The deadline for the second annual Uptime Institute Server Roundup is fast approaching. Deadline for submission of materials is 1 March 2013, and we already have a record breaking year of submissions.
The Uptime Institute Server Roundup contest was introduced in October 2011 to encourage the removal and recycling of comatose and obsolete IT equipment in an effort to decrease data center energy use. Last year’s first-place winner, AOL, rounded up close to 10,000 servers and saved over $5 million. NBC Universal took the prize for largest percentage of obsolete equipment, removing 29% (1,100 units ) from its server footprint.
Uptime Institute will recognize the winners at the 2013 Uptime Institute Symposium, and participant will present their experiences — the challenges and rewards of hunting down and rounding up obsolete and unused IT equipment.
Register for Symposium this week, before early bird pricing expires Feb 28th.
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.
Uptime Institute Professional Services recently hired new Director of Technical Services, Debbie Seidman. She will be managing Uptime Institute’s delivery of Design and Facility Tier Certifications worldwide.
Seidman’s previous jobs include deploying modular data center products for HP, developing data center utility rebate programs with Xcel Energy, and over twenty years experience as a facility project manager and operations engineer.
Modular data center experience: Seidman’s role at HP was liaison between HP and customers, making sure the customer had the appropriate infrastructure in place before the Pod arrived. She also oversaw start-up, commissioning and turn-over processes.
Seidman said modular data centers (prefab units delivered on site) allow companies to roll out a staged deployment, a piece at a time. It’s quicker than traditional construction, and there can be cost advantages.
On the other hand, Seidman said brick and mortar data centers allow for more design flexibility, and that some geographic locations may have long term permit issues with regard to prefab structures for aesthetic reasons.
“I don’t think we’ll see the entire data center market going modular, Seidman said. “It’s adaptable, compact, and can be less expensive in upfront costs. But you can’t just plug these things in, you need to ensure the infrastructure is in place.”
At Xcel Energy, Seidman was responsible for driving data center adoption of demand-side energy efficiency rebates. One of the objectives of the program was to drive cooperation between facilities and IT departments.
Energy efficient IT equipment, efficient server power supplies, server virtualization software, or energy efficient UPS systems all cost more money upfront. Seidman said there is a payback over time, but companies don’t always analyze the total cost of ownership. So utilities step in to encourage implementing more efficient equipment.
“Energy efficient rebate money is available, it’s up to the owners to pursue it,” Seidman said. “Data center operators are risk averse people, and trying something new takes additional time and work. A rebate can bring the costs down, but it takes more effort than a standard design. But people should know about their utility’s rebate programs. It’s available to them as a rate payer.”
Uptime Institute is proud to welcome Debbie Seidman to the team.
In this short video from Uptime Institute Symposium 2011, Chris Malone (Thermal Technologies Architect at Google) discusses the key data center best practices Google uses to drive high energy efficiency, and how to adopt those best practices to improve your own data center’s PUE.
Fix cooling first, it’s the biggest term in your PUE overhead and offers the biggest opportunity for improvement. Do that by managing air flow — separating hot and cold streams. Raise the temperature of the air coming into the rack to make it easier to use economizers.
Second, optimize power distribution scheme by minimizing conversions and using efficient UPS solutions.
Third, measure and improve. Google is currently reporting a 1.16 PUE, and the organization got there by measuring and constantly trying to improve. The typical enterprise data center is likely at a PUE around 2.0, which offers lots of room for improvement.
“These best practices are so simple that everybody should employ them and see good results,” Malone said.
Julius Neudorfer just wrote a great article on ASHRAE Technical Committee 9.9 expanding the recommended environmental envelope for server hardware equipment.
From the article at CTO Edge:
The details of the expanded temperature and humidity ranges are going to be released in the soon-to-be-published third edition of the ASHRAE datacom book, “Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments.”
According to Don Beaty, chair of the Publications Subcommittee of ASHRAE’s Technical Committee (TC) 9.9, Mission Critical Facilities, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment: The approach used by TC 9.9 for the first edition through to the present was to assemble a team of thermal engineers from the major commercial IT manufacturers to develop requirements. The first edition created a recommended temperature upper limit of 77 F (25 C), promoting the use of higher temperatures and endorsed by all of the IT manufacturers.
The second edition (2008) took considerable deliberation amongst the manufacturers and raised the recommended upper limit to 81 F (27 C). Both the first and second editions were groundbreaking (the first edition in unifying the industry and the second edition in enabling the potential to use economizers in many locations and applications).
Beaty will unveil the new expanded temperature ranges at the Data Center Dynamics conference in New York, March 10 2011.
Terry Altom, P.E., an Uptime Institute Professional Services consultant said data center managers who want to take advantage of the energy efficiencies gained by raising server inlet air temperatures will have their work cut out for them.
“You need to have a solid knowledge of all of the server equipment requirements in your data center. Talk to your vendor representatives, know the allowable and recommended ranges and how temperature impacts the server warranty.
“If you have an equipment failure while under warranty, and the manufacturers say the temperatures are out of line, they won’t honor the warranty,” Altom said. “Temperature recording would be a must — put data loggers all over the data center to know exactly what your temperatures are. If you have the manpower to do it manually. Or you can use a tool like Emerson Liebert’s Aperture that allows you to put thermometers inside the racks and record temperatures throughout the data center.”
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. 
