Great IT change came with a whisper not a bang
I have a thesis I would like to try on you.
In the IT world, like in many other human endeavors, the things that get measured get improved. And the things that don’t get measured are easy to ignore. So, when the world’s largest IT enterprise (the US federal government) starts measuring IT differently we need to take note.
Specifically the feds will be improving the measurement of energy efficiencies of IT. This will be done to meet goals mandated by an executive order that President Obama signed on 5 October 2009 titled “FEDERAL LEADERSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL, ENERGY, AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE”.
Agencies will no longer be able to ignore the cost of energy for their IT. The Federal Government will be required to lead by example in IT efficiency. Agencies are required to promote electronics stewardship, acquire energy efficient IT, enable IT power management, and implement best management practices for energy-efficient management of servers and Federal data centers.
What is the “so-what” here?
In most cases in the federal government, the agency CIO does not have to share in the energy bill. The CIO gets energy for free. So energy costs have never been a driver in CIO decisions. Now, even if CIOs do not have to pay for energy, they are going to be measured by energy efficiencies. This will give them more reason to modernize. By selecting newer multi-core servers and newer storage devices (like Solid State Disk (SSD)), dramatic energy efficiencies can be gained in ways that also dramatically increase performance. They will also be encouraged to virtualize more, and will also be encouraged to build in more collaborative technologies that let humans interact across great distances. All this will increase performance.
So now we get to the “so-what” of my thesis. Saving energy in IT requires modernization. And modernization also improves performance. So we all win! We save energy, reduce pollution, and improve IT performance!
Do you buy that thesis?
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Bob,
One great way to improve energy efficiency is to go to centralized DC power plant. My reviews have shown that over half of power purchased is wasted as heat going through various conversions. Additional power is subsequently required to operate the HVAC pumps, chillers etc to move this heat to the atmosphere.
Large UPS systems loose a large percent of purchased power going through the conversion of AC to DC to AC. They are also frequently more unreliable at their output than the commercial power that is purchased.
AC power supplies also waste more power and produce more heat. The silicon in the electronics requires DC so why not power directly from DC ? Telcos have powered this way for a century.
Using DC requires large bus and cables and requires some good engineering planning of proximity of the power plant to the IT loads.
Properly engineered DC plants are ultra reliable and can carry loads for hours instead of minutes with most large UPSs.
Regards,
BJ
Thanks Bill, that’s great context. I’ve also heard that an all DC system saves HVAC since every conversion from AC to DC or back generates heat. Hopefully this new executive order causes many to rethink/redesign their data center approaches to put this sort of best practice in place.
v/r,
Bob
CIOs may not be directly responsible for the energy bill, but they are the direct beneficiaries of any energy savings. As missions, applications and technology become more demanding, so does the requirement on the energy usage. If savings can be achieved at the data center level, the CIOs and their teams can provide additional functionality, capability and capacity in IT processes for less overall energy cost. A useful example is the vendor-neutral roadmap called Energy Logic that can walk IT and data center managers through the best practices that impact overall efficiency. A new measurement of data center effectiveness and efficiency can be located in the following white paper: http://www.liebert.com/common/ViewDocument.aspx?id=1226