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 It takes hard work to get in there and look for duplicated or unused applications, out-of-date, obsolete servers.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 recently awarded Russian colo provider DataSpace Tier III Facility Certification, the first such designation in Eastern Europe. DataSpace converted an aging Moscow Tire Factory into a Tier III Data Center, photos below.

Uptime Institute, the global data center authority, awarded DataSpace Tier III Facility Certification, the first such designation in Russia and Eastern Europe.

There is a huge amount of data center demand in Russia, and the capacity to meet that demand is constrained by limited in-country technical resources.

“This is an important milestone in the modernization of Russia’s infrastructure and supports Moscow becoming a financial center,” said David Hamner, DataSpace CEO. “Financial institutions and other modern enterprises, both global and local, rely on uninterrupted and secured data processing operations and we’ve introduced the industry standard facility product to the market”.

Pitt Turner, Executive Director of the Uptime Institute and Ken Brill, its Founder, jointly presented the award to Hamner and his team during the EMEA conference of Uptime Institute Network.

”We are very pleased to award Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility to DataSpace 1,” announced Turner. “As the first Certified Facility in Russia and Eastern Europe, this is a landmark accomplishment in the region. DataSpace hereby joins a short list of leading service providers who have voluntarily engaged Uptime Institute as an unbiased third-party to validate thoroughly the data center’s high performance capability.”

Asked to summarize what Tier III really means, Turner responded: “Tier III means Concurrent Maintainability — that the data center will never be shut down to maintain or replace the heating and cooling equipment. Because all planned facilities shutdowns are eliminated, DataSpace 1 is a true 24 x 7 data center. Tier III Facility Certification is further significant because many data center operators claim to have Tier III, but only a small number have been verified as true.”

Vincent Renaud, who leads the Uptime Institute Tier Certification Team, said, “Tier III Facility Certification is only successful with a diligent owner and world-class delivery by the project team throughout the construction and commissioning. DataSpace was one of the best prepared projects that I have encountered.”

“When we looked at the market in 2008, we saw a lot of false claims about Tier III and knew from the beginning we would need to demonstrate what it really means and bring a truly world class data center to the market,” Hamner said. “We enlisted HP/CFS, Mercury and Schneider Electric as key partners and working together with Uptime Institute’s supervision from the beginning, we were able to accomplish the task. Of all the data centers around the world I’ve been associated with in my career, this is the best.”

Harris Corporation recently earned Uptime Institute Tier III Facility Certification for its new Mid-Atlantic data center, the Cyber Integration Center. The new facility is the foundation for Harris’ Trusted Enterprise Cloud services.

Uptime Institute Vice President Julian Kudritzki spoke at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Harris data center.

Concurrent maintainability for Harris Cyber Integration Center

According to Uptime Institute Professional Services Consultant Chris Brown, the chilled water system is a typical solution for a Tier III data center. It is a looped piping system with strategically located isolation valves to allow sections of the piping system to be isolated for maintenance without impacting the computer rooms. The chiller-cooling tower combination utilized packaged units. The packaged units ease the design to make the control system Concurrently Maintainable. In large condenser water systems, it is difficult to operate the cooling towers without automatic control since condenser water temperature typically needs to be held in a fairly tight window. This makes running cooling towers in a local manual mode difficult. The packaged systems use on board controls that are independent of the larger building automation system.

The interesting part is the UPS system, Brown said. A typical Tier III solution is to utilize a System + System arrangement. So if the design load was 1,000 kW the design would utilize two 1,000 kW systems. The management of that type of system is easy as one only has to ensure that each dual corded computer device has a feed from each UPS. But the cost is a 50% stranded capacity (45% with a 90% redline). Also static UPS systems do not run at peak efficiency the lower they are loaded.

The Cyber Integration Center used a different approach, utilizing five separate UPS systems. By evenly distributing dual corded loads across all five UPS systems the UPS systems can be loaded to 67% in normal operations. With a loss of a single UPS the total load on each UPS will increase to 83%. This allows each UPS to be loaded to a higher utilization under normal operations. This results in less stranded capacity. Also by increasing the percent utilization, the static UPS will operate at a higher efficiency than at a lower utilization. This system is more complex to manage as the dual corded loads must be evenly distributed across all UPS systems, but the result is less stranded capacity and higher efficiency.

In this video, Harris Cyber Integration Center Operations Manager, James Montgomery, narrates a data center tour.

This facility also won an Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT award for water usage efficiency.

Congratulations to Harris on earning Uptime Institute Tier III Certification.

Every year Uptime Institute hosts the Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards, an international competition that recognizes projects, ideas and products that improve energy productivity and resource use in IT. Although the categories in which the Institute grants Awards may change each year, the objectives remain the same: to educate the data center and IT industries in effective ways to reduce energy consumption by shining a spotlight on innovation and best practice. Through the GEIT program, we want to recognize and support change agents who lead by example.

GEIT is no popularity contest; our rigorous judging process is designed to select projects that demonstrate groundbreaking ideas that produce quantifiable, high impact results. GEIT applications are evaluated by a panel of independent, expert judges. To insure objective evaluation, applications are reviewed in a double-blind process: judges do not know whose applications they review, and applicants do not know which judges reviewed their application. In addition, the staff ensures that Judges are not allowed to judge any Award category that includes applications from his or her own company.

Another unique feature of the GEIT Awards is the benefits winners and finalists receive: GEIT honorees are provided a platform to share what they’ve learned on the world stage. The Institute offers each winner a 30-minute session at its spring Symposium to present their case study and complimentary registrations so representatives from winning companies can network at Symposium and share what they’ve learned with peers. Finalists, likewise, are provided a free registration and are invited to present a brief overview of their projects. As in all Symposium sessions, GEIT honorees engage in Q&A with delegates after their presentation to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing.

And case briefs and presentations are hosted on the Symposium website for the benefit of the global community. Uptime Institute is proud to present the following nine data center case studies that that significantly improve energy productivity and resource use in IT.

2011 GEIT Award Winner Case Briefs.