This is an overview of a session that will be presented at the Uptime Institute Symposium 2012. Click here to register.
Over the past decade, U.S. taxpayers have sunk billions of dollars into the operation of thousands of underutilized government data centers. In fact, according to former federal CIO Vivek Kundra, before the announcement of a huge federal data center consolidation initiative, the U.S. government’s IT infrastructure had an average utilization of only 27%.
Now, take a look inside the biggest data center consolidation project in the world. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget has committed to closing 1,200 federal data centers by 2015 in an effort to combat data center waste and siloed bureaucracy on a massive scale. Over the course of the consolidation initiative, government agencies hope to make better use of tax dollars by halting redundant federal IT spending and excess energy consumption, improving cyber security and taking advantage of hot technologies like virtualization and cloud computing.
So far, the consolidation project has exceeded initial goals. In one success story, the Census Bureau has managed to close a 6,570-square-foot contractor-operated data center, which will save the agency $1.7 million annually. The Census Bureau has reduced its total data center power consumption by 10 percent and is even offering hosting and colocation services to other agencies.
The federal data center consolidation initiative has saved $14 million to date, but that’s only .0183% of the U.S. government IT budget, and the project is far from over. Find out what the situation is like on the ground for the agencies tasked with the heavy lifting from a panel of federal IT executives, hosted by MeriTalk. Karen Petraska of NASA will provide an overview of her agency’s data center strategy; the Department of Energy’s Jake Wooley will discuss efforts to achieve energy savings and lower PUE; and Anil Karmel of the National Nuclear Security Administration will offer insight on the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Infrastructure on Demand private cloud.
Why should you invest the time to complete an application for Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT Awards?
Because implementing a successful project isn’t enough – you’ve got to TELL people about it.
Winning a Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Award does just that. When you win a GEIT Award, the Uptime Institute – The Global Data Center Authority — announces on the world’s stage that your project demonstrates thought leadership, adherence to best practices, and bold innovation.
Winning a GEIT Award enhances your stature within your organization and increases the credibility of future projects you might champion. Winners receive a complimentary registration to present their case study at the annual Uptime Institute Symposium , so you’ll be able to share your Award-winning project with your peers in a 30-minute session . And because delegates will recognize you on sight as a GEIT Winner, your networking opportunities increase exponentially. After Symposium, your presentation and case brief become part of the Path Forward, the official proceedings of Symposium hosted on the Symposium website for the benefit of the global community.
Winning a GEIT Award is smart business. Your project has already provided significant benefits in terms of increased productivity and cost efficiency, but winning a GEIT Award amplifies that benefit: when an independent team of international experts examines your project in a rigorous double-blind review process and determines that you’ve implemented the very best solution to produce the highest-impact result possible, clients sit up and take notice.
Apply now for 2012 GEIT Awards.
This week we are posting testimonials from data center managers and IT executives from around the globe who have participated in Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT Awards (GEIT).
Stephen Bowes-Phipps, Data Centres Manager at University of Herfordshire
Participating in the Uptime Institute GEIT Awards has given further credibility to the work not only that I have undertook but the progress the University of Hertfordshire is making with respect to furthering the Green IT Agenda. We have also used the award to provide greater publicity to the sector to encourage others to follow our path and spend the necessary time and investment in reducing their ICT operational and environmental costs.
In a perfect world, it would be nice to believe that funding for Green efficiencies always deliver a SMART return on investment (ROI) that makes senior decision makers feel good about the outcomes. Unfortunately, that is not always the case (though it was in ours). Awards can celebrate Green IT projects that are good for sustainability but have poor or non-existent ROI. There is evidence that corporate sustainability efforts have taken a back seat during the global recession as organizations seek to retrench their positions in a shrinking market. However, consumers may just be more selective about whom they do business with, and those who can demonstrate independent accolades of using their funds to both improve efficiency and bear more responsibility for the environment and communities in which they operate in, may win the lion’s share of the new and repeat business.
Download the University of Herfordshire GEIT Case Study here.
Uptime Institute is now accepting applications for 2012 Green Enterprise IT Awards. The GEIT Awards recognize projects, ideas and products that significantly improve energy productivity and resource use in IT, data centers and beyond. The GEIT Awards are open to applicants in all countries and are judged by a committee of independent experts. In 2012, the Institute invites applications in 8 categories. Application deadline is February 3, 2012. Award winners for 2012 will be honored at the Uptime Institute Symposium in Santa Clara, CA, May 14-17, 2012.
Over the next few weeks we will profile some of last year’s winners, reflecting on how participation in GEIT impacted their careers and IT organizations.
Eric Swanson, Data Center Manager, at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
GEIT has definitely helped my organization. The process does take some time and effort, but my experience has been that it is well worth it. In my case it helped keep the focus on gathering metrics throughout the project, and routinely studying that data to understand where opportunities for further improvements might be. This was particularly true in our challenging environment, as we were operating in upper ASHRAE conditions with a lot of infrastructure challenges and IT load growth, pushing us beyond best practices.
The metrics, graphs and knowledge gained throughout the project are useful to this day. The application process also helped identify areas that we should have been tracking, for example, PUE and DCIE metrics.
The award has also helped my career. The Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT award is open to the international community, and therefore shows others that you have been involved with something that is world-class. The symposium’s web site has a summary, presentation, and case study. This provides an excellent 3rd party reference to showcase the work done, and share the knowledge widely, which for me was the driving force for participating.
The experience of preparing and presenting at the Symposium was also very educational, as was being at the Symposium.
Also, pursuing green technology has returned on its investment. This project was part of a larger effort to extend data center IT load, mainly through low-cost methods that greatly improved efficiencies and lessened our environmental impact. In our case the payoff was immediate.
Download the case study here.
Family owned Central-Oregon cable company BendBroadband only recently decided to get into the data center business, but in that short time the organization has quickly proven it wants to be a leader in the industry.
The company earned Uptime Institute Tier III Facility Certification, and was the first site to be certified with a Kyoto Cooling system. In fact, the BendBroadband Vault is one of the biggest Kyoto Cooling installations in North America.
BendBroadband was also awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Gold status, under the LEED 2009 Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C) rating system. From the BendBroadband blog: This is a monumental achievement and one that we have been working toward since the initial concept stage of the Vault. This certification puts us in the upper echelon of data centers and makes us only the 5th data center in the world to attain this level.
BendBroadband is also an early adopter of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software. The company recently announced it is using nlyte software for capacity planning.
I spoke with Steven Hall, Data Center Director at BendBroadband about the company’s DCIM use. Hall uses nlyte to help the organization bring new customers into the data center. Clients provide BendBroadband with a list of the servers they want to deploy, and Hall plugs those models into nlyte to plan out how much space, power and cooling will be necessary to meet the workload, and offers various options for deploying the equipment.
“We use it as part of our on-boarding process,” Hall said. “We help customers take a quick look at different cabinet layouts. Do they need a high density cabinet, or should we spread it out over two cabinets? The tool was perfect for that.”
Howdy partners. We’re pleased to announce the first Uptime Institute Server Roundup. A roundup, according to Merriam-Webster, is the act or process of collecting animals (cattle) by riding around them and driving them in; a gathering in of scattered persons or things.
So get out from behind that desk and saddle up. It’s time to bring in those little doggies holed up in a server closet, sitting idle on the raised floor, wasting power and cooling resources. Based upon our field experience, up to 10% of those servers in your racks aren’t doing anything.
We recently heard of a major enterprise data center in New Zealand, fine cattle country by the way, that removed 20% of its servers that were sitting comatose.
Decommissioning a single 1U rack server can result in $500 per year in energy savings, an additional $500 in operating system licenses, and $1,500 in hardware maintenance costs. That’s not chump change.
Instead of piddling around shaving a point off your PUE, it’s time to get focused on what will make a real difference. It takes hard work to get in there and look for duplicated or unused applications, out-of-date, obsolete servers. We need you to drive in those wobbly old steer and replace them with more efficient, virtualized hardware.
Uptime Institute is offering a reward (or a bounty) on your obsolete machines. All participants in the Uptime Institute Server Roundup will receive a T-shirt and a badge for their web sites. Winners in each category will receive a commemorative rodeo belt buckle to proudly display on their corporate trophy rooms, desks—or if so bold—on their belts. The winners will also receive free passes and a dedicated presentation slot at Uptime Institute Symposium, May 13-17, 2012 in Santa Clara, Calif.
The rules: Two winners will be determined, one for most IT equipment removed, one for largest percentage of IT equipment removed. We don’t care how you get there. Going virtual? Server consolidation? Moving to the cloud? Going out of business?! We don’t care. Just unplug and decommission those machines.
Paperwork: What’s the proof? We want to see a paper trail. Send us change records. Do you Identify machines by server name or serial number. Removed 752 servers? We want to see the submittal of the work. Did you send the hardware to a recycler? Send us the receipt.
Results: We want to know how much energy you saved. Send us the UPS output reading before the change and after the change. You can do it right in the flow of work.
Photos: Send us a few before and after photos. Servers in the cabinets, servers in the docks going out. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive. Extra credit for creativity.
Submit your documents for inspection to Uptime Institute’s Hank Seader (hseader@uptimeinstitute.com). Also send any comments, questions, cowboy jokes. Thanks for your interest. Hike up your Wranglers, unhitch your horses, and get to work.
Deadline: Contest closes Feb 1st, 2012.
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. 
