Ironically, I just sat down with a person at ARM to discuss energy efficiency and he was mentioning how in 2005 he asked about energy use at a super computing conference, and people would think he was asking a stupid question.

It’s great to see the question “how much energy does your supercomputer use?” is now a normal part of a purchase decision.

Note this quote below.

"Modern supercomputers can no longer focus only on raw performance," said David Turek, vice president, deep computing, IBM. "To be commercially viable these systems most also be energy efficient. IBM has a rich history of innovation that has significantly increased energy efficiency of our systems at all levels of the system that are designed to simultaneously reduce data center costs and energy use."

Report Finds IBM Supercomputers Most Energy Efficient in the World
IBM Dominates Green500; 90 percent of Top20 Energy Efficient Supercomputers Made by IBM, Staggering 57 Percent of Top100 from IBM

ARMONK, N.Y., July 13, 2009. . . A new list announced today found that IBM (NYSE: IBM) supercomputers already deemed the most powerful in the world are also the most energy efficient according to the findings of the latest Supercomputing 'Green500 List' announced by Green500.org.

Energy efficiency--including performance per watt for the most computationally demanding workloads--is a core design principle in developing IBM systems.  IBM offers the broadest range of generally applicable supercomputers represented on the Green500 List including Blue Gene, Power servers, iDataPlex, BladeCenter and hybrid clusters.

The list shows that 18 of the Top20 most energy efficient supercomputers in the world are built on IBM high performance computing technology. The list includes supercomputers from across the globe being used for a variety of applications such as astronomy, climate prediction and pharmaceutical research. IBM also holds 57 of the Top100 positions on this list.

The number one most energy efficient system in the world -- an IBM supercomputer based on an IBM BladeCenter QS22 at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling, University of Warsaw -- produces more than 536 Mflops (millions of floating point operations per second) per watt of energy.

The world's fastest supercomputer, the IBM supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratories, the machine that first broke through the petaflop barrier, is ranked the fourth most energy efficient supercomputer in the world capable of over 444 Mflops per watt of energy, while the second  fastest supercomputer in the world manufactured by Cray is ranked 90th on the Green500 List, producing only 152 Mflops per watt.

"Modern supercomputers can no longer focus only on raw performance," said David Turek, vice president, deep computing, IBM. "To be commercially viable these systems most also be energy efficient. IBM has a rich history of innovation that has significantly increased energy efficiency of our systems at all levels of the system that are designed to simultaneously reduce data center costs and energy use."

The Green500 list is published by Green500.org. It provides a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world and serves as a complementary view to the TOP500 list of worldwide supercomputers announced last month by Top500.org.

More information about the Green500 List is available at http://www.green500.org
More information about the TOP500 List is available at http://www.top500.org
More information about IBM and HPC Solutions: www.ibm.com/deepcomputing

This is an interesting extension of service from Raging Wire collocation services to host a virtualized infrastructure.

In many ways the Stratascale offering is a greener data center solution for companies with 50 – 500 employees who run their own servers on site or even a collocation offering. Why? Because the solution is designed with Virtualization as an assumption.  The good thing is versus services like Amazon Web Services you can also choose to have a no virtualization and be direct on hardware.  Also, the servers are not share with other customers. The virtualized servers are all yours.

This was my first chat with Reed, but I am sure I’ll be talking to him again to discuss Stratascale’s solution.

Part of Stratascale’s value is its UI for system provisioning.

You can watch a demo here.

The physical servers are listed.

Available in 3 levels of automated integrated bundled environments, IronScale is built on real, physical dual- and quad-core x86 servers.

Level 1 Server...2 cores, 4GB RAM, 70GB storage

Level 2 Server...4 cores, 8GB RAM, 70GB storage

Level 3 Server...8 cores, 16GB RAM, 70GB storage

Each server bundle features:

Dual-/quad-core Intel^® Xeon^® CPUs

70GB of local RAID 5O storage

Your choice of a Red Hat^® Linux^® or Windows^® Server OS

1 Mbps dedicated bandwidth

2 networks and 8 external IP addresses per client

100 internal IP addresses per network

VPN for 1 site-to-site and 5 remote users per client

24x7 Monitoring and Management

KVM access

The data center facility is listed is run by Raging Wire.

Our Tier IV Data Center

Staff

Multi-disciplined, certified engineering staff and 24x7 support team of IT experts is rigorously trained, has extensive industry expertise, and is committed to clients, standards, and best practices.

World-Class Facility

Tier IV class "A+" 200,000+ square foot data center

Engineered for 99.999% availability

Power and cooling is scalable beyond 200 Watts per sq. ft.

Carrier neutral high-speed Internet, over 20 Gigabits of bandwidth

N+2 minimum system and component redundancy for concurrent maintainance and fault tolerance

On-site, 69Kv power substation and well

Financial-grade physical security

Their PUE is not advertised, but given the highly virtualized environment the performance per watt should be high.

Environmental Responsibility

At RES, we have a healthy respect for our environment. Which is why we have always built common sense and green practices into everything we do. But being environmentally responsible isn't just good for the community and the planet - its good business. For our efforts, we have received numerous environmental awards, but we don't stop there. We constantly refine our processes to improve our power and resource efficiency, reduce and recycle wastes, and help us to operate more productively.

Efficiency and sustainability is key to everything we do.

Our power conservation efforts have saved more than 4,000,000 kWh of electricity.

We've increased our chilled water plant and cooling efficiency, conserving an additional 250,000 kWh of electricity per month.

Our two chemical-free water treatment systems have eliminated chemical use entirely and reduced our water discharged by 80%.

We recycle 100% of the cardboard, steel, copper, and aluminum we use for construction and other activities. In paper and cardboard recycling alone, it is equivalent to 36+ mature trees per year.

We recycle 100% of our lead acid batteries, over 700,000 pounds worth, and donate the proceeds to the United States Wolf Refuge.

We recycle more than 2,000 pounds of electronic waste per year, from both our own company and as a free service to our valued clients.

Our social and environmental responsibility is an essential part of contributing to and protecting the community we live in.

FedEx has a historical perspective post regarding sustainability efforts.

History’s Lesson: Sustainability Requires Everyone in the Trenches

By Mitch Jackson on April 21, 2009

“Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity. We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed.” - Benjamin Rush -

Before making any judgments about this quote, let me reassure you that it has a positive aspect. Before I get to that, however, some might be asking who Benjamin Rush was. He was one of America’s lesser known Founding Fathers. He was an associate of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and a prominent physician in his day. And, the context of the quote, from a letter to John Adams, was in reference to some of the darkest days of the American Revolution.

What’s the relevance of the quote? As the historian David Hackett Fischer wrote in Washington’s Crossing, “He (Rush) thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible.” But, the positive aspect of this is that we do rise up and deal with problems, and eventually solve them.

That’s what is needed for the current vexing problems of the economy, energy security and the environment. Just as the nascent nation relied upon state militias to supplement those Continental soldiers in the field month after month during the Revolutionary War (sometimes to the Glorious Cause’s detriment), so, too, this nation requires everyone in the trenches to fight this action in transforming and sustaining our economy.

One of the more interesting points is FedEX discussing P&G Laundry Detergent.

I spoke at a summit some weeks back for The Economist magazine, titled The 2009 Sustainability Summit – The New Climate: Global Warming and Its Implications for Corporate Strategy. This is a big title for a big societal challenge. I was particularly struck by an innovation that could result in big environmental benefits. Procter & Gamble has done much in their sustainability efforts, even conducting life cycle analyses on their products. They found that their biggest environmental impact from energy usage was not their product manufacturing; it was not their materials, not their transportation of materials or products, not even material disposal; none of these were even close. No, it was the use of their laundry products in homes that was their biggest impact, primarily from the energy used to heat water. So, they developed Tide Cold Water. Procter & Gamble has calculated that washing laundry in cold water in every U.S. household would save 70 to 90 billion kilowatt-hours of energy every year – they say this is 3% of the nation’s total household energy consumption, equating to a reduction of 34 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Oh, yes, another interesting fact is that they calculate that the average consumer would save $63 annually on their utility bills. All of these numbers are large in total. And, importantly, they’re all trending the right way – reduced energy usage and environmental impact, reduced costs for consumers, and increased product sales potential for Procter & Gamble. A “win-win-win”, which is invariably better than “win-lose” scenarios – always the result of “us versus them” strategies.

Makes you think how many of you know what are the effects of users using your data center services.

What is the environmental impact of your data center services?

The benefits of attending are listed:

Network with other senior data center professionals

Multi-track programme that allows you to choose from 26 presentations

Post-event* access to the largest database of presentations

Post-event* access to market research key findings from all events

Special access* to filmed seminars on DCDtv
*12 Months access to 'Delegate Resources' area (see top nav)

And, I fall into this first bucket of networking.  Unfortunately or fortunately, I learn much more networking with people then sitting in a presentation. I’ve spent too much time working on my own presentations and others and I don’t have the patience to sit and listen for an hour. Most of the time I am listening to the style of presentation and how they could improve their presentation with better organization, talking points, and graphics.

If you are attending DCD SF, look forward to meeting some new people and reconnecting familiar faces.

Green logistics: UPS lays out CO2 emissions reduction goals in new sustainability report

Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Logistics Management, 7/7/2009

ATLANTA—UPS said today it plans to reduce its airline carbon emissions by an additional 20 percent from 2005 to 2020, which would be a cumulative reduction of 42 percent since 1990.

This objective was disclosed in its annual UPS Sustainability Report, which noted that UPS Airlines has a firm position as an industry leader in fuel efficiency in the package delivery sector, with an efficiency factor of 1.42 CO2 pounds per available ton mile—and a goal to reduce that factor to 1.24 CO2 pounds per available ton mile by 2020.

Distribution is a key point of eCommerce sites like eBay and Amazon.

McIntire added that UPS also wants to be a reliable supply chain partner for shippers, which is why it now has transparency in its CO2 emissions reporting [Scope 1, 2, and 3] and emissions-reduction goals.”

“UPS has taken a bold step in terms of their willingness to provide data related to their direct and indirect carbon emissions, as well as their call requiring all transportation and logistics companies to report their direct and indirect emissions,” said Brittain Ladd, director of logistics and manufacturing at Cognizant Technology Solutions and a leading expert on green supply chains and logistics. “The challenge, however, is that not all transportation and logistics companies have an infrastructure in place or the tools necessary to accurately capture and report their carbon emissions.”

But with so many different consulting firms and 3PL's able to provide support to provide transportation and logistics providers—and shippers—with the expertise and tools to accurately capture and report their emissions, Ladd said he sees no reason why there won't be universal reporting of direct and indirect carbon emissions from all transportation and logistics providers within just a few years.

“The report from UPS is also just one more indication that the issue of carbon emissions and their impact on supply chains continues to grow in importance to businesses, customers and shareholders,” noted Ladd.

On page 74 of the 106 page UPS Sustainability Report is a bit about UPS data centers.

HP and Dell claim energy efficiency server firsts

Power test pass with a catch

By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 6th July 2009 20:40 GMT

Getting IT vendors to agree to any standard, even one that they have a big hand in shaping, is almost impossible. And so it is with the new Energy Star specification for servers, supposedly embraced by server makers to show the energy efficiency of their metal.

The Energy Star specification for servers, which debuted in May, is designed to gauge server power consumption so IT managers can shop for the most energy-efficient machines using an agreed yardstick. In this case, a yardstick established by the US Environmental Protection Agency's popular Energy Star program.

HP has their own site for ENERGY STAR servers.

Part of the ENERGY STAR specification are data sheets.  Here are a few HP has published.

HP ProLiant DL360 G6

• Combining concentrated 1U compute power, integrated Lights-Out management, and essential fault tolerance, the HP ProLiant DL360 G6 is optimized for space constrained installations.
  • Power and Performance Data Sheet (504633-xx1)

HP ProLiant DL380 G6

• The HP ProLiant DL380 G6 Server continues to deliver on its heritage of engineering excellence with increased flexibility and performance, enterprise-class uptime and manageability, 2-socket Intel Xeon performance, and 2U density for a variety of applications.
  • Power and Performance Data Sheet (491316-xx1)
  • Power and Performance Data Sheet (491315-xx1)
  • Power and Performance Data Sheet (504633-xx1)
  • Power and Performance Data Sheet (491335-xx1)

Access Power, Thermal and Utilization Parameters

• Windows Commands
• Linux Commands

‘Ghostboxes’ haunt communities across U.S.

As big retailers go under, consolidate, blight is monument to lost jobs

With the recent spate of bankruptcies and store closures, including Circuit City and Linens ’N Things, more abandoned buildings like this Sportsman's Warehouse in Allen Park, Mich., will be added to a struggling commercial real estate market.

View related photos

Carlos Osorio / AP

updated 2:48 p.m. PT, Mon., July 6, 2009

BISMARCK, N.D. - Hundreds of anxious shoppers watched as city officials used power saws to cut 2-by-4s during Home Depot Inc.’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for its 102,700-square-foot building center in Bismarck. Less than three years later, the home improvement retailer shuttered the underperforming store, leaving a big orange empty eyesore on the outskirts of town.

The building, sitting derelict and silent on acres of asphalt, is now listed for sale at $10.5 million. But there’s been little interest in the near windowless warehouse-like building that occupies a lot the size of a dozen football fields.

Or maybe you could even use the space for a content delivery network in strategy locations.

• Electrical mix: As discussed in Chapter 2, some energy sources spawn much more carbon dioxide when used to produce electricity than others. Deciding to locate your Data Center in a region where electricity has a lower carbon emissions factor is an excellent way to make the facility greener before design work even begins. (More information about electrical mix is provided in Chapter 4: Powering Your Way to a Greener Data Center.)
• Weather: Some Data Center energy efficiency measures can only be implemented with the cooperation of Mother Nature. For instance, air side economizers that use outside air to chill a Data Center (and are discussed in Chapter 5: Cooling Your Way to a Greener Data Center) are more practical to use in regions where it’s cold much of the year rather than in areas where it’s usually warm or mild.
• Building codes: Are the green measures that you intend to include in your building allowed by the regional building codes? If they aren’t, are you willing to either do without that efficiency or else invest the time and effort to negotiate for a variance for your project?

  NOTE

  The Robert Redford Building in Santa Monica, California, houses offices of the Natural Resource Defense Council and in 2004 became one of the first buildings to achieve a LEED platinum rating. Design efforts began in 1999 but the 15,000 square foot (1,393.5 square meter), three-story building was not completed until late 2003.

  Green design elements including rainwater collection, the use of recycled plastic piping (in lieu of copper) and the use of waterless urinals all had to be negotiated with the city because they either conflicted with or else were not addressed by building codes at the time.

• Workforce proximity: Although not a Data Center design issue per se, the distance that employees commute to reach your facility affects how much carbon dioxide they generate every day. It’s for this reason that some environmental building assessment systems award points for features that promote alternative transportation, such as close proximity to public transit or installing bicycle storage units.

Other Data Center Site Selection Factors

As green as you want your Data Center to be, it’s impractical to select a site solely on its environmental merits. Several other factors should be considered, including:

• Property zoning: Is construction of a Data Center allowed at the location?
• Natural disasters: Is the region prone to earthquakes, ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, landslides, fire or other severe events?
• Pollution: How is the air quality at the location? Is there any risk of IT equipment exposure to dust, industrial byproducts or other contaminants?
• Interference: Are there any nearby sources of electromagnetic interference (also called radio frequency interference) such as telecommunication signal facilities or airports?
• Vibration: Are there any nearby sources of vibration such as railroads, major roads or construction?
• Political climate: Is the region politically stable or do conditions exist that might jeopardize the safety of employees or operation of a Data Center?
• Flight paths: Is the property within the flight path of an airport, increasing the possibility of a plane crashing onto the site?

Site selection considerations, including how to evaluate the a property’s risk factors and mitigate them, are discussed in greater detail in my previous book on Data Center physical design, “Build the Best Data Center Facility for Your Business.”

The referenced book has more details.

Chapter 2   Choosing an Optimal Site

Assessing Viable Locations for Your Data Center

• Building Codes and the Data Center Site
• Site Risk Factors
• Natural Disasters
• Pollution
• Electromagnetic Interference
• Vibration
• Political Climates
• Flight Paths

Evaluating Physical Attributes of the Data Center Site

Relative Location

• Accessibility
• Disaster Recovery Options

Pre-Existing Infrastructure

• Power Analysis
• Cooling Capabilities
• Structured Cabling

Amenities and Obstacles

• Clearances
• Weight Issues
• Loading Dock
• Freight Elevators
• Problem Areas
• Distribution of Key Systems

Paint Your Data Center Green: An Interview with Douglas Alger

• By Linda Leung and Douglas Alger
• Jul 1, 2009
• Article is provided courtesy of Cisco Press

From the author of
Grow a Greener Data Center, Rough Cuts

In an interview with Linda Leung, Douglas Alger explains what it takes for businesses to green their data centers, how Cisco is eating its own green dog food, and how his former career as a journalist has helped him in his career at Cisco.

It's easy to do your bit to green up your life. From taking public transportation to work, to switching off your computer every night, to recycling and composting, every little counts. And every little bit counts a lot more when you're involved in greening data centers. By being smart with data center equipment layout and design and using energy-efficient devices, green data centers can save hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars depending on the size of the facilities. Douglas Alger, author of Grow a Greener Data Center, and Build the Best Data Center Facility for Your Business says Cisco's savings due to its green initiatives could be in the millions of dollars.

I haven’t read the book, but took a look at the Table of Contents.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Going Green in the Data Center
Chapter 2  Greener Construction Strategies
Chapter 3  Powering Your Way to a Greener Data Center
Chapter 4 Cooling Your Way to a Greener Data Center
Chapter 5 Cabling Your Way to a Greener Data Center
Chapter 6  Refrigerants and Fire Suppressants
Chapter 7 Choosing Greener Gear
Chapter 8 Saving Energy Through Consolidation and Virtualization  [Contributing Chapter 9 Greening Other Business Practices
Chapter 10 Measuring and Managing Green
Appendix - Sources of Data Center Green Information
Glossary

Douglas’s background is interesting in that he is a journalist and learned his trade in Cisco’s data center group.

Linda Leung: You have a bachelor's degree in journalism, and you had stints as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Syracuse University. Why did you change careers? Are there elements of journalism that have helped you in your career as an IT professional?

Douglas Alger: My career change was actually put into motion by a desire to relocate to San Jose, where I had gone to college years before and where several friends still lived. One of them worked at Cisco, so I called him and asked if he knew whether the company had any openings for technical writers. It did, but my friend also mentioned that his manager was looking to hire someone to do support work for their data centers and ideally create a website to document their data center-related operational policies and procedures, many of which were still taking shape. The position sounded like a new way for me to apply my writing background, and Cisco seemed like a good company to work for, so I decided to apply.

Being able to communicate clearly in writing and produce work while up against daily deadlines are certainly useful skills that can be applied to any field. Probably most helpful from my days as a newspaper reporter, though, has been the ability to investigate unfamiliar subject matter, figure out what are the key elements and then communicate their importance to other people.

The one big thing though I found missing is the lack of discussion on the role of software in a green data center.  Virtualization in many ways is just a hardware utilization technology, working at a low level close to the hardware that software doesn’t care.

There is a communication gap between the software developers, IT operations, and data center facilities.  These groups speak different languages and have different priorities. I actually think it is too hard to get all of these groups in one room, and even if you did get them together once, you’ll have a rapid fall off in any remaining discussions.

The good thing is there are some groups who get the role of software (the consumers of data center resources) need too be aware of their energy use and the impact of their actions.  Look for more on the topic Software and a Green Data Center.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009, 2:39pm EDT

NY beats Ohio, Pa., Ill. for Yahoo! data center site

The Business Review (Albany) - by James Fink For The Business Review

Months of aggressive pitching and a coordinated economic development approach laid the groundwork for computer industry giant Yahoo! Inc. to decide to build a northeast data center in the the Buffalo area.

Yahoo!, Tuesday morning, confirmed it will be building the 190,000-square-foot center at the Lockport Industrial Park. The data center could employ, initially, 125 people. Yahoo! has pegged a 30-acre site in the park for the complex.

Yahoo!’s decision is considered a major victory, especially against a backdrop of a weakened economy where unemployment has increased in the past year in Erie County to 8.1 percent from 5.5 percent, and in Niagara County to 9.3 percent from 6.6 percent.

“This is a big win for the community,” said Tom Kucharski, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise president and chief executive officer. “We won the day.”

Yahoo! was being courted by several states including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois for the center. All offered a handsome array of incentives.

“When a high tech company like Yahoo! picks a community like Western New York, it’s like a lighthouse,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, New York’s senior senator, who played a key role in Lockport landing the data center.

Part of the incentive package is 15 mW of low-cost hydropower.

The region crafted its own aggressive incentive package including the New York Power Authority offering 15 megawatts of low-cost hydropower that could save Yahoo! an estimated $100 million over a 15-year period. Empire State Development Corp. also offered job training grants and other incentives.

The executives and local officials are excited as they say the site will be built in ten months – Aug 2009 start, finish May 2010.

Construction on the data center will begin in August, said David Dibble, Yahoo! senior vice president. The center will be open by May.

News.com adds more.

Yahoo redesigns data center, ditches carbon offsets

by Tom Krazit

Yahoo thinks its plan for a new data center could eventually help the company achieve carbon-neutral status without having to resort to the purchase of carbon offsets.

Yahoo's David Dibble discusses the company's plans for a Buffalo-area data center with New York Senator Charles Schumer (right, red tie) and other state officials.

Yahoo designed its forthcoming data center to let outside air cool the servers at all times, borrowing the idea from the design of a chicken coop, according to Yahoo co-founder David Filo. The company joined New York officials such as Governor David Patterson and Senator Charles Schumer Tuesday to unveil plans for the data center, the design of which Yahoo is attempting to patent.

With One Yahoo data center in Eastern Washing with Hydro-electric and another in NY, Yahoo must see themselves as leaders in carbon neutral data center.

As part of the announcement of the new data center in Lockport, N.Y., just outside of Buffalo, Yahoo also revealed that it will no longer purchase carbon offsets as part of its energy strategy. Carbon offsets have been controversial in some quarters, but they allow companies to claim they are "carbon neutral," in that purchasing offsets diverts money to green projects.

The original Yahoo Blog gives more details about PUE and energy efficiency.

For data center geeks, we expect our Buffalo data center design will have an annualized average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.1 or better. To achieve that, we’ve come up with a unique building design that we call the Yahoo! Computing Coop (because it looks like something chickens live in), which is angled to take advantage of Buffalo’s microclimate, using 100% outside air to cool the servers.

We’ve been pushing green data center standards since we started building our own data centers two years ago. For example, our facilities in Washington are powered by zero-carbon wind and hydroelectric sources, and we use free cooling for most of the year, dropping energy consumption by 40-50%. As we build more capacity to meet demand, we’ll continue to focus on innovations and inventions that improve energy efficiency. And we’ve been sharing best practices to encourage the entire industry to put smarter policies in play.

For years Yahoo has been promoting its carbon neutrality by buying carbon offsets, but now have shifted to carbon reduction vs offsets.  Yahoo will be able to claim a big reduction in carbon when they shut down their existing data center capacity and shift it to NY.  Keep this in mind when you think about your carbon strategy.  The public is wising up to carbon offsets are not as good as carbon reduction.