Energy Matters

Serendipity & Clouds

Every time I have the energy & efficient IT conversation with customers I learn something new.  In the process I try to connect the new information with what will help customers accomplish their objectives and to better understand what drives their decisions.

That’s where serendipity - making fortunate discoveries by accident - comes into play.

For some time, my focus has been IT energy use in data centers and how to help consume less of it.  As I learned more, it became clear that energy difficulties are mostly symptoms of inefficient IT – a very unfortunate and costly side effect. 

Lately I’m seeing a line-up that connects several important customer concerns:  the economy, sustainable business, sustainable natural environments, the expanding digital universe, and next generation IT/business imperatives. 

They may not all intersect for every customer, but the themes do and more frequently there are more ah-ha moments that connect them to a course of action.

Serendipity.

Customers are realizing they have a rare opportunity for multiple related difficulties to be addressed effectively and simultaneously with one core strategy that incorporates mission critical computing, seamless virtualization and Private Cloud. 

All of the elements, including timing, are falling into place.

I think of pool balls - five of them lined up perfectly in front of the pool table pocket.  It isn’t an easy shot but it’s possible.  With a bit of skill and experienced coaching it’s a shot with great promise.

Start with the economy.  Whatever can be done to consume less energy, capital, space etc., will help save on expenses and improve business.  Here you have multiple opportunities to advance the cause -through consolidation, de-duplication, Flash and SATA disk, virtualization and so on.  Yes there are capital expenses, but smart strategy paybacks in direct savings and cost avoidance are rapid and well worth the investment.

There are solid IT efficiency paybacks too.

It’s not all new.  For example, EMC moved to a tiered storage strategy and over about four and a half years capacity grew from under 1 petabyte to nearly 5.5 petabytes.  At the same time, energy for storage decreased 45%. There were immediate savings in the storage consolidation and energy reduction as well as long term operating economies that would never have been possible without that early change in practices.

During the same period, EMC used virtualization to reduce its server pool by over 1000 machines. And there’s opportunity for much more.

Now there are even more reasons to look at this and more positive impacts that can result.

Go beyond the narrow IT focus, because we also want to sustain our business and natural environments.  After all, if the natural environment fails it will certainly not be good for business. 

So, when I talk to customers about IT efficiency, I use energy as a placeholder for ways that the business can increase operational efficiency, spend less for IT and help the environment suffer less. 

In the right context, using less energy means accomplishing the mission with less gear on the machine room floor.  That means less equipment  was packaged, transported or manufactured.  That in turn means we have cut fewer trees and extracted less oil and copper from the ground.  Cloud computing can enable and accelerate these benefits.

All of this makes the business more efficient economically and operationally.  At the same time, the environmental impacts are reduced and chances for both business and environmental sustainability are improved.

Another concern, the expanding data universe, deserves its own discussion.  Then there are the collection of factors pushing next generation IT and business imperatives.  Let’s just agree that the forces are rapid and strong.  We need to contend with new technologies, new IT demands and new business pressures. 

Challenges like these create competitive opportunity and some real dangers too. That’s why the virtualization and Cloud concepts make so much sense.  (Read more about Private Cloud on Chuck’s Blog.)

They incorporate the flexibility factor. 

One of the big drawbacks of more traditional IT structures is that a good deal of physical infrastructure is created for “just in case” scenarios. As a result, overall utilization suffers. In virtualized and cloud environments, the utilization rates can be much greater and much less can be installed for “just in case” needs.

This is the true for private or public cloud environments.  And the resulting flexibility of just-in-time IT services means that business objectives are still met, probably at higher performance and lower cost.

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Clouds, Complexities & Simple Truths

Lots of talk lately on Cloud Computing.  Not unlike the earlier green IT frenzy, there is no shortage of opinions, or confusion.  But once again, EMC is doing its part to lead the way .

In all the talk of cloud -public or private - I have seen little about potential benefits to IT sustainability and energy efficiency.  But here’s a clear opportunity to have another of those happy coincidences. Help lower both IT costs and environmental impacts.  Improve performance at the same time. 

The cloud foundation concepts are pretty straightforward. (Hmm, clouds with foundations – how’s that for a strike at traditional thinking?)  A private cloud extends the virtues of virtualization. Abstract the IT capabilities from the physical infrastructure, make IT a service that can be easily scaled and flexed. In the process buy fewer resources utilize them more fully and service production spikes with federated resources.

Execution can be admittedly tricky since we are now dealing with both virtual and physical environments.  Paradoxically, that means more simplicity and more complexity at the same time.

Among other things, simpler means fewer devices to pay for and operate. It also means easier access.  A great example is those customers who have instituted self-service offerings that enable internal users to virtually provision, use and decommission their own IT resources.

Nothing to buy.  No time waiting.  Log in and go.

Still, behind the scenes it must all be seamlessly knit together. New ways of thinking, new process and change.

Complexity and change can slow progress.  Add multiple complexities together, lace them with discomforting challenges to long held operating assumptions, and place them into a context of economic and political crisis.

Are we having fun yet?

I have had several recent conversations with customers about the linkage of IT efficiency challenges with private cloud and our universal concerns for sustainability in both environmental and business contexts.

I’ve seen great interest in understanding our potential to blend the benefits of private cloud to promote efficiency and sustainability interests simultaneously. 

That’s a worthwhile challenge  all around.

 

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A Serious Call for Help

In the last few years the EMC blogging community has grown but today it is being asked to get the word out on a subject quite unlike any other.  It has to do with a serious call for help and hope.

See below.

From: Fredrickson, Mark
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 12:52 PM
To: Blogs
Subject: Update: Potential donors desperately needed for Nick Glasgow

On Friday we circulated word through the global EMC community and beyond about Nick Glasgow, a 28-year-old EMC employee in California who, in the span of just weeks, has been diagnosed with Leukemia and now is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. Over the weekend, the compassion of the EMC family was abundant as hundreds of EMCers responded to this plea -- either by getting tested as potential donors, passing the information along to friends and family members, or just offering their prayers, personal experiences, and asking what they could do. When word reached Cisco, a company larger than EMC that has been a strong partner in the marketplace for years, Cisco people also sprang into action. 

 

Nick's mother, Carole Wiegand, also an EMC employee, has expressed her and Nick's deepest gratitude at the outpouring of help and support. But the race to find a qualified donor is at a critical stage, so I am sending this update with more specifics on how a potential donor can expedite a possible match. Please feel free to circulate this message beyond EMC (social media vehicles were used to rapidly spread word about Nick throughout the weekend).

 

Here are the essential facts:

 

-- Any person whose ethnic background is a mix of Asian and Caucasian, and is in good health with no history of cancer or major illness, and is between the ages of 18 and 60, is a potential donor for Nick. Expanding on the initial information, one does not need to be 75% Caucasian and 25% Asian -- any potential mix could work. While the most likely match would be from a person who is 75% Caucasian and 25% Japanese, it is absolutely possible that other combinations of Caucasian-Asian background in different proportions could work. The Asian background should be Sino-Asian, rather than Indo-Asian. Finding an ideal match with all of Nick's markers is very difficult, and we do not want to exclude any potential donors.

 

-- Go to the "Be The Match" National Marrow Donor Program at http://www.marrow.org/. Rather than ordering a test kit (time is too critical for that), read the facts about donating and then you can register yourself and enter your zip code at http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Join_in_Person/index.html to find drives in your area in the next few days. If there is not a local drive in your area within the next few days, please call one of the labs listed and request a time to drop in for urgent testing. (These instructions apply to people in the US. Other countries have similar programs.) People who join the registry can help any person, not just Nick.

 

-- The test is a simple cheek swab. The actual donation can be a blood draw or a more complex procedure, which would have some side-affects from which people bounce back quickly. This link has facts about the procedural aspects of bone marrow donation: 

http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Myths_%26_Facts_about_Marrow_Don/index.html. If a qualified donor is identified and medical or travel costs are an issue, this will be taken care of.

 

-- Special drives for Nick are also being arranged for the next few days. We are looking at possible locations where a drive could facilitate good numbers of potential donors (San Francisco/San Jose area, the Boston/Hopkinton area, and Orlando, where EMC World is taking place this week). Carol Gillespie at the Asian American Donor Program (AADP) is providing testing if you are located in the Bay Area in California (all ethnic minorities and Caucasians wishing to join will be asked to pay a portion of their testing costs, $25).  Please contact AADP directly at 1-800-593-6667 and speak to anyone on the staff if you are local, to have your testing done more quickly . 

 

-- If you get tested, it is important that you expedite the process by sending an email to all three people in the cc line on this message:

Carole Wiegand (wiegand_carole@emc.com), Nick's mom and fellow EMC employee

Stacy Morales (morales_stacy@emc.com), a friend and EMC colleague of Nick and Carole who is helping to coordinate all this

Carol Gillespie (carol@aadp.org) at the Asian American Donor Program 

 

In the email, include your registration ID number, the location where you were tested, and testing date.  The reason for this is that the national database usually takes a few weeks to be updated with a new potential donor's test results.  For Nick, time is of the essence. They will be expediting these samples for Nick so his doctors will be able to urgently retrieve possible matches. 

Thank you to all who have tried to help and expressed concern. I would like to close with this message from Stacy Morales:

"Thank you does not begin to express the gratitude that Carole and Nick have for you all right now.  You have given this family hope, and quite possibly, the gift of life."

EMC IT: Do it yourself efficiencies

A new Lab Report posted yesterday on emc.com details the continuing transformation of EMC’s IT infrastructure. The report, titled EMC IT, A Blueprint for Data Center Efficiency, was authored by Brian Garrett and Mark Peters of the Enterprise Storage Group.

No surprise, EMC needs to contend with all the same IT issues encountered by our customers:

• Explosive growth – applications, servers, storage & global operations challenges
• Space, power and cooling at their limits
• Expensive data center upgrades
• Increased efficiency requirements and cost containment

This report outlines EMC’s approach to obstacles, choices and desired outcomes as well as plans for what comes next.  It also shows that we are “drinking our own champagne”, seeking consulting advice and laying the technical groundwork for the coming virtual world.

 

EMC IT Savings

There is no big bang here.  Just as many of our customers would pursue it, this was a steady, thoughtful, flexible, sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliant series of steps toward greater efficiency today and better positioning for the future. 

The report covers a period from 2004 to 2008 with three key and continuing initiatives:

• Storage Efficiency
  • Storage tiers expanded from 2 to 5
  • Software for more and better automation
• Data Center Facilities Efficiencies
  • Power, cooling and space improvements
• Server Efficiency
  • Virtualization / consolidation

Over the period covered, EMC achieved some remarkable results. A data center expansion was delayed by about five years.   About $10 million dollars was saved in energy expense (and 60million pounds less of CO2) and cost avoidance for equipment is estimated at about $74 million dollars. 

This was not a small effort but the demonstrated results were well worth it.  And beyond the progress already achieved the stage is set for the next phase of virtualization, for EMC’s private cloud and for a leadership demonstration of how-to that our customers can look at to help guiding their own next steps.

Lots more detail of what was done and what it means in the report ….

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World Views

EMC published its third annual Sustainability Report today.  Titled "Looking Inward, Outward, Ahead" 

 

The first report was more a brochure, last year we attained report status and this year's 61 page document shows how our attention and commitments have grown.  Not that there wasn't lots of activity here going back a couple of decades.  Just that now the diverse bits are being assembled (special credit to Maria Gorsuch Kennedy)  in a much more coherent and compelling way. 

You might ask, how come?

Every parent knows that very young children have a world view centered upon themselves. 

As kids grow, their world view expands (for some it may seem to take a very long time) and eventually passes through the phases of family-friends-school-church-community-state-country... and at last they have a more encompassing world view.  Factor in political, cultural, economic, geographic, historic conditions and it's no wonder there are so many variations on the theme. 

By understanding the relative impacts from each of these factors, experience can broadly predict the likely world view of groups, if not individuals. 

I'd suggest that businesses go through similar phases - with much greater need to do it right and do it quickly.  Of course there are other compelling points of influence and pressure too - economics, competitiveness and self-preservation high among them.

Like kids, companies grow and mature.  They develop personalities influenced by demographics, technology, economic conditions, management values and lots more.  Somewhere in there is also how a company sees itself as a leader.  What energy, talent and resources are put into all the facets of leadership - and why? 

Sustainability is arguably a buzzword but there are many who also see it as a shift in the way individuals, companies, societies governments, special interests are finally confronting conditions that will impact all of us.  And there are plenty of reasons for the motivation.

Take the example in today's news that a Global Warming Study predicts smaller shifts in sea levels if Antarctica's ice fully disintegrated.  Now they expect that sea levels would "only" rise about ten feet.  That's half what they had predicted earlier. 

Small consolation if you are at the lower end of Manhattan when the tide comes in.

Everyone is needing to grow up a bit more and more quickly.  There is a lot to cover and a lot to learn.

EMC's Sustainability Report covers an overall commitment to sustainability.  It also covers energy, the environment, citizenship, social investment, governance, integrity, supply chain and more.  Most importantly it reinforces our leadership's commitment to sustainability and a mature world view.  It's very appropriate timing, coming on the eve of EMC's 30th anniversary of its founding and as we are ready to conduct the EMCWorld conference next week in Orlando.

We still have lots to learn and lots to do and we're more intent about it than ever before.  Have a look at this report and you'll see progress is being made.

A V-Max Moment

I spent time last week with the IT team responsible for a major university research program.  As a current EMC customer they were interested in how our plans and vision fit with their own. 

They have a good size IT operation in place and want to control costs gain efficiency and control overall IT growth. 

Not unusual. 

The new wrinkle is a major research program being planned that will double and then triple their IT demand in the next 18-24 months. 

Challenging.

They are also nearly out of energy and confined in space.

Predictable plot twist.

So, we talked about a bunch of efficiency improvements to consider.  The starter list: server virtualization, storage consolidation, tiering with Flash and SATA drives, archiving.

The extended list: de-duplication, application classification, consolidation and alignment, information management, proven practices and automation.

Of course the list goes on but the point wasn’t to cover them all.  More, it was to highlight that there are a good number of options - choices to be made.  That’s where experienced professional consulting services were very handy to help sort it out. 

They had a packed agenda but I noticed that the recently announced Symmetrix V-Max was not being covered.   So I offered an overview and they agreed.

We walked through the high level vision - Mr.. Tucci’s vision for the virtual data center.  We talked about our work with Cisco and VMware and how the private cloud looked less cloudy.  Then we talked about the new Virtual Matrix Architecture and the flexibility to start very small and grow very large – up in capacity, out in scale. 

Then came the V-Max moment. 

It was as if little cartoon light bulbs lit up all around the room.

They had the IT efficiency concepts already.  Then, as we linked those to the V-Max and Virtual Provisioning, and Virtual LUNs, and FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) and non-disruptive capacity/performance expansion and VMware’s just announced Vsphere and Cisco’s Unified Networking …

They got it.

We had looked at the piece parts.  Now we were looking at the whole IT system – soon to be virtual environment.

The conversation started with V-Max as a product.  Now they saw it as an illustration of  a concept.  Take all that virtual stuff and start putting it together.  Take it to the private cloud.  And no reason not to start now.

Save some energy too. 

Made my day.

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You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

 

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

That's what Al Jolson said in "The Jazz Singer", the first feature length Hollywood film with sound.  Jolson billed himself as "The World's Greatest Entertainer" and was already the highest paid star on Broadway when the picture was released to put him in front of a whole new phenomenon. 

Everything in entertainment changed.

So, here's the tie in. Symmetrix has also been a star for a long time.  EMC has not been short of hyperbole to describe it either.  But IT changes today. Like adding sound to movies.

The Announcement

Today's announcement is big in multiple dimensions.  It's our first virtual event launch, with thousands of customers, partners, analysts - and no doubt lots of competitors - set for a virtual experience that includes keynote presentations, technical sessions, partner and analyst chats and a whole library of technical documentation.

Its about way more than a new product.  Its about a whole new way of thinking about IT.  And virtual IT. And IT efficiency.

Take it in three parts.

First, the EMC Vision.

That's the overarching set of ideas that have directed our investments, research, alliances, partnerships, services and customer relationships. It's EMC leadership and what we do in response to those ideas. Virtualization in particular:

“The shift from physical to virtual computing is being driven by efficiency gains too compelling to ignore,” said Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and CEO. “Virtualization’s ability to maximize resources and automate complex and repetitive manual tasks is overtaking the server world and is now happening in the storage world. EMC is leading the way with the most breakthrough new high-end storage design in nearly two decades, enabling storage customers to deploy a flexible, dynamic, energy-efficient information infrastructure and get the maximum value for their investment.”

I'm especially happy to quote Mr. Tucci citing energy efficiency, and we'll get to more of that in a few minutes.

Second is EMC Architecture.

It's called the Virtual Matrix Architecture - a practical way to achieve several important objectives at once.  It meansmassive consolidation or scale-up - over 2 petabytes now with potential for hundreds of thousands of petabytes in the coming virtual infrastructure. 

It also means a federated infrastructure that enables previously impossible levels of scale-out. Achievements in automation, flexibility, and performance will ultimately enable tens of millions of IOPS (input/output per second) supporting hundreds of thousands of virtual servers.

Third is EMC product.

The Symmetrix V-Max, announced today, employs the Virtual Matrix Architecture and was designed from scratch as a practical demonstration of how the vision will be achieved. It breaks physical boundaries of the data center.  It does everything that enterprise storage must do while using less energy, taking less space, increasing automation and simplifying management.

Some examples:

Growth and Energy: Contending with data growth still means contending with energy pressures.  Symmetrix V-Max addresses both. 

V-Max consumes 20% less power per terabyte.  And the new system bay is especially energy impressive.  That's the cabinet that holds all of the engines - the nerves, brains and veins.  The new design has greater performance and flexibility but fewer separate components and, depending upon configuration, uses 28 - 43% less energy.

V-Max configurations can scale from pretty small - 96 drives - to extremely large - 2400 drives - and pack more than 3x the usable capacity and 2x the performance into less space than previously possible with anybody's storage. And it uses less energy. 

Automation: Any massive infrastructure requires simple but sophisticated automation and management.  It's in there.

For virtual server environments, a new capability called Auto-provisioning smoothly automates what used to be a tedious manual process that required hundreds of individual mouse clicks to leverage mobility features such as VMotion. Now its only a few. 

There are also Virtual Provisioning and Virtual LUN technologies to improve storage utilization.  Storage pools can grow as applications need it or shrink to reclaim unused capacity.  Data can be migrated between any drive or RAID type without disruption. And it uses less energy.

Data Protection:  One more example.  This is called EDP or  Extended Data Protection.  A picture will help:

The idea here is to increase data protection over extended distances and assure no data loss.  You get that by adding a pass-through system containing only cache and a few disks for vaulting.  So, greater protection, faster recovery times, fewer spindles, less energy consumed.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Our constant objective is improved efficiency.  We also need to help our customers contend with ever increasing needs for capacity and performance.  Then there are the ilities. Reliability. Manageability. Usability. Flexibility....

Let's go back to the vision of virtual IT.  It isn't virtual reality.  It has to be real.

So the architecture is a solid framework to construct that virtual world.

Symmetrix V-Max is a solid example of what it looks like.

Easier management, lower capital costs, higher utilization, along with improved business continuity, blazing performance, less energy and space. Put enough Flash disks in there and you can even make it lighter.

What's better than that?

Its even more exciting in the coming attractions.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

The EMC bloggers are out in full force on this one.  Have a look:

Symmetrix V-Max: Storage Architecture Redefined

« 1.054: overtake the future - with symmetrix v-max!

Symmetrix V-Max

EMC Announces V-Max

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Overtake the Future...

My blog posts have been thin in Q1.  Not because I have lost interest.  It's a time thing.  I've been working on the future.  Yours and mine.

 

EMC plans a major announcement on April 14th. 

This will be a virtual announcement - a first for EMC. But it will feel a lot like a live and in-person event.  And it should be both interesting and fun.

Go ahead and speculate.  Start an office pool.  Then go to the url above and register to reserve your virtual seat.

Save the Planet. Save IT.

                  

A recent op-ed piece in the Boston Globe offered a different view of how we should deal with global warming. 

Don’t.

Titled “Save the planet? Let's try saving ourselves.”the author, John Hagen, argues that global warming is a symptom, a sub-set of the higher order need for Sustainability.

“We need a game-changing relationship with the planet. Our current relationship is not working, either for us or for the planet. We are on track to heat up the earth 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century as a result of burning fossil fuels. Drought will prevail in many regions. The rising sea level will displace tens of millions of people around the world. Wars will be fought over water, not oil, because there won't be any oil. Our current economic crisis will pale in comparison with what we are queuing up for our children.”

Scary. 

But it is not necessarily the only outcome according to Hagen.  Not if we change our ways.  Not if we think differently.

And it struck me that there are a lot of parallels to his argument in the one we have been advocating for IT.  Efficient IT as we envision it addresses multiple pressing needs and also requires a different way of thinking. 

Flash Energy & Economics

Flash disk for enterprise storage. 

HP has finally come ‘round. (See the Storage Anarchist) IBM struggles.  EMC Customers love 'em.

An EMC press release today announced new 200GB and 400GB Flash drives.  Flash is one of those rare technologies that delivers multiple simultaneous positive – even extraordinary benefits. 

EMC was first to introduce Flash – Tier 0 - in enterprise storage about a year ago. Started with 73GB and later added 150GB capacity. 

Taking others in the storage industry by surprise – they didn’t have it so it couldn’t be worthwhile -  it took awhile for the general idea to sink in that his was a tectonic shift. 

Some still don’t get it. (Storage Anarchist again.)

Big objection early on was about price - about 40x a spinning disk at introduction but now only about 8x.  I say “only” because the way to think of it isn’t as a 1-1 replacement.  Since one Flash disk provides the performance of as many as 30 spinners, customers have come to realize they are both cost effective and very good for business. 

Database performance, for example, has long been constrained by hard disk I/O capability.  It’s mechanical, so latency is built in.  

Not with Flash drives.  No moving parts.  Practically no latency delay.  That dramatically improves performance to about 30X the IOPS of spinning disks.

SIA-SSB, an EMEA based financial services company, provides one example from the EMC press release:

“SIA-SSB processes 6.4 billion transactions annually related to credit cards, collections and payments,” said Fabio Grignani, Chief Information Officer and Deputy General Manager at SIA-SSB. “We meet extremely demanding levels of service for our customers throughout Europe and are constantly trying to improve the efficiency of our systems and processes in order to be more competitive. Flash drive technology, as part of an overall EMC Payments Solution, was able to help improve application performance from 6,000 to 16,000 I/Os per second and reduce average response times by more than 60 percent, while monthly batch processing times improved significantly from 22 to 17 hours.”

So, great performance and business benefits. Well worth the price.

But there’s more.  They help save energy too. 

One Flash disk uses about 38% less energy than a spinning drive.  Take out 20 or 30 spinning drives, otherwise needed to equal the performance, and do it dozens, soon hundreds of times. 

You get the idea. 

So, it may take a bit longer to catch on with some vendors.  But EMC customers are getting it and fast.

And the Storage Anarchist again…

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IT Star Gazing, 2009

Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away.

Yes, I’m late.

Any look into the IT / energy future of 2009 should have been done two months ago. But when compared to measurement’s like “only 1,500 light years” my lateness doesn’t seem like much.

So, right on time with my first 2009 prediction - it’s going to be really busy.

A safe bet ‘cause it’s already true.

Something about a challenged economy that gets us all working harder, longer and a bit more anxiously.

And it makes time out for blogging harder to come by.

I’ve pulled some industry predictions in the links that follow. To me, it’s interesting that there is little predicted that wasn’t, well, predictable.

Not that you should believe it all. And not that there aren’t plenty of opposing views. But the essential ideas seem to flow in the same general direction.

Of course the fun thing about crystal gazing is that you can say almost anything and nobody can prove you wrong – not yet at least.

IT, Storage, Energy and a look at the stars of 2008

Now that it’s Groundhog Day, I decided to look back at 2008 before it’s too late.

The picture above is from a collection of the best astronomy pictures of 2008.  It is the star nebula W5, alias the St. Valentine nebula.   What perspective does it give us about the importance of our opinions on events of 2008 and how they fit in shaping the heavens?

Won't stop  us from having them though.

Also, for perspective, 2008 was designated as:

• International Year of Planet Earth.^[1]
• International Year of Languages.^[2]
• International Year of the Potato.^[3]
• International Year of Sanitation.^[4]
• International Year of the Frog.^[5]
• European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.^[6]

Lots of trade articles appeared in December and early January to assess significant 2008 IT highlights.  Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion.  Here are a few of my own, followed by those of several others. 

Too many Kermit references. 

Too many things / ideas / programs that use the word green in their attempt at legitimacy.

Hype for green peaked last January.  By Q4 all the  interest in green was of the cash-money type. 

No crystal  ball needed to expect that financial issues will continue to be out front through 2009. 

My view is that it will be manifest in a quest for efficiency.

A few EMC ‘08 highlights included January’s  Symmetrix introduction of the first Flash disk on Enterprise systems. At a 30x improvement in instructions per second (IOPS), that’s a big performance and efficiency improvement.

Later in the year Flash was included on the new advanced Clarion system that combined Flash, spin-down, virtual provisioning, adaptive cooling, SATA drives.

EMC also introduced new efficiency assessment services. 

EMC Atmos was launched to operate as a separate entity.  It features multi-petabyte offering for information storage and distribution that enables companies to build cloud storage.  Providing massive scalability with automated data placement it is a whole new look at efficiency for content and information services delivery.

Not to neglect the needs of individuals, EMC also created  Decho(for Your Digital Echo),  from the assets of two acquisitions: Mozy and PI Corporation.  Efficiency here comes in the form of care, protection and flexible access to your individual digital archives

Altogether, in step with our customers, EMC devoted much more resource in 2008 to sustainable IT and we have seen it paying off for our customers.

More to come in 2009

eWeek: SLIDESHOW: “Green IT and Green Computing Slideshow: Top 8 Green IT Highlights of 2008”

December 16, 2008

Looking back over some of the news highlights in the green IT sector, companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems and a number of others really took the lead in efforts to update data centers and save electrical resources. Many analysts and industry observers expect this green IT momentum to increase throughout 2009. Here are the top eight green IT highlights of the year, as reported by eWEEK.

InfoWorld: “Green-tech Trends From 2008”

December 22, 2008

By Ted Samson

Like 2007, 2008 proved an eventful year for the world of green technology. The reasons green tech has had such staying power are pretty clear: energy prices continue to soar, organizations continue to struggle with insufficient power and space in their datacenters, and concern over the state of the environment continues to grow. With 2008 nearly at an end, InfoWorld looks back at some of the trends in green tech, ones that will most certainly spill over in 2009.

GreenerComputing.com: “Fifteen Simple Ways to Green Your Data Center on the Cheap”

December 23, 2008

By John Pappas and Ron Wilson

There's been a lot of talk lately about green data centers, and with good reason. As businesses move away from paper records and in-person transactions and more towards computer-based transactions and digital information storage, the amount of energy that data centers use is growing -- and fast. According to the EPA, data center energy use doubled between 2000 and 2006, and many are worried this figure may double again in just a few years. With energy prices on the rise, smart IT and facility managers and even top executives are taking a look at ways to build and maintain not only effective, but efficient data centers.

CRN: “The 10 Biggest Storage Stories Of 2008”

December 29, 2008

EMC acquired SMB/SOHO storage hardware manufacturer Iomega in April, put it together with the Mozy online storage technology it acquired in late 2007 and its Retrospect SMB backup software and unveiled itself as a complete channel-friendly small business storage vendor. EMC has completed its transformation into one of the most channel-friendly vendors of storage, or of pretty much any technology. Solution providers voted EMC the most channel-friendly vendor in both the storage hardware and the storage software categories in the VARBusiness Annual Report Card survey in 2008. And they did so by a wider margin over its competitors than for any other vendor in any other category.

InfoWorld: “A Year in the Clouds”

December 23, 2008

By Eric Knorr

If there was one big trend in 2008 it was cloud computing. As with all new IT trends, levels of adoption were low. The most interesting thing about cloud computing is the argument over its definition continuing to rage, even as customers are paying for it and adopting it.

ZDNet: “2008’s Best Storage Products”

December 23, 2008

By Robin Harris

The world of data storage is changing faster than it has since the mid-90’s saw the rise of storage arrays and storage networks. ZDNet offers its take on the top storage products, both consumer and enterprise, of 2008, including EMC’s Atmos cloud storage.

Enterprise Storage Forum: “Top Storage Stories of 2008”

December 31, 2008

2008 will go down in history as a year of extraordinary financial upheaval, but for storage users, it was also a year of major technological change, as technologies such as solid state drives (SSDs), data de-duplication and pNFS entered the mainstream, while the economic backdrop had users clamoring for any technology that could help them make better use of their storage environments.  EMC is featured in three of the top 10 stories, including: Should EMC Buy Sun?, EMC Kicks NetApp's NAS: EMC is giving NetApp fits in its own market andApple Could Learn A Lot From EMC.

IDG News Service: “Three Deals Symbolized Storage Trends in 2008”

December 20, 2008

By Stephen Lawson

The storage story of 2008 was growth: An accelerating explosion of information, much of it in the form of video, led IT administrators to try to make better use of their capacity and staff. Overall demand for storage capacity is growing by about 60 percent per year, according to IDC. Another research company, Enterprise Strategy Group, pegs the annual growth rate of data between 30 percent and 60 percent. In addition to the trend toward disconnecting logical from physical resources, there were a handful of acquisitions this year that signaled other trends in storage world. In late February, enterprise storage giant EMC bought Pi, a provider of software and online services for consumers to keep track of personal information stored locally or online. The deal, which followed the company's 2007 buyout of online backup provider Mozy, was one sign of growing interest in cloud storage.

Wired: “Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008”

December 26, 2008

By Priya Ganapati

The economy may be tanking, but innovation is alive and well. The world's corporate and academic R&D labs were busy laying the foundations of some amazing future technologies in 2008. Wired offers a countdown of what rocked our world in 2008 — and what will change yours in 2009 and beyond, including flash memory – where EMC is among players championing flash drives for larger business users.

SearchStorage.com: “Top storage acquisitions of 2008”

December 23, 2008

By Dave Raffo

SearchStorage.com outlines the 10 biggest storage deals of the year. IBM Corp. and NetApp set the tone for a busy first half of 2008 for storage acquisitions when IBM acquired XIV and NetApp bought Onaro Inc. in the first three days of the year. By the end of April 2008, EMC Corp. checked in with acquisitions of Iomega Corp. and Pi Corp., IBM added Diligent Technologies Corp. and FilesX Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. bought Nuova Systems Inc., and Blue Coat Systems Inc. picked up WAN optimization rival Packeteer Inc.

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The 2009 EMC Information Calendar

IT Energy and the Environment: Simple Checklists

On Monday this week, I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2009 Technology Conference sponsored by the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). I was asked to present at a pre-conference session: “Green Computing – IT’s Social Responsibility.

First a bit on them:

• ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) is the membership organization and voice of the association profession. Founded in 1920, ASAE now has more than 22,000 association CEOs, staff professionals, industry partners, and consultant members.
• The Center for Association Leadership is the premier provider of learning and knowledge for the association community. The Center was founded in 2001.
• ASAE & The Center serve approximately 10,000 associations that represent more than 287 million people and organizations worldwide.

I discovered that their member associations range from a few dozen employees to a few thousand so their IT environments vary. A lot.

Most of the time my interactions are with customers who run large to very large IT operations and so I take my examples from those environments. The efficiency principles are the same for smaller environments but the scale is different enough that the savings may seem hardly worth it. Although, I’d say that every little bit helps.

Why waste any asset?

Calculated for Good

From time to time one of my EMC blogging colleagues will spend a bit of electronic ink on matters related to energy.  I find it encouraging when they do, since it has always been my objective to have the topic become woven into our discussion  - not stand alone.

On the other hand, they don't typically scoop me as Mark "Storagezilla" Twomey did yesterday. 

- No offense taken Mark.  Always happy for help toward the cause -

For nearly two years, EMC has had a Power Calculator available to EMC field staff and partners to assist in understanding specifics about power and cooling for different storage system configurations.

It's a cool tool.  (Get the puns if you can.) Makes it simple to calculate annual operational costs, weight, floor space, sound levels, and of course, power and cooling requirements.

It has been a terrific resource to help customers with guidance in comparisons of multiple configurations and sites, to help comparing current and previous hardware generations or in making storage tiering trade-offs among cost, performance, capacity and energy consumption.

So, useful as it has been to our own staff and partners, we wanted to make it available to our customers too. 

If you are an EMC customer, go have a look on Powerlink and let us know what you think.

This is where I would have said "Ta Da!" but Mark beat me to it.

 

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Banished from the Queen's English

There is a story about Harry Truman showing daughter Margaret's boyfriend around the White House Rose Garden and extoling the virtues of manure as fertilizer. Margaret complained to her mother, asking for help to stop her father's use of the embarrassing word "manure".

Bess Truman replied, "I'll see what I can do, dear, but you have no idea how many years it has taken me to get your father to call it "manure".

Bess may have worked on Harry's terminology for the sake of polite company but she also influenced his precision of meaning.  Green may not be as vulgar as the word manure replaces but it could use a manure equivalent for similar reasons. And it seems that lots of people agree with me.

Lake Superior State University's Banished Words

                            

The Lake Superior State list of banished words for 2009 has just been issued and they selected fifteen finalists from 5000 submissions. 

Green was number one on the list to be banished.

"Environmental buzzwords are getting the axe this year. "Green" and "going green" received the most nominations.  

GREEN – The ubiquitous 'Green' and all of its variables, such as 'going green,' 'building green,' 'greening,' 'green technology,' 'green solutions' and more, drew the most attention from those who sent in nominations this year."

I've advocated for elimination of green in favor of more precision (What color is Green?). - Probably as likely as eliminiating the the vulgar alternate for manure. -  Still, it's heartening to know others feel strongly, people like Ed Hardiman of Bristow, Virginia who wrote:

"If I see one more corporation declare itself "green", I'm going to start burning tires in my backyard." 

Not very green of him at all.  Is it?

Proof

I recently traced a search link from my own blog to a Chuck Hollis post regarding greenwashing.  The timing seemed odd, until I realized that the post was more than eighteen months old.

In many respects his points are still valid and that's unfortunate.  Seems there are more than enough shades of green to continue confusing us.

The ideological greens, the marketing greens, the practical greens and the financial greens. There are the companies, groups or individuals who support the idea of ecology, the profit potential of ecological positioning, the practical benefits of conservation or efficiency and of course those who know that there is potential to save or make a buck.

Global economic changes have had a big impact too.  Green-for-the-environment motivations are being supplanted by green-the-color-of-money challenges.

Each have their legitimate and positive reasons to exist.  There are many examples where positive environmental benefits come from actions that also have direct and substantial positive financial impacts.  So the two need not compete.  We just need to be even more careful about objectives and objective reality.

For example, we have been reviewing numbers on EMC's own IT cost savings derived from a series of shifts in operational policy and practice. 

There's good news and better news. (I'll detail more in a future post.)

EMC, in it's own IT operations, has exceeded savings of 50% in space, power and cooling.  Sometimes exceeded substantially. It didn't take place overnight - in our case, over the last several years.  But millions of dollars in positive economic impacts are there and the added environmental benefits - less CO2, less material purchased etc., are there as well. 

All good in a down economy. 

Because nearly everything hits the "green" bucket these days - sometimes a stretch - we need to be more specific and prescriptive about what saves and what the savings can be.  Doing that, we need specific examples, proof points and blueprints.  EMC has done that for itself and is doing it for customers. 

We just need to do it more.

 

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Scrooge Too

See Scrooge One last year: « Bah, Humbug! Maybe Scrooge had it right.

"Pretty soon, there'll be more Scrooges in Manhattan and all the boys on Wall Street will be conserving away so there is more of everything to go around.

Misers."

If half of all the incandescent decorative holiday lights in the US were replaced by LED lights we could cut the December power bill by $17 billion dollars.

Does Hank Paulson know about this?

Some good ideas are so obvious that we miss them.  Nobody is saying we should go back to 1889 and Benjamin Harrison's candles on the tree. Still, conservation of energy need not be extreme.

Nancy Pelosi will light the US Capitol treeon December 2nd and it will be brightly lit with LED lights.  These use about 90% less energy than standard bulbs. 

Nice to see a good example being set.  On the other hand, it is a bit gaudy even with LEDs, isn't it?

Probably look fine with half the bulbs lit.

For a few tips on reducing your power bill and having your bright holiday lighting too, have a look here:

Energy-saving Holiday Lighting Tips

Energy Ideas

Energy Saving Tips

Green Holiday Tips from The Sierra Club

Table courtesy of NSTAR

Happy Holidays!

What Was Next?

The future.

How easy is it to know and be ready for whatever will happen next? 

There is the conventional "wisdom":

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur"

   Dan Quayle, 9/22/90

Or

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future"

   Yogi Berra

 

Or, in some instances at least there really are pretty reliable sources looking into the future. 

The real question is: how will we react?

I saw a short AP wire service piece in the newspaper (you know the old-fashioned, delivered-to-your-door, soggy-in-wet-weather news paper) that predicted energy demand will increase globally by 45% between 2006 and 2030.

The article highlighted results from a just-published International Energy Agency report, "World Energy Outlook, 2008".  (Get the executive summary for free or buy the 578 page PDF  for €120.)

This is a fascinating document and the summary alone is quite the sobering eye-opener.  But to the question of reliability I went back and found a 1993 prediction from the World Resources Institute that predicted a 40% rise in energy use, with the largest increases coming from the developing world. 

Here's their view of the future from the past:

"Energy is central to our economies, our lifestyles, and our health. It powers industrial production, transportation, and increasingly, agricultural production. It provides services such as heating, refrigeration, and lighting, which raise the quality of life and provide tangible health benefits such as unspoiled food and relief from the stresses of heat or cold.

Global energy use has climbed steadily over the years as industrial economies have expanded; this rapid rise is expected to continue over the next several decades. According to one model, energy use could increase roughly 40 percent between 1993 and 2010. Even if anticipated gains in energy efficiency from the adoption of new technology are factored in, energy use is likely to continue to surge beyond 2010 as well. (Of course, aggressive steps to reduce energy use could change the course of these trends.)"

World Resources Institute, 1993

So, if you look at what actually happened across this time span, it pretty much tracks to the World Resources Institute prediction and lends credence to the IEA report's outlook for 45% move upward from now til 2030.

What should be a bit scary is the parenthetical note at the end of this quote, that aggressive steps to reduce energy use could change the trends. 

Since the prediction did come true, it seems that whatever was done over that seventeen year span wasn't enough.

So it appears that the more relevant question is not how to predict the future but how to change it.

Many of us are working aggressively to reduce the energy demand for IT and so might feel good about doing our part.   But if IT consumes only about 1.5-2% of energy produced, what about the remainder?

This is where we need some big ideas and need to step out of our own world to use IT to help resolve the bigger issues of energy and economics. 

Feel free to add your comments or big ideas.

 

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Changes and Choices

My Taxi driver to Madrid's airport last Thursday morning spoke little English - maybe as much as my limited Spanish.  Still, there was no mistaking his exuberance in having an American in his cab.  "Obama" he repeated with an enthusiastic thumbs up. 

Barack Obama's picture fronted every morning paper.  Local TV featured the previous evening's  Madrid election rally, complete with life-size Obama cardboard cutouts. 

Friends and colleagues in France had wanted to talk of little else earlier in the week.  All eyes on America in anticipation and then wild parties when the results delivered what 80% of surveyed European's were hoping for.

It was a great week of perspective for me that demonstrated how intently they anticipated and then reacted to the American Presidential Election - and how much was expected as a result.  "A big change for our country" I said to a Spanish colleague.  "No," I was corrected, "for the world."

 

Now What?

There was certainly an atmosphere that change had happened and that more changes and choices are on the way.  

Nearly every conversation turned quickly to if I had voted (yes) and what I expected to happen and how it would impact all the obvious issues at hand. 

We discussed all of it: race and war and economics, and "W".  We also discussed energy- energy policy, futures, social impacts, alternatives, CO2, business impacts and on.

There is high expectation, "a new hope" that each of these thorny topics will be addressed from a fresh perspective.  Addressed and improved and maybe even resolved by this skinny new guy.

I share some of that anticipation and even hope, especially on the energy front, and I think there's a big potential for Information Technology to strongly contribute to change.  Successful change.

Just shaking things up is often a good thing by itself.  This may be just the shake we need to get great minds and new ideas and the new collaborations we need to solve energy issues globally and in the Data Center too.

 

Here's why

Both Obama and McCain featured energy policy high on their agendas, so it was sure to be a topic for either in a new administration.  With a Democrat about to occupy the White House,  the Democratic leadership in Congress is already preparing new energy legislation and even fighting over the chairmanship of key committees - new energy on energy.

Policy impacts will hit all energy sources - oil, coal, gas, nuclear, (the next president even knows how to say it "new - clee - err") and new attention is promised to alternatives - wind, solar, tide, etc. .

Obama has pledged a $25B investment in the auto industry for the design and production of more fuel efficient vehicles and promises greater attention to energy conservation overall- not a strong suit for his predecessor.

Granted, the economy will be first, second and third in line for attention 'til progress is made and confidence rebounds.  But I'm one that sees energy in all its dimensions as a key part of the rebound engine:   EIT, Energy and Information Technology.

While economic issues may make it a bit slower in coming, Obama has proposed investing $150B over the next ten years in clean energy technology and development of green jobs.  He's looking for greater reliance on these alternatives along with aggressive reductions of US greenhouse gases and new industry incentives / regulations / caps around production of CO2. 

With significant alignment of energy sentiments outside the US already, these new policies will likely stimulate excitement for greater acceleration and cooperation - inside and outside the Data Center,  inside and outside the US.

 

Technology in the Cabinet

Obama has also  pledged to create a cabinet level position charged with shaping technology policy.  Information Technology will play a big part in that and it will be interesting to see how the IT and Energy technology (EIT) develop together and are both leveraged to help priority number one - the economy. 

 

 

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October Conversations

                                                        

I'm presenting this Thursday, October 30th, at the EMC Forum in New York City.  If you'd like a dive into the latest technology and trends with EMC and   our partners, here's a great way to get fully immersed in a single day.

"EMC Forum is the premier one-day opportunity to learn how EMC and our partners can help your organization build and refine your information infrastructure to reduce risk, eliminate costs, and exploit the value of your information. This complimentary event features an engaging keynote address by an EMC senior executive, followed by a series of breakouts on key technology trends and challenges."

With regular updates, I've been discussing variations on the efficiency theme for more than two years now and the focus of our message has been consistent.

That's changed.

Crisis Consolidating - Or Not

consolidation: from Latin consolidationem, from consolidare.The act or process of consolidating, making firm, or uniting; the state of being consolidated; solidification

Nearly every customer I speak to has a plan or is underway with some degree of IT consolidation.

Now what? How will the global economic turmoil impact consolidation trends?

What does your intuition predict?

How does that fit with history?

How are you at predicting the future?

Yogi Berra wisdom: "The future isn't what it used to be." 

Earlier this year, IDC updated their report on the digital universe with a projection of continued data growth at about 60% annually through 2011. They included a backward look, tracing growth over the ten years from 1996 to 2006.

Dave Donatelli, president of our storage division, noted recently that during that ten year span, we had the internet bubble, Y2K, the burst of the bubble, 9/11, and a recession. All of that turmoil and the data growth line continued steadily up and to the right.

ET, IT, EIT : Solving Energy and Economic Crisis

ET: Energy Technology

IT: Information Technology

EIT: Energy and Information Technology

Monday September 29th, 2008 - Wall Street dropped 777.68 points yesterday. 

Got everybody's attention, didn't it?

Had a global impact too.  Asian and European markets down and Russian markets closed early.  The price of oil dropped & gold shot up.

Markets are back up today but the fundamental problem is still with us. 

What's this got to do with energy?  Especially IT energy?

Author and Columnist Tom Friedman suggests that re-thinking energy technology (ET) may be the way out of both the economic and the energy mess.  And if he's right, if that's the way out, then information technology (IT) is the way to enable that way. 

So, I think we should combine the two. Make it EIT, energy and information technology.  The perfect combination.  The way to spin gold from IT, as well as the way to spin the global economy to more productive and efficient operation.

Of course we still need to deal with the financial mess on Wall Street and to help out individual mortgage holders.  And it would be great if governments would encourage energy innovation. Get beyond drilling - which will take too long and never solve the problem. Friedman likens drilling to demanding more IBM selectric typewriters as the Internet boomed.

(Typewriters?. Yep.  That's why some of us "type" and some "keyboard".  It's a generational thing.)

Friedman's idea makes sense to me:

"America has a problem and the world has a problem....And I  think we solve our problem by solving the world's problem.  ...what I call ET, energy technology, is going to be the next IT, the next great industrial revolution."

It's a provocative idea. And judging by the activities yesterday in Congress, we need some new ways to think about these things.

Friedman thinks the way to do this is in much the same way IT and the Internet developed - not a Manhattan Project but 100,000 inventors - big companies, small companies, people in garages. 

The venture capital pool was already investing here.  Events of the last few weeks shouldn't be allowed to slow it down.  Just the opposite.

We need that investment to innovate our way to cleaner power and out of this economic mess. 

Who better to fuel that innovation and leadership than those who did it for IT?

Who better to discard carbon technologies for advanced clean technologies?

Like tossing the selectric but more far reaching.

IT professionals know that IT efficiency is gained through a strategic systems approach that innovates individual parts and then assembles and integrates the whole.  It takes planning and hard work and imagination. 

It pays off in competitive advantage and shareholder value.

How about virtualization and cloud computing as models?  As integral resources too.

At the end of an interview, Tom Brokaw asked Friedman about skeptics who say, "...I just don't believer climate change is real."

His answer was that it doesn't matter.  "Because everything we would do to get ready for climate change, to build this new green industry, would make us more respected, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, more healthy as a country."

Same is true for green IT.  You can be an environmentalist or a hard-nosed business person. 

It doesn't make a difference. 

Actions to save IT energy and to become more efficient are the same regardless of your motivation.  They serve to drive out costs and increase value.

Question is, can the same be done for the global economy - EIT?

Worth a try. 

Probably faster than Congress.

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Spinning Gold from IT

"To-day do I bake, to-morrow I brew,

The day after that the queen's child comes in;

And oh! I am glad that nobody knew

That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"  

Rumpelstiltskin turned straw to gold. 

It only happens in fairy tales.

For more practical wealth creation, try Information Communications Technology.   There's a growing list of innovations aiming to do just that with energy, efficiency and the environment as central motivation - next to gold of course.

All the green ink spilled on IT energy inefficiencies has tended to overlook positive impacts on the general economy.  More important to individual businesses, there are positive bottom line impacts too.

Back in February, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) published a study that pointed to productivity gains resulting from ICT as a major force in overall energy efficiency advances.  Their analysis was that:

"For every extra kilowatt-hour of electricity that has been demanded by ICT, the US economy increased its overall energy savings by a factor of about 10”

“Huge cost reductions and important ICT innovations have worked together to drive the expansion and diffusion of new applications that have subsequently enabled the development of additional high-tech products and services, new investments, and new ways of doing things. In other words, the positive economic feedback generated by most ICT innovations has stimulated higher levels of economic productivity and driven net gains in cost-effective energy savings throughout the U.S. economy.”

Said another way, ICT helps save energy. 

You could argue the cause and effect relationships but now they are becoming more direct.

An article appeared in the 9.14 Boston Globe's Innovation Economy section titled "Energized by New Career Prospects" .  It includes example opportunities for entrepreneurs,  investors and job seekers to explore green ventures.  There are several related tracks, including green building, transportation, renewable energy,  smart grids and more. 

IT is fundamental to nearly all of it.

Energy Matters More

Last week was the one year anniversary of this blog.

I thank Chuck Hollis for urging me to do it and I thank my kids for laughing at the idea - which provided the motivation to stubbornly prove that I could.

I wish I could devote more time but still, it's been a fun and enlightening experience,  For example, I've learned that there is more to energy than, well, energy. 

Think of that big many-mirrored  spinning ball over a disco floor. (Look here if you asked "What's disco?").  A single beam of light is split into thousands of divergent, shiny moving beams.  Each started as light energy. Each moving in a different direction.  How many can you chase?

The baseline story is that Information Technology uses lots of power.  Energy costs are on the increase and energy supplies are much tighter.  Consequences for IT are growing.

Still, fixing the IT energy problem can be deceptively simple. 

Easy to say:

"Become efficient in your use of energy and you will improve your business while helping the environment at the same time."

Easy to do:

Repeat what's easy to say.

Energy Efficient IT - Sort of...

 "I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you."

Q3 includes summer. 

Minds may tend to wander and one IT director, coaching her staff on the topic of IT energy efficiency, asked each to write down their number one goal for the quarter.

The top goal: "...to have a winning softball season."

All this great summer weather distracts from keeping our eyes on the IT goal - especially if there is no goal.

I'm seeing more customers that are well into IT efficiency and energy savings programs.  They had an energy issue, or saw one coming, and took decisive action.

Server virtualization?  Check.

Storage consolidation? Check.

Storage Tiering? Check.

Automated data movement? Check.

Consolidated data centers?  Deduplication?  Archiving? Check. Check. Check.

All good stuff.  Right?

Well yes.  Yes but.

Every one of these elements is a likely fit in good efficiency and energy management.  But I have some misgivings about the move-fast, measure later implementation approach that appears to be favored by some.

This is the mode where a good tactic is identified and executed but is never fit in a strategy or larger plan.

Last week I had a customer conversation that started with a review of efficiency options EMC recommends - followed by the customer's assertion that "we've done all of that".  

Great. But their energy requirements have continued to grow and now they need something more.

"So, what new technologies does EMC have that will save the next measure of energy?"

I asked: "How much energy did you save so far and what more is needed?

"Not sure."

"Do you have an energy plan and  monitor progress against goals? "

"No." "Too much going on." "Besides, once a project is justified to management we're not obligated to measure baselines or final project outcomes."

They are headed in the right direction - sort of. They've  taken steps to save energy and gain efficiency.  They've seen some success.  

But they still have no plan, metrics or goals.

Lots of tactics and not much strategy. 

Yes it takes time and some measure of discipline to baseline, plan, set objectives and measure progress.   The customers that have done it will swear it's time well spent. 

The others may as well be playing softball.

 

Technorati Tags: EMC,Symmetrix,Clariion CX4,energy,efficient software,efficiency,IT energy,IT services,planning and planning tools

 

 

On the Beach

^{It's summer. I'm on vacation. But I had to log a quick post to comment on the latest release from CLARiiONbecause, for EMC competitors, it isn't safe to go in the water.}

^{On Tuesday, EMC announced the CLARiiON CX4.  This is a new generation CLARiiON that boosts an already superior storage system.  Energy efficiency is, of course, on the list of advances but there's lots more.}

^{The short list:}

• ^{2X scale and up to 2x performance increase with a new CX4 architecture sporting 64 bit FLARE and Intel-based Multi-core Processors}
                                                                                    
• ^{UltraFlexTechnology for dual protocol  capabilities and hot pluggable IO modules for online expansion}
  
• ^{Tier "0" Flash Drive - first in the mid-tier}
  
• ^{Concurrent Local and Remote Replication via RecoverPoint integration}
  
• ^{Virtual Provisioning software that  increases utilization, simplifies  provisioning and helps to save energy}
  
• ^{AND on the energy front: drive spin-down, low Power SATA drives and adaptive cooling}

^{As Jimmy Buffet sings: "Fins to the left, fins to the right..." and the competition is bait.} 

The Energy Cloud

A good deal of opinionating on Cloud Computing is slowly transformed to real substance: standardized services over the net.  They range from Google search to salesforce.com to EMC's Mozy offering of on-line backup.

During a customer forum last week, one gray-haired IT director asserted that these ideas were nothing new but just a new twist on Mainframe time sharing. 

Perhaps.  I never argue with a Mainframe guy.

But the twist is that we can accomplish this now in ways that were not available before.  What was lumbering and expensive can be fast, elegant and cost-effective. 

That's where new technologies, or new application of old technologies become the innovation drivers. 

So, apply the same principles to energy.  Think of it as the energy cloud.  Solar, and wind and wave energy generation are not new, but the refinement of the means and the changes in economics and the consciousness of environment, make them much more appealing and realistic. 

Of course there is also the profit motive.

Wind Power

T. Boone Pickens, the US billionaire oilman,  testified before Congress last week about his campaign to create a wind-energy grid in the Midwestern US.  He wants to replace gas-fired power plants with windmills. 

Pickens expects to spend tens of millions of his own money promoting the idea in television and Internet advertising.  In ten years he sees it as feasible to replace as much as 38% of US oil imports by using wind energy.

This is not an altruistic initiative. 

Pickens is a billionaire.  He says he's in the energy business, not the oil business.  And economically and technically the opportunities are there to ramp wind while oil is dialed back.

In his testimony he cited national security as a primary motivation.  But he's also a businessman and is investing huge amounts of money to build a windfarm in West Texas that will produce 4000 megawatts, the equivalent of two and a half Nuclear power plants.

Travel Learnings

In six days last week I traveled to four cities: London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris - five cities if you count my departure and return to Boston. 

Not helpful to my personal carbon footprint and not helpful to my sleep cycle either.

But always interesting.

I was there to do some training, meet some trade press and to skip some meals. I succeeded at all three.

Beyond the IT focus, I've become a habitual energy observer. Especially when I travel, I frame nearly everything by energy consumed, wasted or conserved. 

For example, as you leave Heathrow by train, you see a very long string of video screen advertisements and as the train zooms past they stay in sync with it's progress. I wonder if they are train activated and in energy saving sleep mode otherwise.

I really like that many European hotel rooms have lights that won't operate until after inserting your room key in a power slot.  When you leave, take your card-key and shut it all down.  I've seen this in the US too but not often.

On the other hand that hotel room with energy saving lights also featured a high end TV that turned itself on to greet me and never seemed to be fully off.  It also featured a fish station.  That's a 24x7  TV aquarium channel, bubbles and all. 

Save on lights and then burn the savings watching fish on the Telly.

Similar contrasts show up in IT and other business energy initiatives.  Improve on one point but miss the point on another. It appears that energy saving commitments are still a great patchwork. 

The Sustainability Umbrella

Sustainability: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

World Commission on Environment and Development, The Brundtland Commission - 1987

Efficiency, with an emphasis on IT energy,  is my primary focus in this blog. However, energy, IT or otherwise, comes under the umbrella of environmental sustainability.  And the larger umbrella of full sustainability covers that. 

You'll see variations on the definition of sustainability.  Typically it's defined as some combination of social, environmental and economic factors.

All of concern to business.  Long concerns of EMC.

As of July 1st, EMC's corporate commitment includes a new Senior Director for Sustainability, Kathrin Winkler. 

It's a significant step that formally recognizes and organizes development of our sustainability culture.  And it presents Kathrin with a very lengthy to-do-list. 

Sort of "Congratulations on the new job.   How much sleep do you really need?"

Stand on Your Head

The term electricity was coined to describe the force that is found when amber is rubbed with silk (static electricity).

Can you stand on your head?

Some people are naturals. Most aren’t.

Necessity has much to do with it. So does habit.

For the record, I can’t do it. Even as a kid I could only stand on my head by leaning against the house or having my brother hold my ankles. But I have learned to do it mentally. Safer for my bones too.

To do it mentally, is to look at the familiar, differently - as if you were upside down.

For example, yesterday I heard a radio story about some residents in rural parts of the US who are standing on their heads trying to see a solution to gas prices that now consume as much as one third of their income. Three working guys, facing the necessity to reach their factory jobs, have hatched a terrific idea to cut their individual gas consumption by a third.

They’re car-pooling!

Not a revolutionary idea, but the one-car, one-driver, and no passenger habit didn’t stop ‘til necessity flipped their view upside down.

A Hole in the Sum of the Parts

 

Neutrons, electrons, atoms.  Power supplies, processors, disks. HVAC, PDUs, power generators.  Servers, storage, networks.  Data, applications, web pages.

Lots of bits and pieces make up Information and Communications Technology.  All needed to make it run and none certain to make it effective. 

 

Without a view to the whole what results are holes.

 

You know, the hole you dig yourself into, or the hole you can drive a truck through or the hole you want to hide in to dodge the bullets zipping by overhead.

 

 

EMC and a few other enlightened vendors understand that the data center – all of Information & Communications Technology really – absolutely needs a comprehensive systems approach to be fully successful and effective.  That goes triple for the changing and growing environment we contend with – both the business and the natural environment.  Still, I see many vendors that continue to focus on piece parts and appear oblivious to big picture objectives.  Variations on the theme assert an energy efficient data center is within reach by using some new energy frugal component, power supply or processor.

 

Systems thinking is important for a number of reasons - some that we can’t even foresee. 

 

To spin, or not to spin: that is the question

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?

 

Today EMC has answered the question.

And the answer is, well, yes.

On the opening day of EMC World today, EMC announced several new backup offerings in what has been a steady stream of backup enhancements and announcements. Today’s most interesting to me is the new EMC Disk Library 4000.

The 4000 is an open systems virtual tape library (VTL) with some notable energy efficiencies built in. These include data de-duplication, disk spin down and high-capacity low-power 1TB disk drives. In combination, the potential power and cooling reductions can be as much as 47% compared to earlier alternatives.

What I find most reassuring is that energy efficiency shows at the end of the benefits list. It’s a part of the feature set. One of many important considerations but just one.

First, the idea of disk libraries is that it is disk made to look like tape. That’s the virtual part. That means traditional tape backup applications don’t see a difference, which makes for easy deployment. But there is a difference in performance. Disk is about five times faster.

Disk also allows for RAID protection and remote copies done oven the wire. No tape delivery trucks. Saves on gas. Avoids those embarrassing missing tape headlines.

Now I am sure that critics will point out that others have been shipping disk spin-down for some time now and that it’s no big deal that EMC has joined the pack.

Maybe.

But it sort of misses the point. EMC has shipped about 245 PB of VTLs so far.  Add spin-down along with several other energy saving refinements, it makes a very good thing even better.

Energy savings come from three sources:

- Policy based data de-duplication gets rid of extra copies and reduces capacity requirements. Pretty straightforward.

- Low power 1 TB SATA II drives have a lower rotational speed – 5,400 rpm versus 7,200 for the older model. This reduces power by 32% but still minimizes performance impact. Pretty straightforward.

- Idle disks spinning down to save energy. This is the coolest part. Spin ‘em down when they aren’t being used. Spin ‘em up when you need them, say for backup/restore.

Spin-up happens automatically at the first I/O but there is a spin up delay. Still, this is a great match for virtual tape where operating systems and backup applications are already tolerant of the lag in tape devices.

The system also spins up disks at least once a day, just for exercise. The system also maintains spin up/down metrics and provides a report to show activities over the last 30 days.

So, the energy efficiency improves. Data integrity and product reliability aren’t compromised. The system reports out key metrics with no performance differences between spin-down and normal usage.

Pretty straightforward, eh Hamlet?

What's easier, Urban Planning or IT?

No doubt, we must control IT energy consumption but as problem solvers, IT Directors have it easy compared to urban planners and big city mayors.

Look at what they are trying to control.

Most of us are vaguely aware of urban growth headaches. But I've just been startled to full consciousness while participating in a UN sponsored conference on urbanization and the role of information technology.

A 2004 UN report found that urban population was growing by one million people a week.

                              

There are already at least 250 cities of more than a million—many of these in Asia, especially India and China.

In 2003, there were 39 cities over 5 million in population.

However, urban giants with populations exceeding 10 million dwarf cities of a few million. According to various estimates, there may be over 20 of these already. By 2020, the projections place 20 or more of these at over 20 million.

Think about this while you’re grappling with creative ways to handle extreme growth in data and applications. How would you handle 20 million people and all that supports them?

Here is a great place for information technology to help in dealing with very real world issues.

Decide, Act, Be Eaten

I am not alone in finding Scott Adam's Dilbert one of the funniest and most terrifying comic strips ever.  Funny because so many of the strip's characters depict, do, or say the silly, insipid and often clueless things we hear and see happen around us every day. 

Terrifying for the same reasons. 

Sometimes it’s a fun-house mirror but a mirror nonetheless.

A recent strip is a great example.  The pointy haired boss is pushing ahead with a merger - with some aliens - because he urgently wants to get something done:

How often is it the case that, in a rush to appear productive or decisive, we take action, any action, without a considered plan? 

How often does that succeed?

Your Mileage Will Vary

EMC's advises a systems approach to IT energy efficiency. Look at every individual IT element to maximize the contribution of each.  Then step back and take a comprehensive look, a systems view.  Still, when looking at those individual elements, it pays to take care in selection and configuration.

There are similarities to auto MPG ratings. The brand and model selected make a big difference in potential efficiency.  But so do driver habits, driving conditions, and maintenance.  For storage there are even more variables that require care, along with attention to that systems view.

Your mileage will vary.

EMC storage technology delivers great individual energy results and excels when framed in that broader view. 

Our customers attest to it.

I visited with one of our largest last week in New York.  They saw the results from a recent DMX refresh where capacity was increased but power consumption dropped by 30%.

Still, it's always welcome when you get independent corroboration of benefits.

The Wrong Debate

A colleague just dropped a copy of eWeek on my desk.  The April 14th issue.  It contains an article titled: Green IT's merits spark debate by Clint Boulton.

(I'd provide you a link but the on-line eWeek seems to be out of sync with the printed paper version.  Why do they even have a printed version of eWeek?)                

The essence of the debate, staged among four Gartner analysts, was to state opposing views on the merits of "Green IT".

But, alarmist or skeptical, it was the wrong thing to debate. 

I wouldn't blame you for being immediately skeptical of four Gartnerites on stage in Las Vegas at a Gartner event debating IT impacts on global warming.  What's the chance of outside the G thinking?

And of course 'Vegas is a great place to discuss carbon footprints.  We'll be doing it at EMC World in just a few weeks. 

Hmm.

Opening Day

Baseball.

I was in New York on Tuesday,  opening day for the New York Yankees.

No need to mention your team preference in NYC. Just say you're from Boston and they fill in the blank.

So, the evening news made much of the Yankees last year of play in Yankee Stadium.  That got me to wondering how "green" the new Yankees ballpark will be.

That's because a few days earlier the Washington Nationals opened in their new "green" ballpark.
(Beat the Braves 3-2.)

                  

                "D.C. turns brownfield into 'green' ballpark"

"The Washington Nationals' gleaming new baseball park...will be the first green professional stadium in the United States,..."

And why not? 

Water Power

The topic of water or liquid cooling for data centers keeps coming up.

Just when it seems that every old mainframe data center has had all of the water pipes removed, the wisdom of water over air cooling has seen a resurgence. 

Actually there isn't any disagreement that water/liquid is a more effective cooling agent than air.  It's just that all of that liquid flowing through pipes next to all of that expensive electronic gear made operators nervous. 

So, as soon as they could, most had it removed.

Times have changed. 

Again.

Re-enter liquid cooling - maybe. ( See Adam Trujillo's interview with Neil Rasmussen of APC. )

So, I started looking at  the relationship of water and energy. 

But I was sidetracked.  I followed some interesting info bits that seem obvious now but which had never occurred to me. 

Surprise Inside!

Think about matryoshka dolls.

Think about the childlike glee that comes from discovering that one doll is really eight!

                                        

Matryoshka are the Russian nesting dolls where each fits inside the other. (I always called them “Russian Dolls” and had to look up “matryoshka”) The first were created near Moscow in 1890. Maybe not high-tech but they help to illustrate an important eco-energy concept .

Dale Hoenshell, a colleague at EDS, recently explained a computer controlled lighting test project he was running. Preliminary results indicated potential for a 45% reduction in electricity use. Maybe more.

Among other means, they achieved this by dimming lights to reduce glare in work areas, turning off lights where nobody is present and by “harvesting” sunlight.

They were achieving, even exceeding, the desired power savings – the big doll.

But there were other benefits, smaller dolls, hidden inside.