It’s been an exciting few days in the opening of Uptime Institute Symposium 2013. We have a stellar lineup of speakers this year, and the content has been fantastic so far. Here are just a few images from the last few days.

Samsung is the 2013 underwriter of the Uptime Institute Server Roundup awards. As part of the sponsorship, Samsung Semiconductor’s VP of Marketing Jim Elliot will be presenting on the latest advances in IT hardware components at Symposium next week. You can read more about Jim’s presentation and Samsung’s commitment to Server Roundup here.

In this video, Samsung’s Director of Strategic Marketing, Dr. Sylvie Kadivar provides a preview of the keynote.

Stay tuned for more blog posts from the event, and I look forward to seeing all of you in Santa Clara next week.

Yesterday we profiled the 2013 Green Enterprise IT Award-winning case studies. Today we’ll provide a brief introduction to the case studies that were named Finalists or were recognized with an Honorable Mention.

Audacious Idea – Recognizes new, unprecedented ideas for realizing energy and resource efficiency.

Microsoft‘s Data Plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was named the Finalist in this category. This pilot project locates a data center at a biogas source in an attempt to demonstrate that if facilities can operate reliably independent of the utility grid, owners will have greater flexibility in siting choices and more data centers can achieve carbon-neutral status.

The judges recognized a patent-pending freestanding chilled air duct developed by QTS (Quality Technology Services) with an Honorable Mention. The duct delivers in-rack cooling directly to IT equipment, reduces the amount of underfloor static pressure required, minimizes hot and cold air mixing without the need for containment, and eliminates the need for perforated tiles.

Facility Design Implementation – Recognizes cutting-edge data center projects that demonstrate energy and resource efficiency in a new, operational data center.

Both the Finalist and the Honorable Mention in this category were brownfield re-developments in conservation settings. As Finalists, the judges recognized Melbourne Water‘s new green data center designed by Norman Disney & Young. This facility uses an indirect free cooling design and promises to save over 600 tons of CO2 annually compared with their previous facility.

The venerable University of St Andrews IT Services department received an Honorable Mention for its new data center, which uses energy procured from renewable sources only. The facility recently received a Gold award from the British Computer Society’s Certified Energy Efficient Datacentre Award (CEEDA) program.

Facility Design Innovation – Recognizes cutting-edge data center designs that focus on energy and resource efficiency.

The judges named TELUS Corporation‘s Intelligent Internet Data Center, which features prefabricated modules provided by Skanska, as Finalists. The facility is Tier III design-certified by Uptime Institute, built to LEED Gold standards and reports a 1.15 PUE rating.

eBay‘s modular green data center in Utah received an Honorable Mention. This facility, designed by Winter Street Architects with engineering firm AHA Consulting Engineers, incorporates fuel cells for onsite power generation and reports a PUE of 1.13 or better with 100% free cooling.

Facility Product Deployment – Recognizes facility infrastructure products that significantly improve data center energy and/or resource efficiency, as demonstrated in a user deployment.

The judges designated the case study submitted by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and SynapSense Corporation as Finalists. In this project, the Lab retrofit variable-speed drives on constant-speed fans in the Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRACs), then controlled the speeds by deploying the SynapSense Active Control system and ThermaNode DX units. The PUE for the cooling system improved by 24%, even in the face of increased IT load.

Facility Retrofit – Recognizes data center facility retrofit projects that significantly improved energy and/or resource efficiency in an existing data center.

Schuberg Philis and engineering consultant De Vlieg Techniek will be honored as Finalists for their cooling system refit accomplished with zero downtime. In this project, the data center was equipped with a demand-controlled redundant cool water distribution system combined with free cooling via cooling towers. During the winter, the excess cooling energy produced by the cooling towers is stored in deep wells to be used during the summer months.

Green Digital Infrastructure Strategy – Recognizes exceptional energy and resource efficiency beyond an individual data center.

The judges recognized Avnet as Finalist for its company-wide approach to IT-enabled energy efficiency. In addition to numerous cooling, virtualization and storage upgrades in the data center, Avnet employs a system hibernation script, encourages telecommuting and video conferencing, and uses energy-efficient, motion-triggered lighting in warehouse spaces to save energy.

IT Product Deployment – Recognizes IT products that significantly improve energy and/or resource efficiency, as demonstrated in a user deployment.

The case study submitted by NTT DATA and Intel Corporation was recognized as the Finalist in this category. NTT used dynamic server power provisioning technologies to manage peak loads and ensure business continuity during the long-term power shortages Japan experienced after the 2011 earthquake in that country.

IT Retrofit – Recognizes projects in which IT operations staff significantly improved energy and/or resource efficiency while improving IT effectiveness.

The judges recognized Stanford University‘s server room consolidation project as Finalist in this category. By consolidating two server rooms and migrating to a new facility, the University increased compute capacity, improved PUE from 2.0 to 1.3, and regained valuable real estate for research efforts.

All honorees are invited to profile their case studies in the GEIT Awards Showcase (May 13, 2013) at Uptime Institute Symposium 2013 (May 13-16, 2013, Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA). Although attendance at the Showcase is free, preregistration is required.

For five years, Uptime Institute’s Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards have spotlighted the most innovative data center projects on the planet, and this year is no exception. Our 2013 Winners include an example of industrial symbiosis, a facility with a nine-foot raised floor, data centers featuring nontraditional power and cooling, and tens of millions of dollars in energy savings.

Audacious Idea – TeraCool
This Award recognizes new, unprecedented ideas for realizing energy and resource efficiency.

The winner is TeraCool’s proposal to locate data centers in close proximity with liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals to improve the energy efficiency of both facilities. The system would use the refrigeration energy created when LNG is vaporized to cool the data center, and use the waste heat from the data center to vaporize LNG. The system then adds an additional refrigeration loop to the circuit in which the refrigerant is pressurized, warmed and vaporized. The expanding refrigerant drives a turbine coupled to a generator to produce electricity in a combustion-free, emissions-free process.

Facility Design Implementation – National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), The RMH Group and H+L Architecture
This Award recognizes cutting-edge data center projects that demonstrate energy and resource efficiency in a new, operational data center.

The winner is the new high-performance computing (HPC) facility operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center incorporates a high-efficiency closed-water cooling system and a low-pressure drop design in a nine-foot raised-floor environment. The facility is LEED Gold-certified and designed to achieve a PUE of 1.08.

Facility Design Innovation – TD Bank Group
This Award recognizes cutting-edge data center designs that focus on energy and resource efficiency.

The winner is TD Bank Group’s new facility that integrates sustainable design elements (e.g., rainwater harvesting, onsite renewable energy generation, heat recovery systems, natural lighting) with efficiently meeting its IT goals through server virtualization, tiered storage platforms, energy-efficient infrastructure, overhead cabling and more. This phased construction project is Tier III certified by Uptime Institute and LEED Platinum certified by USGBC.

Facility Product Deployment – University of Leeds, Iceotope and 3M Company
This Award recognizes facility infrastructure products that significantly improve data center energy and/or resource efficiency, as demonstrated in a user deployment.

The winning case study is the University of Leeds’ replacement of its HPC servers with Iceotope’s liquid-cooled server system, which uses a coolant produced by 3M Company. The server unit is closed and runs silently, which means it can be deployed in almost any setting. Because liquid cools more efficiently than air, the system significantly decreases the amount of energy used for cooling. In the University’s deployment, the hot output water from the system is reused to heat the lab via domestic radiators.

Facility Retrofit – Interxion
This Award recognizes data center facility retrofit projects that significantly improved energy and/or resource efficiency in an existing data center.

The winner is Interxion, for its use of seawater to cool its Stockholm data centers. In the system, seawater is used to cool multiple data centers in a process that is more efficient and uses less water than conventional seawater cooling systems. The warm water is used to heat local offices before it is returned to the sea. The system has helped Interxion reduce its energy costs on its Stockholm campus by 80 percent, free IT capacity, and improve PUE to a reported 1.09.

Green Digital Infrastructure Strategy – Cisco Systems
This Award recognizes exceptional energy and resource efficiency beyond an individual data center.

The winner is Cisco Systems, for the comprehensive Lab Energy Management Program employed in its 1,600+ labs worldwide. Teams audit individual labs to identify inexpensive, fast fixes for airflow, cooling and power. Next, labs implement energy-efficiency upgrades and deploy monitoring technologies. An employee engagement program helps maximize results, and information is shared throughout the organization to help other divisions implement their own energy-efficiency projects. The program is on track to reduce the labs’ energy costs by up to $9 million annually.

IT Product Deployment – Arc Productions and TSO Logic
This Award recognizes IT products that significantly improve energy and/or resource efficiency, as demonstrated in a user deployment.

The winning case study is Arc Productions’ deployment of TSO Logic’s server power management software to monitor power use on a per-application basis, identify idle servers, and manage server utilization. The data center is now on track to save 56% of its electricity costs without compromising performance.

IT Retrofit – Avnet
This Award recognizes projects in which IT operations staff significantly improved energy and/or resource efficiency while improving IT effectiveness.

The winner is Avnet, for its comprehensive program to upgrade its IT environment, saving over 1.75 megawatt hours of energy and avoiding a multi-million dollar power buildout for its data center. Projects included deploying a new storage environment, implementing virtualization, and upgrading the physical infrastructure to improve energy efficiency. As a result of these efforts, the organization has saved more than $18 million in energy costs while significantly increasing its IT and storage capacity.

All winners will present their case studies at Uptime Institute Symposium 2013, taking place May 13-16, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif.

Tomorrow we’ll profile the case studies honored as Finalists and recognized with an Honorable Mention.

I have attended every single Symposium, since Ken Brill hosted the first one in the Orlando Airport Hyatt so many years ago, and I can tell you each one is different, and each one records a seminal moment for our industry.

I haven’t’ missed a single opportunity to learn and participate in the most important event of the year, and neither should you.

Listed below, please find the top ten reasons to join us at Uptime Institute Symposium 2013:

1. Make better decisions about cloud and colo providers: The vast majority of enterprise data center operators today also deploy some portion of their IT operations in a third-party facility, with either a cloud or coloction provider. The sessions at Uptime Institute Symposium will help you become a smarter customer of third-party data center services, and will give you the tools to perform due diligence, to make smart investments.

Symposium features an entire track on this topic, staffed by industry luminaries, senior level end-user executives and Uptime Institute experts. If your organization relies on third-party data center services, you cannot afford to miss these sessions.

If your organization provides colo and cloud services – you need to attend to understand how your value and performance will be evaluated going forward.

2. You will not find a better discussion of DCIM anywhere: Andy Lawrence and his team from 451 Research’s Data Center Technologies practice are the industry’s foremost experts on Data Center Infrastructure Management Software. Our experts will provide you with the latest DCIM adoption statistics, pricing information, buying advice, and projections for future technology development. We are hosting a panel of senior end-user execs to discuss the pain points and benefits of DCIM implementation (so be sure to stick around for Thursday!). And we are partnered with the leading DCIM vendors as underwriters, who will be presenting their latest technologies, touting new customers and projecting their product roadmaps at Symposium.

3. Giant cowboy hats and cowboy boot beer mugs: Server Roundup is back! Uptime Institute’s second annual contest to remove obsolete server hardware and improve data center energy efficiency has been a huge success. We’ve doubled the amount of servers removed over last year, as well as the number of participants and winners. This year we will feature a keynote panel with all of the winners and finalists, as well as our Server Roundup underwriter at Symposium, Samsung. The 2013 Server Roundup awards promises to be more fun than your average technology conference snooze-fest – these networking receptions just get a little livelier when everybody is wearing a ten gallon hat and drinking out of a boot.

Close deals! Make new friends! Annoy your family with a giant foam hat! Yeehaw.

But in all seriousness, you will learn something from our Server Roundup winners and finalists that will more than pay for your travel costs to this event.

4. Would you fail the Crisis of Facilities Management Pop Quiz? Building a data center is one of the most expensive investments a company can make. And yet, staffing and operational standards are often given short shrift when compared to the planning and diligence dedicated to the site’s design and engineering. Uptime Institute Symposium features an entire track dedicated to the data center operations professional, with expert presentations on how to manage your organization’s most vital asset. Uptime Institute will draw from field analysis of the successes and failures of its clients and members to provide guidance and real-world experience on the core elements of a successful and enduring facilities management program.

Are you confident in your Facilities team’s capability to manage a technologically advanced and highly efficient design to your 24 x 7 uptime requirements? Can you easily replace any member of that team? Are you protected against poor operations practices migrating from older sites to higher criticality data centers? Do you have sites that operate in isolation without adhering to global corporate standards? Do you even have corporate global standards? Attend Uptime Institute Symposium to help get the right answers to these questions.

5. The only data center industry event with a global perspective: Uptime Institute has awarded Tier Certifications in 38 different countries. Our Accredited Tier Designers (ATD) and Accredited Tier Specialists alumni represent 60 different countries. Uptime Institute Networks are currently growing in Brasil, Asia Pacific, and EMEA as well as the established North American Networks. We have offices in London, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Taipei and Singapore. Our experts are delivering data center consulting services to the largest IT organizations around the world. We are hosting speakers from Moscow, Western Europe and Brazil.

6. The data center industry’s most elite networking event: Symposium is a worthwhile investment in your professional development and your company’s success. Data center managers from Fortune 500 companies, large financial firms, and the colocation space will be presenting on the top issues facing their organizations today. We are hosting a meeting for all ATD alumni, representing the industry’s leading data center designers and engineers. Uptime Institute Network Members from four continents will spend three days learning and sharing experiences. And the most senior executives from the biggest vendors will be on hand to present and answer your questions. You owe it to yourself — make Symposium a priority.

7. The killer keynotes: The data center conference circuit can seem a lot like the movie Groundhog Day. You see the same people, talking about the same stuff, year after year. Not at Symposium.
The invited keynote lineup for 2013 includes Twitter’s Anoop Mavath, discussing for the first time, Twitter’s data center strategy. Find out how Twitter has deployed data center infrastructure to keep pace with the constraints and changing demands of managing one of the most dynamic workloads on the Web.

The last time we saw Christian Belady, he was a mad scientist putting servers in tents, developing metrics that would take over the industry, and challenging our assumptions. Recently, Microsoft’s General Manager of Data Center Services has kept his head down, busy executing the deployment of Microsoft’s massive global cloud footprint. At Symposium Christian will share what he’s learned, including the latest trends that may impact your data centers: Cloud-optimized servers, fail-in-place and self-healing IT, and a shift to OpEx-driven accounting.

Finally, Alexander Martynyuk will provide an overview of how Russia is building its national cloud computing platform. Rostelecom, Russia’s largest national telecommunications operator, launched a project in 2011 to develop a national cloud computing platform. The success of any data center build out is defined by how efficient the collaboration is between various project teams. Rostelecom’s Senior Project Director Alexander Martynyuk will discuss how his organization is meeting priorities, deadlines and budget on this complex project.

8. Stop guessing – use data: The sessions at Uptime Institute Symposium are largely based on quantitative peer data, collected from the largest and most critical data center operations around the globe. From the opening session, featuring the results of the 2013 Industry Survey, to the annual data center density study, and the Hurricane Sandy lessons learned report, you will have access to the most up-to-date and accurate industry data available.

9. 2013 Green Enterprise IT Award Winners: The 2013 Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards recognize pioneering advancements for that significantly improve energy productivity and resource use in IT. The 2013 class of honorees includes 28 organizations associated with 19 case studies and spans 8 countries.
“This year’s’ entries have included an impressive mix from unique innovations to excellent project executions, and as always the rigorous and scientific process which that we go through at the GEIT Awards has allowed us to pick the very best from an outstanding collection of entries,” said Martin Bradley, GEIT Awards Judge and Head of European Data Centre Engineering and Operations, Morgan Stanley.

The GEIT Award winners’ case-study presentations are scheduled throughout the event.

10. Unmatched experience and expertise: Join Uptime Institute Founder Ken Brill, Chief Technology Officer Vince Renaud, Executive Director Emeritus Pitt Turner, and Managing Principal, Research and Education Hank Seader for perspective and guidance from decades in the data center industry.

I sincerely hope to see you at this event, and look forward to catching up in May.

-Matt Stansberry