Senate passes bill touting energy-efficient servers
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President expected to sign off on law that could draw attention to products that offer "clean tech" solutions.
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IBM&#39;s new eServer allows users to run multiple OS environments at the same time to increase efficiency. Customers can purchase the machine based on the processing power they need. The server comes in configurations from one to four-way and ...
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(InfoWorld) - The forecast for datacenters isn't good for the short term: they're going to get hotter and a lot more cramped, according to Gartner analysts. Increasing use of cheaper x86 chip-based servers has presented problems for datacenters, most of which haven't been redesigned since the last tech boom went bust six years ago, said Rakesh Kumar, a Gartner research vice president. He spoke Monday during a presentation at Gartner's Data Center Technology Summit in London. The number of server racks is increasing. Consequently, the amount of floor space in datacenters is decreasing, but their power and cooling requirements are rising. More attention is being focused on theÂ environmental impacts of running high-energy datacentersÂ and moves by governments toward new legislation. "It will come down to a balance between the power, the cooling and the floor space," Kumar said. "What that means is legacy datacenters are obsolete." Gartner predicts that within 12 to 18 months organizations will have to make major changes to accommodate the heating and cooling challenges that come with more processing power. Four years ago, a stand-alone server in a rack used 2 kilowatts of electricity. Today, a standard rack filled with between 50 percent to 80 percent of blade servers consume between 15 kilowatts and 30 kilowatts per rack, Kumar said. The cooling statistics complicate the power picture. It takes between 1.2 to 1.3 times the amount of energy a server consumes to cool it, Kumar said. IT managers frequently can't fill an entire rack because of the heat generated by the servers. Floor cooling, where cool air is circulated under server racks, and air conditioning -- aren't going to work anymore because the heat is too great, Kumar said. What's more, the cool space beneath the servers in legacy datacenters becomes clogged with cables and wires and occasionally, other odd things that interfere. "They're thinking 'Hey, there's space under here. I'll keep my beer in there,'" said Peter Hannaford, of American Power Conversion, which makes server cooling equipment. "We found this guy who had a Christmas tree under there." All of these obstacles contribute to higher energy costs. Gartner estimates that electricity costs could go from 10 percent or less of IT budgets to 20 percent to 30 percent if left unchecked, Kumar said. Electricity costs have risen over the last year and will likely continue to rise, although the peak is unknown. Fortunately, everyone from chip vendors to servers vendors and software makers have a stake in reducing energy and heat, Kumar said. The problem could ultimately limit the growth of IT. A huge amount of investment is being made in finding solutions, either through new products or through new datacenter designs. Governments also are paying increased attention to IT. It's possible high-energy users could see higher taxes, or that ill-fitting legislation could be implemented, spurred by public demand for greener IT, said Steve Prentice, vice president and chief of research for Gartner. "They [the government] will rush something in that apparently does the job but does not address all the issues," Prentice said. "We think it's better to self-regulate."
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(InfoWorld) - Computer maker Dell's solution to the datacenter energy crisis is to market more energy-efficient versions of its PowerEdge line of servers. Dell is scheduled to introduce on Monday the PowerEdge Energy Smart model 1950 and 2950 servers, which the company claims deliver a 25 percent improvement in performance per watt compared to the standard 1950 and 2950. The announcement follows Dell's September launch of Energy Smart OptiPlex business desktop computers. The Energy Smart server features include a processor that draws only 40 watts of power versus the 65 watts or 80 watts drawn in standard servers. Energy Smart servers will also offer only 2.5-inch disk drives, smaller than the typical 3.5-inch drives. Those design changes may diminish performance in a way some customers would find unacceptable, said Jay Parker, director of PowerEdge Servers in the Dell Product Group. But for others, the goal is energy efficiency. "We would expect somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range of our customers to be interested in this product and to ultimately migrate to this. But there is a whole other set of customers who need more configurability or [for whom] power efficiency is not a priority," Parker said. The Energy Smart servers also feature redesigned power supplies and cooling fans, as well as software that regulates the processors and memory to power the server up and down as computing demand changes. Vendors of servers, desktops, and other enterprise hardware are on anÂ energy-saving kickÂ these days, addressing the need to cut datacenter power consumption. The lifetime operating cost of powering servers and cooling them with air conditioning is becoming more of a concern to datacenter managers than the price of the server itself. Hewlett-Packard unveiledÂ on Nov. 28 what it calls "Dynamic Smart Cooling" for datacenters. Heat sensors on server racks send signals to a control panel that adjusts the air-conditioning output. HP's technology doesn't address the energy problem as directly as Dell does by making the server energy-efficient, Parker said. "You have to optimize the server, because ultimately that has a huge ripple effect on the other infrastructure pieces in the datacenter. In our mind [HP's technology] seems to ignoreÂ the first obvious step, which is to address the server itself," he said. Pricing for the Energy Smart 1950 starts at $2,449, $100 more than the standard 1950, Parker said. Pricing for the Energy Smart 2950 starts at $2,619.
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Opinion: A decision to continue charging for server software based on CPUs and not cores will make Microsoft server software a much more attractive alternative to utility computing providers.
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Processors will feature enhanced power management technology.
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After Intel CEO Paul Otellini bragged that Intel&#39;s Xeon chip was the most energy-efficient processor, Neal Nelson compared it to AMD&#39;s offering and found that Intel wasn&#39;t being exactly truthful.Recent tests by Neal Nelson &amp; Associates, an independent computer performance consulting firm, have reported that in 36 of the 57 cases tested an AMD Opteron-based server delivered better power efficiency than a comparably configured Intel Xeon-based server.The tests were performed on servers configured with 2, 4, 6 and 8 gigabytes of main memory at various transaction processing load levels. The results show that for certain configurations and at certain load levels the Intel Xeon based server was 2.4 to 11.7 percent more power efficient while in other cases the AMD Opteron based server was 9.2 to 23.1 percent more power efficient. In addition, when the systems were idle and waiting for transactions to process, the AMD server was 30.4 to 53.1 percent more power efficient.Power consumption while the servers are idle is particularly significant since many servers spend most of their time waiting for work. A November 16, 2006 press release from IBM quotes a report by the Robert Frances Group which states that on average servers in data centers are idle 80 to 85 percent of the time.The test results also showed that:-- Larger memory configurations deliver both higher throughput and better power efficiency;-- Intel&#39;s power efficiency advantages decrease as memory size increases;-- AMD&#39;s power efficiency advantages increase as memory size increases;-- For CPU-intensive workloads, the Xeon delivers 8.0 to 14.0 percent higher peak throughput;-- For primarily I/O intensive workloads the Opteron delivers 11.3 to 19.4 percent higher peak throughputNeal Nelson conducted these tests in response to a statement made by Intel CEO Paul Otellini in a July 18, 2007 analyst conference call. During that call Mr Otellini referred to Intel&#39;s &quot;lead in power efficiency&quot;. Neal Nelson decided to use his company&#39;s benchmark toolset to determine if Intel actually had a lead in power efficiency.In a somewhat dry comment, Neal Nelson said: &quot;It appears that Mr. Otellini&#39;s statement is inconsistent with the test results.&quot;The tests were not financed or sponsored by any company or group.Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.&#160;
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Dell has introduced a new line of blade servers, the PowerEdge 1855 series, equipped with dual Xeon processors. The computer maker says its blades take up less space, cost less and are more economical to operate than traditional servers.
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Buy new servers more often - it'll make you greener.... Intel has kicked off a campaign to make data centres more efficient and less environmentally damaging. Paradoxically, one of its key messages seems to be that companies need to refresh their servers - ie. buy new ones - more often.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Like other adopters of server virtualization, Purdue University was concerned that its datacenter would hit the wall, exceeding physical space, power, and cooling limits. The use of EMC VMware let it combine 140 physical servers into three Hewlett-Packard DL-585 servers, a 40:1 compression ratio, says Mike Rubesch, director of IT infrastructure systems. "It helps postpone the inevitable," he adds. But the first servers chosen had very low utilization -- around 5 percent -- so the 40:1 rate is not sustainable. Over time, Rubesch expects the ratio to be 6:1, taking into account such servers as e-mail, database, and telephony that cannot be virtualized. That utilization rate will still reduce overall power usage to 16 percent of what it had been and physical space needs to a tenth, as the use of blade servers plus virtualization greatly reduces the physical footprint. Facilities costs should fall by $75,000 per year and hardware costs by $250,000 per year, he says. But organizations considering the use of virtualization need to be careful calculating costs, Rubesch cautions. If you have fewer than 10 virtual server instances running on a physical VMware server, virtualization becomes "extraordinarily expensive," he says. IT managers must also be careful not to factor in too much savings for the operating systems and applications running in virtual machines, Rubesch says. Many IT managers count on being able to run multiple instances of an OS or an app on one CPU, paying for just one license, because most enterprise apps are licensed on a per-CPU basis. But vendors are starting to charge per instance, not per CPU. For example, BEA now charges per instance rather than per CPU for its WebLogic server, and Microsoft Windows Server Enterprise Edition's license allows use on one physical server and as many as four VMs on that server. As virtualization grows more popular, you can expect the licensing savings to evaporate, so the investment should be based on savings elsewhere, such as in hardware and facilities efficiencies, Rubesch says. The use of VMs also increases your risk, because "you can put a lot of eggs in one basket," Rubesch says. But because you've reduced the number of points of failure, IT staff has more capability to focus on those critical areas, he notes. Rubesch is building sufficient capacity so that no single server is fully utilized, providing space for EMC's VMotion software to move VMs if a physical server fails. He's also keeping a spare physical server ready to go if needed. Using virtualization also incurs a high up-front cost. "The benefits aren't immediate," Rubesch says. A big reason is that to use the EMC VMotion utility to move server instances to other physical servers for better load-balancing or failover requires that all the hardware use the same CPU family, requiring a big hardware cost at each refresh cycle. "You need to sell that concept a little bit," he says dryly. Beyond the hardware costs, the use of virtualization makes the server environment more complicated, as "servers" can reside anywhere and change where they reside over time. As a result, "you need more skills," Rubesch says. For example, although a good Windows administrator will easily adapt to running virtualized Windows servers, you still need a dedicated person to handle such items as dynamic allocation and failover, he says. Of course, you can also use virtualization to simplify your environment, Rubesch notes, such as having standard server images that ensure consistency -- ending the nightmare of navigating the peculiarities specific to each hand-deployed physical server. "It's a lot simpler with VMs to have them nearly identical." Despite the caveats on understanding actual savings and the increased up-front costs, Rubesch is a big fan of server virtualization: "You get real benefit from it -- as long as you plan ahead." Virtualization special report Case study: Credit Suisse Case study: Nationwide Insurance Case study: Stonebridge Bank Case study: Transplace
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The House of Representatives on  Tuesday approved an energy bill to increase the fuel efficiency  of cars and trucks for the first time since 1975, boost  production of ethanol and cut energy use in light bulbs and  appliances.
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Each skinny server houses eight processors. Plug a few together, and voila! A high-performance machine.
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The US Senate late Thursday passed a wide-ranging energy bill, a key priority of majority Democrats, which raised average auto fuel efficiency standards by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years.
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IBM Corp. next week will begin shipping the second generation of its rack-mounted dual processor servers based on Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD) Opteron microprocessor. The new server, called the eServer 326, will be IBM's first product specifically designed to support the upcoming dual-core Opteron processors that AMD is expected to ship next year.
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Peter Glaskowsky analyzes the potential benefits of AMD's new quad-core Opteron processors for data centers.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission is considering introducing a voluntary code of conduct on energy efficiency for datacenter operators. Next week, the Renewable Energies Unit of the Commission's Joint Research Center will meet in London to discuss the idea. If adopted, a code of conduct would be voluntary, said Antonia Mochan, spokeswoman for the science and research unit of the Commission. Those organizations that adopt it would agree to abide by certain principles or standards, she said. The London meeting will include a session on the technical capabilities for reducing datacenter energy use and what a code of conduct -- if one is to be adopted -- should include. Participants will include hardware manufacturers, including Intel, datacenter designers and datacenter operators. The Commission has made few regulations about computer energy consumption, said Kevin Fisher, Intel's standards and regulations manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, earlier this week. Environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, which placed limits on greenhouse gas emissions for countries, are driving government interest in reducing energy consumption, Fisher said. Enterprises are interested in reducing utility costs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)Â Energy Star programÂ is used internationally as a specification for energy-efficient desktop computers, but the specification does not address servers. Part of the problem is a lack of metrics for establishing efficient server power consumption, although several efforts are under way, Fisher said. The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit group based in Warrenton, Virginia, is developing a first-generation benchmark for evaluating the energy efficiency of servers. The benchmark will measure energy use in conjunction with performance metrics. In December, U.S. PresidentÂ George Bush authorized the EPAÂ to study datacenter power consumption. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab at the University of California is also study energy issues with servers, and a report is due to the U.S. Congress in June, Fisher said. The Renewable Energies Unit meeting is a day after the UK Energy Summit organized by Datacenter Dynamics at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London and will be held in the same venue. Â
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Your data center gets the job done today, but how will it handle increasing demands of the future, especially fundamentals such as power and cooling?