NetApp Technology Network : Thread List - Our Green Community

Join me at the Clean Tech Awards Gala 11/17/09 with a NetApp Discount

ronl@netapp.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:43:58 GMT

Cleantech Open Awards Gala next Tuesday, November 17

The Cleantech Open is running an amazing event at the Masonic Center in San Francisco on November 17th. You need to be there!

Details:

* Expo from 10am to 2pm - showcasing technologies from alumni and this year's semifinalists
* Awards Gala from 2pm to 6pm - technology demonstrations and speakers
* Networking Reception from 6pm to 8pm.

There will be networking all day, and speeches from Bill Weihl - Green Czar at Google, Lesa Mitchell - VP of Innovation at Kauffman, Gil Friend - CEO of Natural Logic and Steve Westly - CEO of Westly Group. All are outstanding speakers.

The Cleantech Open is a nonprofit and the Awards Gala is intended as a fundraiser. Tickets normally go for $129 and up – but because I’m on the Advisory Board I have some discounted tickets which will give you a 40% reduction – just use this code: LongGala when you register: http://www.cleantechopen.com/app.cgi/events/view/84

Please let me know if you'll be there - I will most certainly be there and am looking forward to seeing you. If you wish, you can also forward this email and discount code to your colleagues.

Best wishes,

Ron

NetApp's Ralph Renne quoted by Projects@Work on 'Green PM'

community@netapp.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:17:34 GMT

Thanks to Ryan Lowry for providing OGC with this submission.

_______________________________________________________________

Green PM

Projects@Work

Venessa Wong

July 3, 2008

http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/243526.cfm

The green movement is transforming the IT landscape — and creating a new set of challenges for project managers, who must balance hard ROI choices, fuzzy metrics and assorted expectations. When it comes to cutting energy costs and delivering long-term sustainability, the blueprint for green projects isn’t black and white. But best practices are emerging.

Rapid expansion of Bryant University’s campus in Rhode Island created serious IT challenges. Between 1997 and 2007, it added 144,000 square feet of new facilities and experienced a 300 percent rise in applications. Although these extensions were a boon to students and faculty, the IT infrastructure was decentralized, inefficient, costly and unable to scale to growing demand. The university sought help to update the sprawling, high-energy consuming IT system. John Guimond, an executive project manager for IBM Global Services, led Bryant’s effort to build a new “green” data center and virtualize existing servers.

Fortunately, this was not the first project of its kind for Guimond. In recent years, he has participated in many IT projects with “a green technology slant,” especially involving cooling and power. IBM helped Bryant University virtualize its 75 servers to 40, cutting floorspace by 40-50 percent while reducing power consumption and cooling requirements.

As the global energy crisis escalates, new IT, by necessity, will be green IT. Data centers consume twice the energy today as in 2000, and McKinsey & Company predicts their carbon output to surpass that of airlines in 12 years. Many project managers confront the question of how to make a facility with extremely dense equipment concentration less taxing on energy resources. Success requires understanding the goals of the organization, implementing flexible solutions and measuring achievement.

Green Project Management

“Green IT” minimizes environmental impact while cutting energy costs. These advantages may seem self-explanatory, but the first step for project managers — and possibly the most challenging — is making a business case. Inefficient systems can cause a significant drain on budgets, but the cost of powering IT is often not calculated comprehensively. Thus, green IT proposals are frequently pushed to the backburner. The upfront investment for updating equipment, hardware, software and infrastructure can also be alarmingly high: retrofitting a small data center can easily cost $100,000. While the investment can pay for itself in energy savings within a year, communicating budget and ROI considerations to CIOs and CFOs can be a difficult hurdle, especially in a bad economy.

Alan Chhabra, director of systems engineering at data virtualization company Egenera, says a project manager’s first step is understanding the company’s reasons and goals for going green. Many companies, unable to procure additional power, need to boost efficiency just to keep running. Others hope to reduce energy costs while some aim to enhance their public profile.

As many corporations now have sustainability programs, aligning IT projects with the corporation’s overall goals is vital, says Tom Mochal, president of project management training and consulting company TenStep. Working closely with executive leadership to understand their needs can help develop tailored solutions. TenStep is in the early stages of creating a new green project management (GreenPM) training program that aims to foster better communication and thinking about green issues and help PMPs tie project decisions into companies’ sustainability objectives.

“GreenPM is about asking the right questions … and, in all aspects of the project, keeping the environment in mind,” Mochal says. While the program is still under development, TenStep hopes to initiate cohesive thought leadership among project managers about environmental issues.

For now, project managers will need to collaborate with company leaders to understand their goals for sustainability and work on long-term solutions. As green IT gains support at the executive level, top-down directives will make the process much smoother.

Implementing Solutions

The key in all areas of a green IT project is creating flexible solutions “that can adopt as needs change” rather than using pre-engineered solutions, IBM’s Guimond says. As many companies only recently began thinking about sustainability, it is important to remind stakeholders that scalable systems will have longer lasting benefits and make future updates less costly as the organization expands.

Project managers are focused on two areas where updates can achieve the most energy savings:

> Reduce hardware/software: The bottom line: less hardware equals less energy consumption, says Chhabra. Currently, most companies utilize merely 10-15 percent of their servers’ capacity. With a small budget, project managers can improve this ratio through consolidation — combining workloads from separate applications into a smaller number of systems — thereby reducing the amount of equipment being powered, managed and maintained without buying new servers.

If procuring new equipment is possible, switching to space-efficient blade servers can reduce the area occupied by servers and thus the space that needs power and cooling. Yet as demand for storage continues to drive up server usage, it is more effective to adopt a longer-term strategy such as server virtualization, which allows hardware to run several operating system images at once and can cut processing power by as much as 66 percent. Egenera has been helping clients migrate from physical to virtual servers for eight years and is also vitualizing I/O devices, a solution that is not yet widely adopted but shows great potential, says Chhabra.

One caveat: as companies migrate their systems, it is important to carefully manage growth and virtual complexity. Poor management can lead to virtual server sprawl, says Chhabra, which would once again set back effectiveness and energy efficiency.

> Enhance cooling: Green IT is not only about power; it also involves cooling. Consolidation and virtualization have hiked up utilization rates, raising power consumption from 3 kilowatts per rack just a few years ago to as high as 40 kilowatts per rack today. This means a lot of heat in a small footprint.

Most data centers pump air conditioning to maintain server temperatures at about 52 degrees and the expense is staggering — for every dollar spent to power data centers, another 50 cents is spent on cooling. “ROI is often not focused on energy saving, but being able to provide cooling at a high availability level to high density equipment,” says Guimond.

Green IT initiatives commonly implement the “hot-in/cold-out” arrangement, wherein servers’ fronts face one direction and their backs another direction. Unfortunately, says Ralph Renne, site operations manager at IT company NetApp, this is ineffective as hot and cold air mix, increasing the need for air conditioning. As an alternative, he recommends hot-aisle and cold-aisle containment, which allows hot air to exit through the air conditioning system without warming incoming air, reducing air conditioning requirements. Containment systems cost less than infrastructure changes such as raised floor or ductwork.

Renne was able to raise incoming air temperature to 68 degrees, while contained 90 degree hot air exited without mixing. This is “extremely efficient from an air conditioning standpoint,” he says. In doing this, his greatest challenge is the “fear factor” involved with this concept. Project managers may need to work with stakeholders so that they understand that servers can be safely kept at higher temperatures if airflow is managed correctly.

Meanwhile, projects in areas with mild climate can implement airside economizers, which shut off air conditioning when the outside temperature is 68 degrees or lower and recycle outside air. In locations such as California, for example, data centers can use 6,000 hours of “free cooling” annually, says Renne.

For projects willing to move away from air cooling, Guimond proposes using new water cooling technology, whereby pipes located above the processors carry cold water to them and warm water away. According to IBM, this is 4,000 times more efficient than traditional air conditioning. IBM is also developing a new technology that captures the water at the hottest parts of a computer chip and pipes it into the data center’s heating and water systems.

Measuring Results

Perhaps the biggest uncertainty for project managers is how to measure green IT. Presently, there is no standard system for evaluation. Many calculate the space saved by virtualization and consolidation, as increasing server density allows capacity to grow without expanding the physical data center.

But even more important is how much productive work is being accomplished per unit of energy, says Renne. There is still a lot of discussion about how to measure IT productivity. One widely recognized standard is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), developed by IT industry group Green Grid, which is calculated by dividing the amount of power entering a data center by the power used to run its computer infrastructure. Most data centers are still operating at a PUE of 2.5 and greener ones are at a PUE of 1.8. NetApp achieved a PUE of 1.4. Other ratings include Billions of Operations Per Second (BOPS) and Million of Instructions Per Second (MIPS).

New IT metrics are in the pipeline. Green Grid is creating an efficiency measure called Data Center Productivity (DCP). McKinsey & Company and the Uptime Institute also recently proposed a new financial metric that combines efficiency of facility operations such as space cooling and measures the utilization of IT equipment. Meanwhile, Labs21 and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories are advocating the development of a LEED green building certification that would standardize the requirements, definition and classes of “green” data centers.

The green movement is transforming the IT landscape, and nearly all projects today aim to achieve long-term sustainability. New tools, metrics and expectations will emerge as environmental issues drive corporate initiatives, giving project managers an entirely new set of resources — and challenges — to work with.

Where do we go after Kyoto?

community@netapp.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:01:38 GMT

As the UN Kyoto Protocol approaches its final years and a potential "Kyoto II" takes formation, leaders of the world's most powerful economies have pledged to seek huge reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. I am going to update this thread periodically to keep you all informed on the latest global update. Please feel free to let us know what you think! What impact do you foresee on the larger U.S. economy, on our most dominant industries, or on the IT industry specifically. Anything!

August 3rd: Here is one of the best, and most digestable, overviews of what is really going on with the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act right now. Take a look and please comment with any questions or opinions!

http://earth911.com/blog/2009/08/03/cheat-sheet-the-energy-bill/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_content=719786155&utm_campaign=Earth911.com+Weekly+-+8%2f5+_+kjhyti&utm_term=Cheat+Sheet%3a+The+Energy+Bill

July 20th: The chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows dissapointment toward the G-8, saying Monday that they had "clearly ignored" taking any concrete action to accomplish its new goal of limiting climate change.

http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090720/ap_on_re_us/un_un_climate_change.html

July 8th: At a Summit in L'aquila, Italy, G-8 leaders stated they would "join a global response to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050 and to a goal of an aggregate 80 percent or more reduction by developed countries by that date."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/07/08/g8.summit/index.html

June 24th: In a counter-move against continual worldwide criticism of United Sates' neglect of greenhouse gas regulations, today President Obama announced a U.S. commitment to control global warming gas emissions with greater legislation. Obama admits that the US has been slow to act, but promises to accelerate efforts in the very near future:""this is also a global problem, so it's going to require a global coalition to solve it...Truth is the United States has been slow to participate in this kind of a process...But those days are over now."

http://www.ecofactory.com/news/obama-chants-green-leadership-while-trailing-kyoto2-bids

If you have any questions, opinions, or other articles to share, please feel free to comment!

Earth Day: The Best of Green IT

community@netapp.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:36:02 GMT

Check out CRN's special Earth Day technlogy slideshow. The broad slideshow highlights technologies from many different sectors of IT that are focused on ‘green’ and energy-efficient technologies.

http://www.crn.com/it-channel/217000002;jsessionid=1SSBO1SOPJGF4QSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?pgno=1

Achieving Higher and GREENER Levels of IT Efficiency

community@netapp.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:30:24 GMT

Check out the latest NetApp Play by Plays on Power Usage Effectiveness so you can realize how to achieve higher and greener levels of efficiency.

The NetApp Play by Plays are broken into a three part series.

Part 1 gives an overview of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

Part 2 focuses on what IT can do to realize effciency

Part 3 focuses on how to design smarter IT Data Centers

Climate Savers Power Down for the Planet Video Challenge

community@netapp.com — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:03:44 GMT

This contest is for university and college students:

Hi,

Climate Savers Computing Initiative has launched the Power Down for the Planet Video Challenge. Most computers waste nearly half of the energy delivered from the wall – needlessly expending both money and energy. However, most people do not know that there are easy ways to make computing practices greener and less wasteful. Essentially, we want to do our part to make the world a better place and need your help.

This is where you come in. Pick up a camera and create a video telling the Climate Savers Computing story. The challenge is to develop original and creative videos that educate, entertain, and/or inform others about the importance of energy efficient computing to the global environment. Think about it:

How do we spread the word about slowing climate change through efficient computing?
How do poor computing practices waste energy?
What will the impact of better power management have on our environment?
What does sustainability mean to you?

The competition goes through April 17. We'll announce the winners on Earth Day - April 22. Participants have a chance to win $5,000, 2009 Specialized Globe Vienna Deluxe 1 bikes, HP TouchSmart laptops and Microsoft Expression Studio licenses.

Are you excited yet? To learn more, visit www.PowerDownforthePlanet.org/video/.

SNIA releases 'green storage' metrics

community@netapp.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:47:04 GMT

This article was originally written by Kevin Komiega, and accessed at InfoStor.com: http://www.infostor.com

Direct Link: http://www.infostor.com/article_display/snia-releases__green/0171688949/s-articles/s-infostor/s-top-news/s-1.html

[Note from the poster] Alan Yoder is the primary representative to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) for NetApp. He is Vice Chair of the SNIA Technical Council (TC), Secretary of the SNIA Green Storage Initiative Governing Board, and has been active in several SNIA technical working groups, including those working on SMI-S, XAM and Green storage.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

By Kevin Komiega

January 21, 2009 -- The Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative (GSI) group today released the first tools for classifying and measuring the energy consumption of storage systems.

The initial Green Storage Power Measurement Specification consists of two components – a Green Storage Taxonomy and the Idle Power Measurement Metric – both of which have been developed to provide classification and measurement guidelines for standards organizations, governmental agencies, storage vendors, and end users.

The Green Storage Taxonomy is used to classify storage products based on energy consumption characteristics and application environments, while the Idle Power Measurement Metric serves as a baseline standard that can be applied as a uniform method for collecting idle power consumption measurements.

Al Thomason, vice chair of the SNIA's GSI and system storage portfolio manager with IBM, says the taxonomy was designed to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons between storage devices.

"We have put a tremendous amount of effort into creating the storage taxonomy with a focus on system characteristics and usage segments, rather than technologies," says Thomason. "It allows direct comparisons. We want to make sure that these tools are useful and not used for the purpose of green-washing technologies."

The Green Storage Taxonomy groups storage devices based on feature criteria for the application environments that they are intended to support. The SNIA has categorized those environments into five classes of storage products, ranging from small home/office applications (SOHO) to large enterprise–oriented applications.

The storage system categories covered under the Green Storage Taxonomy are: online, near-online, removable media libraries, non-removable media libraries, infrastructure appliances, and infrastructure switches.

The feature criteria for each storage system class are based on the required level of data protection, component redundancy, serviceability, data access time, and range of energy consumption.

Once a device is classified, the Idle Power Measurement specification can be used to test energy efficiency. The specification, which is currently available for public review and comment, outlines a standard for testing and measuring storage power consumption in idle mode. The idle power measurements are reported in raw GB per watt (GB/w) based on manufacturer model number, raw storage capacity, storage media rpm, and interface.

According to recent SNIA research, servers, networks and storage systems draw about 46% of all data center power. Thomason says storage accounts for about 13% of overall power consumption. That percentage is sure to rise with the need for more storage capacity to accommodate data growth.

Members of the SNIA's GSI include 3PAR, AMD, Brocade, Copan, Dell, EMC, Emulex, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Intransa, LSI, Microsoft, NetApp, Pillar Data Systems, QLogic, Quantum, Seagate, Sun, Symantec, VMware, XIOtech, Xyratex, and other companies and industry analysts.

The SNIA is also working with several groups and industry associations to make IT greener, most notably The Green Grid and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program.

There is still much work to be done. Thomason and the GSI have mapped out their plans for 2009 and the next items on the agenda are the development of active power measurement guidelines and metrics, standardized power supply efficiency specifications, and publication of each vendor's completed test metrics.

The group also plans to add power-related reporting capabilities to the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) profile.

Economic challenges and eco-logical opportunities

community@netapp.com — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:50:22 GMT

In what ways do you see NetApp taking advantage of the recent economic downturn, specifically as it relates to energy efficient and environmental responsible products and the ability to cut costs?

In this unique time, we're seeing an increased awareness of the environmental impact the IT industry can have on our planet, and in turn for the industries and enterprises we support. However it could also be argued that being anvironmental responsible and pro-actively seeking sustainable solutions can provide a competitive economic advantage. How do others see NetApp products and services playing into this scenario?

Congrats on $1.4M rebate for data center energy efficiency

community@netapp.com — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:43:11 GMT

Hi Peter! Just saw the press release about the $1.4M rebate from PG&E - very cool. I recall talking to folks from NetApp IT about Phases I & II of our data center consolidatation project last year for a Tech OnTap article, but this is the first time I've seen specifics on the PG&E rebate shared publicly.

Below are some old stats from 2007 ... is there an updated technical summary with more details on the project? Any pictures?

The 2007 Tech OnTap case study consolidation phase I & II results:

Storage utilization increased from less than 40% to an average of 60%.
Storage footprint reduced from 24.83 racks to 5.48.
50 storage systems replaced with 10.
Direct power consumption decreased by 41,184 kWh per month.
$59,305 in annual electricity costs eliminated.
Substantial capacity and performance gains.

http://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/DC_efficiency.html

http://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/netappit_case_study.html

Servers to get Energy Star rating

community@netapp.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:57:19 GMT

This article was accessed via Techworld.com: http://www.techworld.com

Direct Link: http://www.techworld.com/green-it/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=106855

_________________________________________________________________________

EPA stickers on boxes by February.

Agam Shah, IDG News Service

10 November 2008

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the third draft of its Energy Star specification for servers and expects the final spec to be ready for use in February.

The specification aims to help customers identify the most power-efficient servers when making purchases. The Energy Star program already covers desktop PCs, monitors, light bulbs and dozens of other products. Products are identified with an Energy Star label.

The third draft establishes power consumption limits for when a server is in an idle state, something that had not been established in the second draft. To qualify for the Energy Star logo, vendors must also meet minimum requirements for power supply efficiency and publish a data sheet for each server indicating its power and performance levels for maximum, minimum and typical configurations.

The specification covers servers with up to four processor sockets. The EPA said it chose to exclude blade systems from the draft because SPEC indicated that its SPECPower_ssj2008 benchmark for measuring idle consumption can't run on blades. Future specifications will "look for appropriate ways to address blade systems," the EPA said.

The specification is due to take effect on February 1, 2009. A more comprehensive "Tier 2" specification planned for October 2010 may include servers with more than four sockets.

The idle power limits have been set at 60 watts for one-socket systems and 271 watts for four-socket systems. Additional components are given an additional power allowance. For example, a second hard drive gets an additional 15 watts of power.

The third draft is due to be posted soon to the EPA's Energy Star for servers website.

Overcoming Common Barriers To Green IT

community@netapp.com — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:33:58 GMT

This article was accessed via Sustainable Life Media: http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com

Direct Link: http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/content/column/greenIT/overcoming_common_barriers_to_green_it

________________________________________________________________________________

Overcoming Common Barriers To Green IT

Despite the obvious business benefits of energy efficiency (starting with the electric bill), IT managers still struggle to move from awareness to green action. Here's how you can overcome some common hurdles.

By Doug Washburn

While green IT offers tangible environmental and financial benefits, recent research suggests that IT managers still struggle to move from awareness to action. Why? Culture, costs, prioritization, and budget ownership can all become barriers to green IT adoption. While these are legitimate concerns, here are several recommendations to overcome some common hurdles:

Culture. If your business doesn’t care about being green, sell them on the other “green” – cost savings. Much of this comes down to marketing and communications which can be foreign to some IT managers. Words are powerful, so consider calling green IT something other than "green" – such as efficient IT, energy efficient IT, or lean IT. And focus your conversations on the economic benefits — such as cost savings or cost avoidance — since you know it will resonate with the business.

Costs. While some IT managers consider cost to be a barrier to green IT, greening your IT can be free. In fact, there is a number of low-hanging fruit that IT managers can grab. For example, General Electric saves $2.5 million per year simply activating the power management settings already available in Windows. Likewise, Citigroup finds that if each employee “uses double-sided copying to conserve just one sheet of paper each week, the firm can save an estimated $700,000 each year plus eliminate 76 tons of solid waste.” Once again, a feature that is standard on most copiers and printers that just needs to be enabled.

Prioritization. If you’re struggling to determine what to green first (e.g. PCs, servers, storage), measure your green IT baseline – an annual estimate of the energy consumption, carbon emissions and financial costs of operating IT. Not only will this data offer a practical green IT starting point by exposing your most eco-taxing assets, but without it you cannot accurately quantify and report the benefits of your greening efforts to senior management.

Budget ownership. If someone else owns the energy budget (e.g. facilities) – but you believe green IT can positively impact the bottom line – talk to the business. Refer to the hard data from measuring your Green IT baseline and explain that the firm will save ___ (fill in the blank) dollars per year and also reduce annual CO2 emissions by ___ (fill in the blank) pounds. Even if the financial benefits of your greening effort accrue to the facilities group, the company overall is profiting and aligning IT operations with the business.