Notes from week 51 rss reads.
This week : Cisco, EMC, GreenIT, Microsoft, Wordpress
You are currently browsing articles tagged PUE.
Rightsizing Servers to Achieve Cost and Power Savings in the Datacenter: This article introduces a whitepaper (pdf) published December 09:
In a nutshell, the paper describes how we perform detailed analysis of our internal workloads and then select balanced servers that are optimally sized for our production scenarios. It is my hope that IT teams in other companies can use the information in our paper to justify devoting resources to characterizing internal workloads, because that is the basis of an effective rightsizing strategy.
The whitepaper makes a parallel between the servers and the cars purchasing process is interesting as it enlarges the vision on the all criteria to look for, but it just dismisses that if you have an outsourced services or if you just lease your servers, then your needs are not the same and you tend to remove some criteria from your process.
The document goes through SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation) and TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council) benchmark with their respective applications and limitations.
After an overview of cpu, memory, disk and network performance evolution over the last years and the links between theses components, the power factor is introduces through the PUE perspective, highlighted by this figure (from source document):
Three-year total cost of ownership of a basic 1U server
The whitepaper continues by studying cases for typical servers roles: web server, file server.
What I find really surprising, is that it never deals with virtualization.
Update : One more very good article on this whitepaper from GreenM3 : ex-Intel engineers at Microsoft share processor secrets, optimize performance per watt
European Free Cooling Tool from The Green Grid is available since October 01, 2009. You can alternatively consult the European Fresh Air Cooling Low Res Map (high-res for members only) or report your PUE but keep in minds that its evolution is still under work.
How a Good Metric Could Drive Bad Behaviors: through three issues commonly reported, this post pictured one more time the limitations of The Green Grid’s PUE and the need to make it a real metric : something easily measureable, with an expressed unit (it is actually a ratio more than a metric without it). I already discussed that but it is always good to repeat. The Green Grid is working on guidelines and improvements, through the “proxies“.
Microsoft signs EU Code of Conduct for data centers and targets PUE of less than 1.2, please refer to the related post for more information on the EU Code of Conduct for data centers.
Microsoft’s Top 10 Business Practices for Environmentally Sustainable Data Centers (celebrating Earth Day): title speaks by itself. This 10 pages whitepaper with samples from Microsoft’s field practices presents more or less practical points on IT efficiency. The common factor is that investing in knowledge is a must, from monitoring, measuring and testing. And PUE is used. From ms datacenters blog
Measuring datacenter efficiency easier said than done : another article on the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) metric limitations and the need for a wider look . The Green Grid’s metric and The Uptime Institute’s CADE (Corporate Average Datacenter Efficiency) are compared with last Energy Star standard from EPA. I agree with the fact that PUE is not an IT metric, it is incomplete, hard to measure and the hype around it decrease its interest for benchmarking. It remains a first step and this small one bring awareness cross organizations.
Being irregular at blogging has a consequence : I talked here about PUE, but forgot to talk about The Green Grid (TGG), its originator.
So first, a little introduction (quoting) :
The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to developing and promoting energy efficiency for data centers and information service delivery by:
- Defining meaningful, user-centric models and metrics
- Promoting the adoption of energy eicient standards, processes, measurement and technologies
- Developing standards, measurement methods, processes and new technologies to improve performance against the defines metrics
They just released a refreshed website, where information falls easily under hands, PUE and DCIE definitions including. They are organised mainly around Work Groups, two of them being EMEA ones. Then, last but not least, they are organizing events and among them, a yearly “The Green Grid Technical Forum”.
TGG Technical Forum 2009 held February 3-4, 2009. Here are some coverage:
- During the meeting:
- Tidbits from The Green Grid Technical Forum Two board members (from APC and Sun) share insight on the event’s first day. First, the “Data Center 2.0 design guide” is introduced. The title of this initiative speaks for itself. Second, a virtual world (Second Life) is presented, a virtual “Green Grid Academy”, where vendor-neutral data centers are used to train avatar, for free.
- Green Grid Tackles Productivity This interview of three directors of the The Green Gird (from Dell, HP and Intel), highlights how difficult it is to establish industry metrics and the difficulty to get an agreement from everyone on a definition. The fact that PUE varies, and that is it only an energy ratio and not a data center productivity or efficiency indicator is key. The event aims to discuss a new proxy approach (indicators). Then the “Data Center 2.0 design guide” initiative is discussed.
- After the meeting:
- Green Grid Postmortem: Successes and the work ahead Contribution from Deborah Grove this event’s comments deal with new tools under development by the Green Grid:
- Free Cooling Web Map – EMEA will be supported
- PUE Calculator
- Power Configurations Calculator – aims to optimize power distribution
To conlude, the Data Center 2.0 becomes a strategy (many guides will be produced) more than a design guide and you can’t help but think about Web 2.0 definitions and discussions. Good to see that the financial downturn does not prevent technical forum to enter such close to philosophical strategy (for data centers world).
- [fr] Green Grid : les avancées en direct des Etats-Unis This feedback is from dotgreen CTO James Pavia, member of Green Grid. It can be completed with the two daily reports on dotgreen’s website. The new tools (see above) and Data Center 2.0 initiative are reported. Microsoft keynote [pdf] and Green Grid’s partners are mentioned.
- Green Grid Postmortem: Successes and the work ahead Contribution from Deborah Grove this event’s comments deal with new tools under development by the Green Grid:
Comments:
- DataCenter 2.0 strategy : This initiative presentation has been uploaded Green Grid page. It is a long term run, and does not define 2.0 vs. 1.0. It is common to see Data Center 2.0 as the “Grid Datacenter” but I am not sure the discussions were on Grid.
- DC Pro Software Tool presentation.
- Link to all others Technical Forum Presentations in Green Grid Library & Tools website section.
Following previous article, I found this interesting piece from Datacenter Knowledge and so decided to vampire it and dig more into related contents.
First, this nice schema well introduces PUE:
As more and more PUE adopters are releasing into the wild PUE values (improbably low numbers, lower than competitor if possible), a controversy is starting on the reality and seriousness of theses figures. PUE is simple to calculate with only basic guidance, evolving to an industry standard without the discussions and collaboration typical to norms. Fast adoption could be an evidence that it is a too easy game:
- approximations (measurement, weighted average) : It is complicate to measure everything in a datacenter, like it should be for PUE. Old infrastructure are not that flexible and when it is not designed from begining, it can’t evolve. If your datacenter is in an office building for exemple, it could be that generator, power conversion, UPS and cooling are shared amongst many usages and users. Google for exemple is not taking into accounts small values so small datacenters. The sampling method is also important in any measurements and as coolings is highly linked to seasons, should not be discarded in reports. PUE varies! See illustration from Microsoft who has a hidden modesty showing it.
- use of products’ manufacturer technical value instead of real one. It can’t believe they went to every server, every PSU to measure it. They just make maths from the spec sheet. I do. I wish I could measure it, some servers give that information but it is just easier to get to the point. And more scalable.
- restricted scope : PUE is often calculated for modern, self-owned facilities ? How about the one you lease, the racks provided by your telco to host internet services, etc. PUE is used then as a justification for investment in new and shiny datacenters, not as a metric for IT efficiency.
Again, PUE is not a norm, standard or certification, it is just a metric.
It remains the way to go of course, incorporated in a global effort, involving desktops in the scope…
It is always good to pay attention to this.
Facts and links after the jump.
Green IT links round up, classified by category (read entire post to get content):
- Information
- Blog
- Metrics certifactions
- Manufacturers
More to come…
