Featured Session of Uptime Institute Symposium 2013: Hurricane Sandy recently stressed, if not compromised, a number of data centers located in the Northeast U.S. A few of the heroic efforts needed to keep some data centers operational, such as carrying buckets of fuel to the roof, have been characterized in the industry press. However, the size of this weather event and the number of data centers in the region warrant a more holistic and comprehensive review of the actual consequences. Uptime Institute has collaborated with data center owners and operators to collect and analyze actual impacts and publish lessons learned.
Events like this challenge some of the data center industry’s longstanding assumptions on data center operations and design. Company names and sensitive site details will not be revealed, but Uptime Institute Professional Services Vice President Vince Renaud will analyze the responses to Sandy, and provide insightful lessons learned from the event.
Read more about the speakers, sessions and tracks for Uptime Institute Symposium 2013: The Global Digital Infrastructure Evolution.
Kenneth G. Brill is the Founder of the Uptime Institute and the Site Uptime Network. Many data center industry innovations over the past 25 years can be traced back to his original concepts, including dual power, the industry’s Tier system for evaluating and classifying data center facility performance, and IT/facility energy efficiency and productivity measurement. Mr. Brill’s research into the Economic Meltdown of Moore’s Law, Data Center Productivity and Energy Efficiency, and IT’s declining economics form core knowledge to be taken into account by corporate leaders charged with business performance, profitability, and sustainability.
In 2008 through 2010, Brill was an IT columnist for Forbes.com. His essays for senior executives combine uncommon common-sense ideas with real-life illustrations to set practical IT management priorities. We’ve compiled a selection of his best columns on a range of topics, including data center energy use; effective cross-department communication; and the changing nature and future of the IT industry.
You can download a PDF of Ken Brill’s advice for data center and IT professionals by clicking here.
As reports come in from the East Coast of data center operations impacted by Hurricane Sandy, it is important to consider your own organization’s disaster preparedness in the case of a regional emergency.
“The data center manager and their team should have dusted off a natural disaster plan days ago to review and prepare for what they are experiencing today,” said Keith Klesner, consultant with Uptime Institute. “The challenges of critical facilities in this case could include flooding, electrical utility transients, availability of diesel fuel for engine generators and availability of operations and maintenance staff. Any one of these elements could lead to an outage event for a data center.
“Significant weather events such as Hurricane Sandy can place major strain on data center infrastructure and cause outages for those operators who are unprepared. Most critically, data centers who have properly tested and operated on their diesel engine generators are better prepared for this type of event. Resilient data centers will have planned for several days of autonomy both with diesel fuel, staffing and provisions to support days of continued operations without utility power or outside support.”
According to Vince Renaud, Uptime Institute’s VP and Managing Principle of Uptime Institute Professional Services, one of the biggest challenges for data center operators in disasters of this magnitude is the ability to actually get more fuel. “Especially when a state of emergency has been declared, most or all fuel is directed towards hospitals and other emergency facilities. That is why we recommend the contracting (as a backup) with out of state sources.”
Our thoughts are with the millions affected by this storm.
This is the second blog post in a series that features continuing discussion with various senior staff of the Uptime Institute in response to the New York Times feature on data center energy use. The following was drawn from a discussion with Julian Kudritzki, Senior Vice President of Uptime Institute.
Many data centers are inherently wasteful due to the governing (mis)economics of cheap, high-availability computing. As long as IT reaps economic benefits divorced of true costs, then discipline in server procurement, utilization, and data center management is a ways off.
These favorable economic conditions delay motivation to change, but once dissipated, will transform our industry’s characteristics.
DAMS
Hydro power west of the 100th meridian in the US is fundamentally government subsidized. (See Marc Reisner Cadillac Desert.) Federal investment in Grand Coulee generated massive amounts of inexpensive and reliable power. Today’s result is that Quincy is a desirable data center location. Power commissions seek data centers as the ideal customers of high concentrations of power. Now those bulk power deals are unavailable in the Pacific NW (scroll past login for full article).
Cost are no longer sub-3 cents, but susceptible to market fluctuations. Arguably, Quincy’s data centers are the last IT beneficiaries of a federal spend made over 50 years ago. If new data centers flock to available bulk power, which is dwindling nationally, the cost repercussions will compel a new data center mindset that looks at the IT provisioning and utilization and data center capacity deployment with a much more clinical and harsh eye. And, if we look beyond western hydro, there will be cost and lifecycle consequences of the existing carbon-intensive power generation.
TRASH
The commodity server model allows for cheap and short-lived deployments. But, commodity servers are viable due to leveraged global labor pools and variable environmental regulations to dispose of the troublesome contents of a decommissioned server. Similar to hybrid cars, the sticker price does not reflect the cost of throwing it away. If foreign outsourcing of server recycling (i.e., teardown) was performed onshore at the scale of disposal, what would the total cost of a throwaway server become?
The consumer’s approach would evolve to extending the life of that server rather than replacing it. The irregular and need-based operation of diesel engine generators pales in environmental comparison to server disposal toxicity. Uptime Institute Survey shows 20% of IT departments pay their own power bill. Thus, is it safe to assume that the same percentage pay their own garbage bill?
CASH
For the enterprise, data centers and their contents are often treated as a cost center. For the IT and data center teams, the mission of uninterruptible uptime has been paramount. Thus, the prevailing management mode has been to hold nose and sign check. Budget reductions will threaten headcount in operations teams, but overall data center budgets continue to grow.
The unintended result of the favorable economic conditions is an unrealistic and unsustainable end user mindset of all IT functions available all the time. Many apps whose business value is not of the highest order have luxuriated in a ‘buy new now’ servers and enterprise-grade data center platform (i.e., power, cooling, monitoring, and automation infrastructure). Forward-thinking enterprises have been analyzing and distributing applications to match data-center infrastructure-level support to business value. But, these leading companies do not indicate industry prevalent behavior.
Debating whether server utilization is 7% or 12% or even 20% is a distraction. The issue is the economic factors that allow those low numbers to be perpetuated. There is a move afoot to compress IT, such as virtual server instances. But, the fact that this is an emergent trend shows how far we must travel and so fast.
OUTCOME: A BOON FOR OUTSOURCERS
A disruption in the economic conditions that IT has been enjoying will compel a new level of discipline and consequence in IT decision making. And, outsource alternatives will rush to propose a host of solutions to this economic crisis.
Many of these options will be so complex, or have such efficiencies of scale, that more enterprises will continue to divest themselves of data center facilities or entire IT assets.
A 2012 Uptime Institute survey of global owners revealed that 85% utilize colocation or hosting. Yet 54% had no confidence in their ability to compare outsourcing alternatives dependably. This is to the detriment of both enterprises and providers, as it calls into question the basis and viability of such commitments.
Previous IT decisions were based upon a narrower set of competitive offerings. Currently, the vast majority of enterprises deploy a hybrid computing environment. The decision is no longer binary—whether or not to outsource. It’s multi-faceted—how many and how much of each alternative to deploy.
Uptime Institute has been intensively developing the FORCSS methodology to weigh deployment alternatives with a full look at the major benefits and constraints of these options. FORCSS is the theme of Uptime Institute Symposium 2013. For more information on FORCSS click here.
Find the previous post in this conversation here. Photo of Grand Coulee Dam by Chris M on Flickr
In this new video, data center operators and executives discuss the benefits of being members of the Uptime Institute Network. Membership enhances Facilities and IT operations. Longtime participation in the Network reduces the frequency and duration of unplanned downtime.
For more information on the Uptime Institute Network, visit: UptimeInstitute.com/network
Uptime Institute is now regularly publishing online videos: profiling data center leaders, commenting on new tools and metrics and showcasing data center operational excellence in its Network membership. 
