environment makes it a good candidate for big data center expansion," writes Om, noting the favorable climate for free cooling and the coming explosion of trans-Pacific bandwidth.

Posted by Rich Miller July 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

June 30, 2008

215 Data Centers to Participate in EPA Study

At least 215 data centers have volunteered to provide data on their energy usage to the Environmental Protection Agency, which hopes to use the information to develop an Energy Star certification for data center facilities. That's a huge improvement from mid-May, when just 54 facilities had agreed to participate, well below the agency's goal of 100. The EPA extended its original deadline of June 1 by a month, and will get underway this week with more than twice as many facilities as initially hoped.

The EPA has been looking for data centers of at least 1,000 square feet to voluntarily provide energy use data that will help develop the Energy Star Data Center Infrastructure Rating, which will help data center operators and their customers evaluate the energy efficiency of specific facilities. Participants must collect 12 consecutive months of IT and building (whole building if stand-alone or data center portion only if within a larger building) energy use data, and submit the data by June 1, 2009. Additional details and instructions on how to participate are available at the Energy Star web site (PDF).

Posted by Rich Miller June 30, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

June 19, 2008

New Supercomputer Top 500 List Tracks Power

The updated list of the world's top 500 supercomputers was released yesterday, and includes energy efficiency data about these powerful systems, as noted by ComputerWorld (link via Dave Ohara). Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and co-creator of the Top 500 list, said that the supercomputers of the future may require as much as 100 megawatts of power. Systems under development at Oak Ridge National Lab will have annual power bills of more than $30 million when they debut in 2012. An excerpt:

"Power consumption is becoming one of the most important aspects of computing," said Dongarra. "It will be the most important driving force for supercomputing in the future. Without focusing on that, building bigger machines will be prohibitive. We're trying to understand which machines are more efficient, why they're more efficient, and understand the trends in high-performance computing."

The good news: the most powerful systems are also the most energy efficient, reflecting the benefits of the latest technology.

Posted by Rich Miller June 19, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

June 13, 2008

UPS Service Market Grew 8 percent in 2007

The North American uninterruptible power supply (UPS) service market generated $876.3 million in revenues in 2007, growing at a rate of 8.1 percent over 2006, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan. The market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.7 percent between 2007 and 2014. UPS service growth is driven primarily from demand from data center operators.

"Revenues are likely to be dominated by services supporting three-phase products throughout the forecast period," the report says. "Preventive and breakdown maintenance represented 61.9 percent of the total UPS service revenues in 2007. This consists of on-site service for breaks and fixes for the duration of two, three, and five years."

The full report, titled North American UPS Service Markets, is available from Frost & Sullivan in the US or Research and Markets in the UK.

Posted by Rich Miller June 13, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

June 04, 2008

Emerson Withdraws Bid for UK Power Firm

Emerson Electric Co (EMR) has halted its efforts to acquire Britain's Chloride Group (CHLD) after its latest improved takeover offer of $1.37 billion was rejected, the company said early Wednesday. Shares of Chloride, one of Europe's leading providers of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, fell 10 percent in trading on the London Stock Exchange.

Emerson, the parent of Emerson Network Power and its Liebert line of data center power and cooling products, made an initial acquisition offer of 255 pence a share on March 18. Chloride rejected that offer on May 12, and Emerson said today that its improved bid of 270 pence per Chloride share had also been rejected.

"Accordingly, Emerson confirms that it is no longer considering making an offer for Chloride," it said.

Posted by Rich Miller June 04, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

May 26, 2008

Uptime's Ken Brill on Data Center Power Costs

Here's an in-depth video for a holiday weekend: A presentation from Kenneth Brill, Executive Director at the Uptime Institute, at the 21st Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '07) last November. In this 90 minute video (a 45-minute presentation, followed by questions), Brill speaks at length about the cost of power consumption in data centers in a message titled "The Economic Breakdown of Moore's Law." Check it out if you have time, or bookmark it for when you do.

NOTE: The slides Ken refers to in the video are available at http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa07/tech/brill_talk.pdf so you can follow along.

For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Posted by Rich Miller May 26, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

May 21, 2008

Few Data Centers Sharing Info With EPA

Just 54 data centers have volunteered to provide data on their energy usage to the Environmental Protection Agency, which hopes to use the information to develop an Energy Star certification for data center facilities. The EPA had hoped to have at least 100 data centers participate in its National Data Center Energy Efficiency Program, but will commence the one-year analysis on June 1 with as many facilities as have signed up at that time, the EPA told Federal Computer Week.

365 Main, which has five data centers, has announced that it will participate in the EPA program. Emerson Network Power, a leading vendor of power and cooling products for data center industry, has been publicly encouraging its customers to take part in the EPA program.

The EPA is looking for more than 100 organizations with data centers of at least 1,000 square feet to voluntarily provide energy use data that will help develop the Energy Star Data Center Infrastructure Rating, which will help data center operators and their customers evaluate the energy efficiency of specific facilities. Participants must collect 12 consecutive months of IT and building (whole building if stand-alone or data center portion only if within a larger building) energy use data, and submit the data by June 1, 2009. Additional details and instructions on how to participate are available at the Energy Star web site (PDF).

The low participation to date suggests that few data center operators are eager for the government to know more about their facilities, despite assurances that information shared with the EPA will be masked and untraceable. Many major players in the IT industry would prefer that the data center industry effectively police itself, using best practices and standards to document their progress on energy efficiency. Recent headlines depicting data centers as energy hogs may lead to increased scrutiny.

Posted by Rich Miller May 21, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

May 16, 2008

A Look at Modular Power Expansion

Modular expansion isn't just for servers or compute capacity. Several vendors have developed products that allow data center operators to easily expand the power capacity of existing facilities, or an instant power infrastructure for container-based expansion solutions. Active Power, Inc. (ACPW) has developed PowerHouse (pictured above) which packages a flywheel UPS, switchgear, a diesel generator and fuel tanks in a shipping container.

PowerHouse was designed to provide a turnkey power and cooling infrastructure to accompany the Sun Modular Data Center S20, easily sold two containers to Tesco PLC to boost power capacity in existing data center. The PowerHouse gear is stored in a 40 foot shipping container, similar to those now being used in mobile data centers from Microsoft, Rackable, Verari, IBM and Dell.

Last summer we first began to note is the emergence of products customized for the "Blackbox economy" of container data centers. And with a growing number of facilities-based data centers running out of power capacity, modular power expansion products have application well beyond the container sector.

Posted by Rich Miller May 16, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

May 15, 2008

Active Power Sells 'Power in a Box' Containers

Active Power, Inc. (ACPW) has a new customer for PowerHouse, its containerized power systems. Tesco PLC, one of Europe’s largest retailers, has ordered two PowerHouse containers for a data center north of London, where it will protect the facility against power sags, fluctuations and outages. The systems are expected to be delivered in the second half of 2008.

Each PowerHouse container system includes one CleanSource UPS 1500iC system, switchgear, a 1900 kVA diesel generator and fuel tanks. The containers will be positioned beside Tesco's existing data center facility. Both containers will be manufactured offsite, which will ensure minimal disruption at the Tesco facility and pose less risk to day-to-day business operations.

Posted by Rich Miller May 15, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

April 30, 2008

Study: Data Center Energy Woes Will Intensify

If current trends continue unchecked, data center greenhouse gas emissions will quadruple by 2020, according to a joint study by the Uptime Institute and McKinsey & Company. The study, released today at the Uptime Symposium in Orlando, calls for a doubling of the energy efficiency of large-scale corporate computing facilities by 2012. The authors warned that attaining that goal will require "an immediate overhaul of corporate management practices," including the establishment of "energy czar" positions in major corporations.

The report, "Revolutionizing Data Center Energy Efficiency—Key Analyses," is the result of a year-long collaborative study by McKinsey and the Uptime Institute. The study is consistent with recent warnings from Uptime that energy use among the top tier of data centers soared in 2006-2007, rising at a 24 percent annual growth rate.

From a greenhouse gas perspective, the issue goes beyond building efficient new data centers, according to said Kenneth Brill, founder and executive director of Uptime Institute. The data center industry must also address energy woes at older data centers that will remain in use for years to come.

"While the design of the next generation of 'green' data centers gets a lot of attention and is certainly a worthwhile pursuit, we’re putting forward the case in this report that improving efficiency in existing sites will lower energy usage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions faster and more significantly with less cost," said Brill.

Posted by Rich Miller April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter