The Data Center Consolidation Project

Data center consolidation projects are not out of fashion yet. NYC and the feds move to consolidate their sprawling infrastructure to gain financial and energy efficiencies. ...

NYC Data Center Consolidation via InformationWeek: "current IT infrastructure of New York City is fragmented, with more than 50 unique data centers serving nearly 48 city agencies, many located in prime commercial real estate space. " NYC IT plans overhaul of data infrastructure: "The consolidation will lower the City’s cost of operations by up to $100 million over five years, reduce energy consumption and emissions, strengthen security, and improve overall IT service quality for agencies."

Federal Data Center Consolidation via Data Center Knowledge: Agencies are challenged to ... "prepare an inventory of the IT assets by April 30 and develop a preliminary data center consolidation plan by June 30. " by Federal CIO.

Intel Data Center Strategies Drive Business Value

IT Market Insights

The mid-tier enterprise is exhibiting leadership in adoption of new strategies for driving operational efficiency in the technology infrastructure. ...

... "Mid-sized enterprises are more aggressive and pioneering than either small or large enterprises. They are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and deduplication at 11-17 percent higher rates than small or large enterprises. " ...

Via Symantec: 2010 State of the Data Center

Proof-of-Concept Testing

Internet Initiative Japan adapts its green data center design with US market trend of ambient air cooling and shifts into proof of concept ahead of commercializing new container data center product. ...

... "They will build a modular data center with a cooling system that directly uses outside air, and operate it for one year starting in February 2010, with the aim of commercialization. This will be the first data center in Japan with a container unit cooled all year round by outside air. " ...

Via Internet Initiative Japan: Proof-of-Concept Data Center

Reaching for the Cloud creates Business Value

Amazon CTO provides his take on cloud computing and the type of cloud that would appeal to CIOs and increase adoption. Amazon has introduced a virtual private cloud that can be used to extend an enterprise architecture. Interesting note: some CIOs are capping the growth of their traditional data center in favor of growing the cloud portion of the architecture. This offering plays to that emerging trend. ...

... "The cloud let its users focus on delivering differentiating business value instead of wasting valuable resources on the undifferentiated heavy lifting that makes up most of IT infrastructure. " ...

Via All Things Distributed: Extending the Data Center to the Virtual Private Cloud

Data Center Design

WWII-era bunkers are being retrofit for reuse as secure, green data centers. ...

... "Using innovative approaches to energy, cost and space efficiency, these bunkers are being converted into Tier III high-density rack-ready powered base facilities, that will exceed industry standards. " ...

Via Prairie Bunkers: Design

Its Nebraska data center will use geothermal cooling system.

Data Center Visual Map

HP offers solutions for data centers with scale that include visual maps of environmental performance for energy tuning and optimization. ...

... "The HP Data Center Environmental Edge solution offers a complete visual mapping of environmental variables so customers can quickly identify and take action on data center inefficiencies. " ...

Via HP: Scale-out Computing

Want Fries with that Data Center

A sign of the times ... Syracuse works with IBM to create efficient data center with cogen facility. The University will use the facility to lead and to learn. ...

... "SU will manage and analyze the performance of the center, as well as research and develop new data center energy efficiency analysis and modeling tools. IBM will provide more than $5 million in equipment, design services and support, which includes supplying the electrical cogeneration equipment and servers such as IBM BladeCenter, IBM Power 575 and an IBM z10 systems. " ...

Via IBM: Syracuse University Data Center

Performance Benchmarks

Activity in benchmarking energy consumption is increasing, as business seeks to understand their performance versus peers and to highlight leadership positions with management. ...

... "We’re beginning to wrap up the data collection phase for data centers and we will begin exploring the development of a data center energy performance rating. " ...

Via CoStar Group: ENERGY STAR

Night of the Living Dead

Finish that upgrade or implementation project? Didja retire the legacy system or infrastructure that it replaced? Oops. You've got zombies. And, they're costing you ... big-time. ...

... "I'm talking about zombie servers, machines that, for whatever reason, have been left in the rack, powered on but doing very little or no work whatsoever. " ...

Via InfoWorld: Slay your zombies

Sleep When Idle

Microsoft focuses some of its investment on energy efficiency in the data center. Reducing power consumption during server idle periods is a research topic. Microsoft Research on efficient datacenters: "selectively putting idle servers into a low-power state ... " ...

... "As of today, turning servers off and on automatically is difficult to do, but with growing interest in environmental sustainability and a need to reduce rising energy costs, more people and businesses are motivated to find and develop solutions that work. " ...

Via Microsoft: Sustainable Computing

Green Performance Monitoring

Google uses standard data center efficiency metric to monitor performance, identify opportunities for improvement, and track the impact of its actions. The trends are impressive and efficiency gains drop straight to their bottom line. ...

... "We achieve this result without the use of any exotic techniques the EPA report assumes are necessary to reach this level of efficiency. Individual facilities can return even lower PUE values, with at least one facility returning a TTM PUE of 1.15. Our lowest published quarterly average PUE of an individual facility is 1.12, meaning that all electrical losses and cooling overhead combined used just 12% of the IT load. We believe that each of these data centers ranks among the most efficient large data centers currently in operation today. " ...

Via Google : Green Data Center Trends

Integrated Thinking for Green Computing

The information technology industry can take advantage of low-hanging fruit to make their data centers more efficient in the short-term. However, in the long-run, a holistic, integrated view of the data center design will yield leading energy performance. ...

... "For instance, a strict policy should be in place for selecting UPS providers, floor systems or high co-efficient of performance chillers, which work efficiently in combination. " ...

Via Silicon Republic: Data Center Energy Saver

IT Vendor Green Ranking

ABI Research did nice job with this green vendor ranking, looking for the vendors to "eat their own dog food" by implementing sustainable practices internally as well as offering green products as services. HP edges out the competition, but it is good to see the large vendors making strong moves in this area. ...

... "Hewlett-Packard emerged as the winner in ABI Research’s Innovation category, which measures how green a vendor’s products are. It was a very close contest because of the extensive efforts both IBM and Cisco have been making in this market. " ...

Via ABI Research: The Greenness of Data Center Equipment Vendors

Microsoft Texas Data Center Builds on Lessons Learned

Microsoft opens new data center as it executes on its cloud-computing strategy, incorporating energy efficiency into the design and operation of the facility. ...

... "The San Antonio facility is the most power-efficient data center we’ve built to date. The facility will use 602,000 gallons of recycled waste water (from San Antonio’s waste water system) a day to cool the facility during peak cooling months or approximately 8 million gallons of water a month. " ...

Via Microsoft: Microsoft San Antonio data center

Green is INnovative

Sun offers advice on green IT strategy and provides assessment toolkit as part of its eco initiative launch. ...

... "1. Assess Your Datacenter: Sun has resources available that you can use to measure the current efficiency and environmental impact of your datacenter, or we can do it for you. Based on the results, we can recommend ways to optimize space, power, and cooling for better efficiency and utilization across your IT infrastructure.

2. Optimize Your Infrastructure: Customers can upgrade their old equipment to new models that are the most energy efficient and powerful systems possible. Sun systems can deliver improved performance, power and cooling efficiencies as well as provide additional capacity in your facility.

3. Deploy Virtualization Technologies: Sun's virtualization solution is built upon industry-proven virtualization technologies – from desktop, to server, to disk and tape, and includes the free and open Solaris OS that runs across more than 890 Sun and non-Sun systems and has built-in virtualization and Predictive Self-Healing features. These products, combined with innovative programs, tools, services, and strategic partnerships can help customers achieve greater utilization, greater manageability, and significant savings, while bypassing power and space limitations. " ...

Via Sun Micro: Sun Eco Innovation Initiative

Operational Efficiency at Citigroup

Citigroup plans to eliminate thousands of positions in effort to streamline operations. Its list of information technology actions can have a significant impact. They seem late to the party with leveraging these efficient IT enablers - regionalized data centers, virtualization to increase capacity utilization, and a standard enterprise architecture. ...

... "Continue to rationalize operational spending on technology. Simplification and standardization of Citi's information technology platform will be critical to increase efficiency and drive lower costs as well as decrease time to market. Examples of this are: consolidation of data centers; improved capacity utilization of technical assets and optimizing global voice and data networks; standardizing how the company develops, deploys and runs applications; and maximizing value by limiting the number of software vendors to operate at scale. " ...

Via Citigroup: Citi Announces Actions to Streamline Organization, Reduce Expense Growth and Drive Future Expansion

Cloud Computing For Hyperscale DataCenters

Dell makes move up-market to compete more directly in the data center big-leagues. Can it differentiate itself?

... "Dell's Cloud Computing Solution is designed to provide data center optimization, increased energy efficiency, and lower deployment and overall management overhead for customers whose IT infrastructure, or compute cloud, is the factory for their business. These data-intensive customers include major providers of goods and services over the Internet, financial services organizations, national government agencies, institutional university and laboratory environments and upstream petroleum producers. " ...

Via Dell: Dell Announces Cloud Computing Solution to Address Unique Needs of Hyper-Scale Data Centers

IT Project Consideration: Data Center Power Consumption

Hardware, software, internal and external labor go into any analysis of IT project investments. The impact of new hardware investments on the data center power consumption needs to be considered in order to plan cooling and energy capacity requirements. ...

... "Power and thermal demands are changing drastically within server rooms, he says. Any IT project these days has to consider heat density as an important factor. " ...

Data Center Energy Consumption

Virtual Infrastructure: Grid Perspective

Grid-computing provider discusses the characteristics of managing a successful distributed computing infrastructure, which is of interest to companies that are aiming for a more lights-out, virtual infrastructure. ...

... "It is in the interest of application providers to meet the demands of their customers, and some of their largest customers are demanding grid-enablement as part of their overall IT strategy in the data center. " ...

Via Grid Today: Read