Users Vent About Electric Power Struggle

SAN FRANCISCO -- VMworld -- Lack of standards for measuring storage and server hardware, antiquated data centers, and high-density equipment are all adding to users' energy problems, according to CIOs and IT managers on a panel here yesterday.

"There's really no way for vendors, or people who are purchasing servers, storage, or routers, to fairly compare the energy performance of different manufacturers' products," said Andrew Fanara, product team leader of the U.S. government's EPA Energy Star program. "There's no industry-accepted test procedure to measure products."

Spiraling power costs have been an ongoing problem for users over the last few years, both in the public and the private sectors.

Fanara explained that the U.S. government's power bill is now north of $600 million, and he urged storage and server vendors to help solve this problem. "We would suggest that the industry, in cooperation with the federal government, help to set industry standards that everyone would abide by."

An EPA report, released last month, revealed that U.S. data centers could shave up to $4.4 billion off their overall electricity costs. It highlights virtualization as one way for users to tackle the problem.Despite recent attempts by hardware vendors to jump on the green bandwagon, users are struggling to work out the actual energy requirements of their server and storage kits, according to David Brooks, associate professor of computer science at Harvard University, who was also taking part in the panel. "What a manufacturer says the requirements of a specific system are may be very different to what it is in the field," he warned.

The academic explained that, within Harvard's labs, he typically uses a "multi-meter" approach to measure power across CPUs, disks, and memory, and also to track changes in rack configuration. "[Measuring] performance per watt per cubic foot makes a lot of sense" as a benchmark, he added.

Despite the lack of standards for data center gear, users are nonetheless attempting to make their data centers more energy efficient. "We have hit all the major challenges over the last few years in terms of power, cooling, and space," said panelist John Gibson, chief technical specialist at financial firm HSBC, which has 5,000 Windows servers spread across its two U.K. data centers.

This infrastructure is struggling to cope with high-density modern hardware. "Our data centers were built in the 1970s, so they were contending with 300 to 400 watts per rack," he said. "But with blades, we're generating 15 megawatts a rack."

To make matters worse, HSBC's growing demand for compute power is forcing the firm to deploy around 100 additional servers a month. "Over the last few months we have had to deploy a new 5-megawatt diesel generator because we can't get enough power from the suppliers," said Gibson.HSBC is now trying to re-engineer its data centers with smaller computer rooms, more efficient airflow, and better cooling. "We're looking at high airflow with two hot aisles and cold aisles, and a self-contained water-cooling mechanism to chill the cabinets," said Gibson, explaining that the smaller rooms allow him to better manage his energy requirements.

The financial firm is also using virtualization to get a grip on its spiraling power demands. "We have deployed 1,700 virtual machines, which we think has offset 800 kilowatts of power," said Gibson. "We're hoping to take a couple of thousand servers and consolidate them down to maybe a hundred."

Another user heading down this road is EDS, which has used virtualization to tackle server sprawl in its "Enterprise Lab" for development work. "Within the Enterprise Lab we identified 500 servers that could be virtualized, and using VMware we virtualized those servers," said Ray Cline, vice president of infrastructure services at EDS. "We reduced the power bill, just in dollars, by 60 percent."

Prompted by Google's recent decisions to locate its data centers close to sources of hydro-electric power, panelists touched on the topic of where best to locate future data centers.

"If you want to see where, from a power perspective, the data centers of the future will be located, take a look at the metals industry," said EDS's Cline. "The power system was built to feed those smelters and steel mills."