Green tech doesn't reduce computational demands?

Ted Sampson over at Infoworld writes a nice column on sustainable IT which is a good read. His latest deadpans a briefing about AMD's energy efficient quad-core processor, where a journalist asked if AMD would be hurting its own sales with the release of its newest energy-efficient chip, code name Barcelona. The reasoning is as follows: If AMD is selling a processor capable of doing twice as much work as its previous CPU, wouldn't that mean that organizations will end buying fewer products from the company? Plink.

Oh, absolutely not. As explained, the underlying, mistaken, assumption is that companies have essentially maxed out their processing and storage demands and have no need to grow any further. Apparently, after you the empty half your datacenter using green techniques like virtualization, and equipping servers with energy-sipping chips, the premise is that you will fill it right back up again with more servers. To, you know, accomodate for the growth of your company's IT needs.

I sympathize with what AMD is trying to do, really, and I have made some glowing remarks on their progress. And obviously no org is going to suggest at a press conference that they are going to put their chipmakers, datacenter architects, and hardware vendors buddies out of business by selling more energy-efficient wares. But this fart-in-a-spacesuit logic catches me between laughing and taking the matter seriously; are we really to believe that the rationale for implementing a green tech solution is to just buy more equipment to satisfy our insatiable build-out of IT? If you believe that one, got a nice bridge in lower Manhattan to sell you. :: Inforworld

Economics of Virtualization May Be "Off Planet"

With the promise of reduced costs and increased efficiency, the virtualization rage continues in the techno-sphere. The basic premise of virtualization is to make one server do the work of many; this increases utilization, and hence requires less servers. Fewer servers mean less power, which in turn means less CO2, thus saving the planet. Simple.

But now there's a counterpoint; "yes, you have fewer servers in a virtualized environment, but each one of those servers is more heavily utilized, and because they are doing more work their power consumption goes up. The net gain is zero." Can that be? When I interviewed Foedus, they claimed one could get up to a 20 to 1 reduction in hardware using virtualization; it's hard to believe that doesn't more than make up for the extra power. Quocirca did their own analysis and came to the same conclusion. On the other hand, when I interviewed John Engates of Rackspace, he agreed that the power to run the heavier-laden box beats the costs of buying it - the juice beats the iron.

There's got to be missing pieces of the puzzle here - perhaps not all servers virtualize well, or we need to take into account the specific kinds of applications being served. And other items, such as ambient temperature and facility design, clearly make a big difference as well. The takeaway is that, like most things, establishing what power savings you are going to get from an infrastructure virtualisation project is not straightforward, but there is a potential for a win-win here - you will not only be saving the planet, but also money. And with the total power costs over the lifetime of a server currently estimated as being in the region of 50 per cent of the hardware costs, self-interest may play as big a part here as enlightened altruism; I'm still for jumping on the calliope.::Quorica :: The Register

A Horde of Hosts : Interview with John Engates, Rackspace

With over 30,000 servers and 12,000 customers, Rackspace is one of the biggest hosting providers in the world. Big companies can be slower to take environmental initiatives - they are aren't running all these boxes off of solar, for example - yet when they do make a move it usually has a bigger, longer lasting impact. TH recently had the 'tunity to interview John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, to see what they were up to.

Hi John, can you explain what Rackspace does?

In its simplest form, we offer managed hosting; this is an offering whereby companies look to outsource their hosting solutions.

Rackspace Managed Hosting delivers enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 12,000 customers in eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support™. Through trusted relationships, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business.

The average replacement cycle for hardware is two to four years - what is your timespan? Do you have any plans to extend it?

Rackspace replaces hardware as customers order new hardware or as their contract ends and they leave the company. Rackspace does attempt to recycle that gear as long as is reasonably possible. They don’t have a mandatory replacement timeline, so they use it as long as possible.

The average CPU utilization for hosting is absurdly low, often as low as 10 percent... do you have a number the CPU utilization of your equipment? How does this compare to the industry standard?

Don’t have specific numbers, but the nature of Rackspace’s business (production managed hosting services) lends itself to generally higher utilization than typical corporate datacenters.

Do you use virtualization? What if any advantages for the environment do you see in using this technology?

Rackspace does not currently have a virtualization offering, but plans are underway to announce one in Q4 2007.

While virtualization may offer a few advantages to the environment, it is important to point out that in the long run, virtualization does not provide significant environmental advantages. Virtualization does enable IT managers to add more servers (applications) on to fewer machines, reducing the amount of hardware needed and power consumed. Reducing the amount of hardware can certainly cut cost, but virtualization simply allows a server's CPU to run at a higher utilization. And the higher the utilization of a server, the more power it consumes. The additional power cost from virtualized servers will offset any savings created by purchasing less hardware (as hardware is relatively cheap.)

From an environmental perspective, what are the advantages of going with a managed hosting provider? Any disadvantages?

Service providers like Rackspace have the scale and resources to develop their own management tools, and Rackspace creates multiple efficiencies and reduces costs for its customers.

On a related note, Rackspace recently announced a “green” data center. The new facility will provide capacity to add more than 40,000 servers to support Rackspace’s growing customer base; it will help to reduce Rackspace’s dependency on fossil fuel. Slough Heat and Power, which will supply the Rackspace data center with the required power, does not burn coal and instead uses clean wood chips and fiber fuel, both renewable, biomass energy sources. In the process, material is shredded and converted into small, odourless cubes, which are then combusted to generate electricity, hot water and steam for local businesses and residents.

What is your take on free software - do you use it? Overall, do you think the total cost of ownership (TCO) of free software is less or more than commercial packages?

Rackspace uses open source software, but it’s not all free. They do pay maintenance fees for the Linux software they deploy. Even open source software that doesn’t require a maintenance fee is not really “free.” The costs of maintaining a free software environment may be slightly less expensive than the commercial alternative, but there are pluses and minuses to either, so Rackspace always recommends looking at your pool of talent and choosing the software based on who is going to be operating and maintaining it.

Gartner predicts that energy will account for 50 percent of the typical IT budget in the next few years. Do you agree with this number? How does managed hosting/green grid initiatives help to reduce this number?

Rackspace is seeing projections in their datacenter models that tell them that those numbers are not at all unrealistic. Managed Hosting will help reduce the cost when compared to a typical corporate datacenter. Rackspace can negotiate better power arrangements and they have the scale to implement more efficient technologies than most typical IT datacenters would be able to accomplish. Rackspace also has the scale to have people on staff thinking about efficiency on a full time basis. Their participation in Green Grid is an example of their commitment to driving efficiency in the datacenter. Rackspace believes it will improve efficiency and potentially help offsite rising energy costs.

What is the future of managed hosting? Will we see more or less hardware consolidation in the IT industry, and what are the biggest drivers for these changes?

Rackspace sees the future of managed hosting as ‘All IT is hosted,’ meaning more and more companies will need more than just there website hosted. They’ll need solutions like email and internal infrastructure hosted with a provider like Rackspace. Rackspace feels if it is not your core business, if it’s not revenue-generating, then you are wasting time, money and manpower supporting it internally when you can let companies like Rackspace host it better and faster.The biggest drivers for changes like hardware consolidation lie in better technology. Virtualization obviously has its pros with more applications running on fewer servers, but as the servers in general improve, they will be able to run more applications before using virtualization.

Virtualize With Xen, Now

Virtualization software allows you to run many different servers on a single piece of hardware; it's all the rage with IT departments because it drastically reduces the number of servers you need. This translates into reduced energy consumption (fewer machines to draw juice), less maintenance (fewer machines to fix), and more dollars in your pocket (fewer machines to buy).

VMware, a commercial product with a good rep is the clear market leader. But now a worthy competitor - the Xen open source project - just got better. Xen just released a new version of its virtualization product this week, and apparently it boots gluteus maximus. From the article:

"For server workloads, Xen's core hypervisor functionality now meets or beats VMware ESX in pretty much all areas, both features and performance," said Ian Pratt, leader of the Xen project and founder of XenSource.

Hype? Probably not; the list of supporters (Intel, IBM, Novell, VA Linux (Japan), HP, Fujitsu, SGI, Red Hat, AMD, Sun, Unisys and the National Security Agency) is impressive. And the cost of the free software is zero; ironically, that always seems to be the hardest number for IT shops to swallow. But why buy? Put your saved cash into a green technology, say solar cells.

Xen says the next stop is laptops and desktops; no idea what that means but I'm sure it will be exciting:: ServerWatch

Virtualization Expensive, Brains Cheap

So now Gartner's saying that virtualization is too expensive to implement right now, that we will all have to "stick it out a few years" until the technology improves. One of the problems is there is not enough implementors, like Foedus. So, seems like you may end up shelling out just as much cash to virtualize right now than not doing anything at all.

Here's a better idea, one I got from my interview with Richard Stallman - how about using brains instead of technology? Richard pointed out that all systems are time sharing systems; maybe people have just got in the habit of running one application per server, instead of being able to run many applications on a server. Like 10 years ago, when you ran email, ftp, gopher, and served up office from a single server . Brains let you do that, skilled workers. And when it comes to environmentally friendly, brains have got to be the best thing going.

Sustaining Virtual, Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact. The 'world' is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids, called 'avatars', and you get to control one or more of them. Some popular virtual worlds include Second Life and the Sims, to name just a few.

There's been a lot of talk about how these worlds can best adapted for business practices, and there are some differing opinions. Melanie Turek of Collaboration Loop thinks that IBM's new Codestation in Second Life, a kind of virtual place for sharpening programming skills, might turn out to be a non-starter for a pretty simple reason; Codestation might be fun, but real work is not always so. And she questions, rightly so, whether workers are going go through the hassle of getting into a virtual world and manipulating clunky avatars do their work, when they could just do their work at their desk using traditional tools.

Not everyone agrees - rebuttal here - but it does seem silly to do what you could be doing on 'Earth' in a virtual world, particularly when the latter realm uses up real world resources, such as energy. In fact, Nick Carr reports that each virtual person uses as much energy as the typical Brazilian. Let's take it a step further to a ridiculous conclusion - should we use computers in a virtual world to login to another virtual world, and do our work there? What benefits would that acheive? Seems like we should stick to keeping most activities Earth bound as much as we can.

Foedus on Track with Virtualization

You probably know that most companies use computers to provide a variety of business-centric services that are critical to their success. These machines are known as 'servers'. Each server usually performs a single, specific duty; there's the email server, the accounting server, the print server, etc. Oftentimes each server runs on its own separate hardware, and is controlled and managed as a single unit. IT personnel really like this, as it makes each application far easier to troubleshoot and maintain than if everything was lumped together on one box.

A lot of that is beginning to change with a new technology that allows for several of these machines to be consolidated and run off a single computer. This process, known as virtualization, is still in its infancy, but will have tremendous ramifications for the environment. Foedus, a three year old Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based company, specializes in this process. Mike Reilly, CEO of Foedus, was happy to fill in the details.

According to Mr. Reilly, most servers are only run at about 5 to 12 percent utilization; that means that the processor, or CPU, is only doing work for that amount of time. In addition, servers use a large amount of electricity, much more than your typical desktop or home computer. How much? Mr. Reilly estimates that each server uses between $300 and $550 per month in electricity. So the idea here is clear; if there was a way to put a lot of these machines onto one piece of hardware, companies could (a) save a lot of energy, (b) buy a lot less hardware, and (c) throw away a lot fewer machines when they reach their end of life.

The savings are substantial; Reilly estimates that a typical project reduces the numbers of servers by a factor between 10 to 1, and 20 to 1. That turns into, on average, a 40 percent overall cost savings and an 80 percent reduction in hardware purchases. And the good thing is that almost all servers (95 percent) are candidates for virtualization. Only a few, typically running old software or 'legacy' applications, are not.

The downside is fairly minimal; personnel require some additional training in the virtualzation software. It is of course, new, so there may be some reluctance at implementing it corporate wide from the get-go. But, as Reilly says, the good thing is that you can try it out on a few servers and see how you like it. Virtualization is clearly a revolution, probably as big as the invention of networking, and it's sure to be a big hit for companies, and a low hit on the environment.

The Virtual Road Ahead

With the possibility of cutting up to 40 percent of your IT bill with virtualization, everyone desperately wants to be a part of the new thing. Microsoft really just wants to help, but others are suggesting that their product, Virtual PC, is the equivalent of releasing a one-legged man in a marathon. Yeah, you're in the game, you're just not there to win.

VMWare has of course picked up on this and has suggested that they are just not trying, with the usual devilish ends. But the Soft might have the last and biggest fisc burp out of this new trend; since virtualization makes it is so easy to set up a new server, they are now propagating like wildfire. Which means more licenses, and more revenue for the OS. Ha ha, sit back and do nothing MS and let the money roll in - VMWare's got you covered.

Virtualization: Some Don't Care For It

Up until now, I thought that virtualization was a sans cerebellum, but it appears some think otherwise. According to a recent survey, about 1 in 10 companies think it's too expensive to implement, or they don't have the money (there is a difference.) One guy thinks Solaris in the answer...

And for some strange reason, it appears the Europeans are none too interested either. I'm not sure why this is; perhaps it is because there are more vendors in the European space, and companies are waiting for a clear victor to emerge. There's definitely a big battle going on between everyone and you-know-who.

There's no telling how this is effecting the server market either; some say server sales are going down, others up, and there are a few other players on the sidelines such as PG&E that are supporting the technology through rebates, etc. Still seems pretty cut and dried for me; after the smoke clears, I think we will the technology implemented in most organizations.

Ballmer: I Prefer the Bottom

Steve Ballmer says that he prefers the bottom. From the article:

In a meeting with corporate customers in New York last month, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said, "Everybody in the operating system business wants to be the guy on the bottom," the software that controls the hardware. And he vowed that Microsoft, whose Windows operating systems are the main source of its corporate wealth and market power, would "compete very aggressively with VMware."

This is response to the repeated accusations that Microsoft is making it very difficult to run Vista in a virtualized environment. The MS response is that they considered virtualization a security threat. Another security threat? This gets more mileage than the Prius; if we could put security threats in our gas tanks, the energy crisis would be over.

He's right though, this is going to be a big battle, and time is going to be on his side, with the options for not upgrading to Vista already dwindling. And with MS giving away virtual PC for 'free' and VmWare profits rocketing upwards, it will be jockeying to the finish line. Let just hope it's not a race to bottom, where everyone loses. Oh wait, that's what Ballmer wants. Well Steve, if you do in fact get on the bottom, just make sure you don't roll over on your belly. You know what will happen if you do.

It's a Breeze to Go Virtual

with VMWare's Converter, that is. This handy tool will convert your Microsoft server into image files that work with VMWare. Also converts other formats like Virtual PC, Live State Recovery, and Ghost. Two editions available, one free and one not.

Now you just have to figure out what those Windows machines will cost in your virtual environment. Well, it's easy, just use the Microsoft Virtualization Calculator.