BM Seer Facts & Questions from an Anonymous Sun Source

Configs used for SPECpower_ssj

Thursday May 08, 2008

Yet another SPECpower_ssj of a "different" configuration:

  • tiny memory: ONLY 4GB!
  • low GHZ CPU: only 2.83GHz QC
  • tiny config: only 1 chip!
Why do the servers that vendors publish on SPECpower_ssj2008 look so different from servers used on other benchmarks? See, this is the problem with NOT adding perf/watt on every benchmark as published. What can the industry learn from low-GHz small-memory configurations?

I a previous posting I mentioned that HP configurations used in other benchmarks have reasonable-sized memory and high-GHz CPUs, I'll dig up the same on IBM, or you can just look at the www.spec.org website yourself:
64GB: HP DL580 G5 (4 quad-core Xeon 2.933GHz)
64GB: HP DL585 G2 (4 dual-core Opteron 3GHz)
32GB: HP DL380 G5 (2 quad-core Xeon 2.66GHz)
32GB: HP DL380 (2 quad-core Xeon 3GHz)
32GB: HP BL685c (4 dual-core Opteron 3GHz)
32GB: HP BL460c (2 quad-core Xeon 3GHz)
for more see: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/hp_dl580_g5_4_qc

It is so easy to measure watts on benchmarks that one publishes, Sun does it all of the time. Why other vendors not disclose their measured system wattages" Sun has shown them on UltraSPARC for YEARS!:
2008: UltraSPARC T2+
2007: UltraSPARC T2
2005: UltraSPARC T1 & T2000 blogs with power-performance
...and Sun is starting to show them on X64.

Disclosure statement:

IBM System x3200 M2 server achieved a Performance to Power Ratio of 1,054 overall ssj_ops/watt (one-chip quad-core Intel Xeon Processor X3360 (2.83GHz, 1 chip, 4 cores, 4 cores per chip, 2x6MB L2 cache, and 1333 MHz front-side bus), 4GB of DDR2 PC2-5300 FBD memory, IBM JavaTM 6 Runtime Environment, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition SP1. SPEC and the SPECpower are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. All results from www.spec.org as of 5/08/08.

Note: I got this info from the IBM website, as the report isn't up on SPEC.org yet. We'll all have to wait to find out measured watts @100% util on the 1-chip with only 4GB (!) configuration mentioned above. IBM didn't mention this in any of the press info or blogs.

Also how come no one jumps on IBM for lack of proper SPEC copyright information? IBM bloggers write:

    SPEC and the SPEC benchmark names are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

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VMmark performance & watt/performance

Wednesday Apr 30, 2008

Sun continues to show watts on a wide variety of benchmarks, first on UltraSPARC T1, T2, T2 Plus benchmarks on all kinds of SPEC benchmarks that don't require it! ...and Sun extends this to X64 on VMmark benchmark. Other vendors need to do the same!

I didn't know about this benchmark until I saw it here (personally I hope Sun continues to show Watt/performance data on everything, hint hint for the internal people): http://blogs.sun.com/ontherecord/entry/ibm_sun_fire_x4450_tops

4-chip 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 64GB, standard BIOS: VMmark = 830watts

The Sun Fire X4450 server, running VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 software, posted one of the best scores among all 16 core results – 12.23 @ 8 tiles, with an average power consumption of only 830W measured during the steady state of the benchmark.

Sun used a 64GB configuration, which makes sense because virtualisation is driving up memory sizes. Table with the current 4-socket 16-core results which all use 64GB of memory (4/28/08)

System Sk/Cr/Th Clock/CPU ESX watts Tiles Score
IBM x3850 M2 4/16/16 2.93 Xeon7350 3.5.0 ? 9 13.16
Sun Fire X4450 4/16/16 2.93 Xeon7350 3.5.0 830w 8 12.23
Dell PE R900 4/16/16 2.93 Xeon7350 3.5.0 1325w
watt calc
8 12.23
HP DL580 G5 4/16/16 2.93 Xeon7350 3.0.2 1086w
watt calc
8 11.54
More details and results at: http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html

The Sun wattage measured on 2 hours benchmark steady state: Watts: min=788watt, max=850watts, avg=830watts.

In reality with the same CPU, and memory configuration, I really don't expect actual measured to be much different, but it would help if HP and Dell actually published measured watts.

Watt calc:
Dell's public power information on CPU & memory configurations used in their VMmark submission is from the Dell's Datacenter Capacity Planner found on this web site http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pedge/topics/en/config_calculator?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz) This shows a power consumption estimate of 1325watts using "Typical SPEC workload" (it is even higher with "Scientific" workload).

Watt calc:
HP's only public power information on CPU & memory configurations used in their VMmark submission is from the HP power calculator (http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp). The tool produced power requirement of 1086watts at 115V with 95% CPU utilisation.

...but you get very different watts when you change the frequency, memory-size, and an very different power benchmark (can't compare SPEC to non-SPEC benchmarks).

4-chip 1.86GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 16GB hacked BIOS: SPECpower_ssj2008 = 387 watts at 100% target load

Reading "HP ProLiant DL580 G5 server posts highest 4P result on the new SPECpower_ssj2008(TM) benchmark" brochure leaves one quite confused. HP does not specify processor GHz, Memory size, or the use of non-standard BIOS - why?. Take note SPEC members: you guys need to force that be clearly specified in the future, or you will just encourage confusion.

Also why doesn't HP benchmark four 2.93GHz QC with 64GB of memory with default (normal) BIOS settings? So the industry can see the wattage difference vs 1.86GHz QC with 16GB memory. The 2.93GHz QC 4-chip results (with 32GB to 64GB with normal BIOS) exist on performance benchmarks they should also exist on power-performance benchmarks.

I'd suggest SPEC require better disclosure of information and clearly show effects of CPU GHz and memory size. MEMORY SIZE makes a HUGE difference in watts. Again I plea to add power measurements and power-performance metrics to all performance benchmarks at full utilisation.

SPEC Disclosure statement

SPECpower_ssj2008: HP Proliant DL580 G5 (4-chip QC Xeon L7345 1.86GHz, 16GB), 546 overall ssj_ops/watt, 359523 ssj_ops and 387 watt at 100% target load, 255512 ssj_ops and 359 watt at 70% target load, and 71409 ssj_ops and 294 watt at 20% target load. SPEC, SPECpower reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 12/11/07.

Issues?
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/specpower_ssj2008_power_benchmark_needs
http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/hp_dl580_g5_4_qc

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HP DL580 G5 4 QC Xeon 2.93GHz real watts and lots of 'em

Wednesday Jan 09, 2008

It is so easy to measure you wonder why some vendors hide their wattages. Sun as US T2:
2007: UltraSPARC T2
2005: UltraSPARC T1 & T2000 blogs with power-performance

The only thing I can think of is that the numbers are embarrassing in real configurations.

I a previous posting I mentioned that HP configurations used in other benchmarks have reasonable sized memory:
64GB: HP DL580 G5 (4 quad-core Xeon 2.933GHz)
64GB: HP DL585 G2 (4 dual-core Opteron 3GHz)
32GB: HP DL380 G5 (2 quad-core Xeon 2.66GHz)
32GB: HP DL380 (2 quad-core Xeon 3GHz)
32GB: HP BL685c (4 dual-core Opteron 3GHz)
32GB: HP BL460c (2 quad-core Xeon 3GHz)

Looking around at HP's own power calculators we find that an HP DL580 G5 with four QC Xeon 2.93GHz Tigerton and 64 GB memory should draw 1,072watts but how much does is actually draw? We carefully measured one in our lab running database workloads at 60-80% util at just above 800watts. Fair, NO gaming. It is so easy to do this right, try it yourself.

    Note:HP configures 1200w supplies with their 4 Xeon QC DL580 G5. Everyone knows that even with efficient power supplies you design near the rating so that you keep the costs down and keep the efficiency up. An engineer would be a bit daft to put a 1200w supply on a server they expect to draw only 300watts! :)

HP DL580 G5 power consumption from HP Power Calculator system configured with 4 x2.93GHz processors, redundant PSU, 16 x 4GB DIMMs, two GbE, four 146GB SAS disks, two PCI-E Dual-Port FC, 80% utilisation on 1/8/07: http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp

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Memory size matters most in watts

Tuesday Jan 08, 2008

Memory size is one of the most important configuration details you need to know when comparing measured server watts. This has been true for a long time.

In 2006 I dug into the actual watts used by 2-socket Woodcrest Xeon servers.

Woodcrest:
330 watts 2-socket 8GB
430 watts 2-socket 16GB
510 watts 2-socket 32GB

Now we have even lower-watt CPUs that have a lot more power management to reduce CPU watts, which means in general that memory size will matter even more in the future.

Another fact is that all of the servers I see using virtualization are being configured with larger and larger memory (32GB to 128GB for 2-socket servers!).

This is why I'm not overly impressed with wattage measured on small-memory configurations like 8GB or 16GB.

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Google authors make case for energy-proportional computing

Thursday Jan 03, 2008

Luiz André Barroso and Urs Hölzle of Google have written an article called: The Case for Energy-Proportional Computing. You can find the IEEE Computing article here.

They correctly point out that memory (and disk) are a key factor in power used. Too bad that new SPECpower benchmark only favors tiny-memory configurations, and vendors do not publish measured watts on real-size memory configurations.

They miss the fact that low utilization wastes more power than energy-proportional designs will get them, as we've pointed out here

Disclosure statement

SPECpower_ssj2008. SPEC, SPECpower reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. See www.spec.org.

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SPECpower_ssj2008 power-benchmark needs work

Tuesday Dec 18, 2007

A new SPEC benchmark called SPECpower_ssj2008 was announced last week.. I've taken a little time to look at the new results and benchmark rules.

Quite simply, I don't know why SPEC didn't add power measurement to every benchmark. It is quite easy to add rules that puts one SUT (system under test) on a power meter and a few rules to accurately measure power. That should have been done months ago, it is so much easier than creating a new benchmark.

So why didn't SPEC do this? I have no idea. I can only guess some vendors to show off their power-management software at different utilisation levels. As we've talked about here for a very long time, running servers at low-utilisation (below 50% utilisation) is the worst way in the world to waste power... Even with the most extreme power-saving HW/SW.

With a different benchmark only for power-benchmarking it is really possible to game results. Did anyone?

  • HP submitted a SPECpower_ssj2008 on the DL 580 G5 QC Xeon. Cool now we can see what the DL580 G5 does. But HP PICKED 1.86GHz Xeon L7345 for SPECpower_ssj and a very DIFFERENT processor (2.9GHz Xeon) for performance on SPECweb2005, well at least they are not confusing things...
  • HP's DL 580 G5 SPECpower_ssj2008 documentation does NOT EVEN mention processor GHz or type! Why?
  • The only SPECpower_ssj2008 results were on 4GB, 8GB, 16GB configs. Memory is a huge power draw. So why configure such small systems for power? Why do these vendors use 32GB and 64GB configs on performance benchmarks?
  • The HP DL580 G5 used one 60GB 5400 RPM SATA drive. My laptop has better :)
  • HP's DL580 G5 Power supplies used are 2x1200 watts. The 1.86GHz Xeon DL580 G5 draws 387 watts at 100% on SPECpower_ssj2008. Since all vendors know that you use power supplies near their rating for best energy efficiency, why does HP not sell properly-size power supplies? Maybe because HP typically expects to sell configurations that are different than SPECpower_ssj2008 DL580 configs?
  • Is running at low utilisation efficient? SIMPLE answer NO! Let's look at SPECpower-ssj2008 HP DL580 G5. Comparing 70% utilisation with 20% utilisation we see that one wastes 3 TIMES more watts for the same amount of work at 20% utilization than at 70% utilization!!! 3 = round(2.93) = (294w/71409ssj_ops) / (359w/255512ssj_ops)
  • SPECpower_ssj allows default BIOS settings to be changed to make better results by turning off prefetch (also see SPECjbb & prefetch) - yeah, right, every customer does that :( get real.

So what serves the industry? Using the same configurations that you benchmark for performance and power-performance.

Sun does this and has been doing this for years:
2007: UltraSPARC T2
2005: UltraSPARC T1 & T2000 blogs with power-performance

The only thing I really can take away from SPECpower_ssj2008 is that running at low utilization is silly, read carefully, and avoid silly configurations.

Disclosure statement

SPECpower_ssj2008: HP Proliant DL160 G5 (2-chip QC Xeon E5450 3GHz), 698 overall ssj_ops/watt. SPECpower_ssj2008:HP Proliant DL580 G5 (4-chip QC Xeon L7345 1.86GHz), 546 overall ssj_ops/watt, 359523 ssj_ops and 387 watt at 100% target load, 255512 ssj_ops and 359 watt at 70% target load, and 71409 ssj_ops and 294 watt at 20% target load. SPECpower_ssj2008: Colfax CX2266-N2 (2-chip AMD Opteron DC 2216HE 2.4GHz), 203 overall ssj_ops/watt. SPEC, SPECpower reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 12/11/07. HP ProLiant DL580 G5 (16 cores, 4 chips) 30261 SPECweb2005. SPEC, SPECweb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of Oct 8, 2007. HP DL580 power consumption from HP Power Calculator system configured with 4 x2.93GHz processors, redundant PSU, 16 x 4GB DIMMs, 8 x 36GB SAS drives,1 x PCI card, 80% utilisation on 9/10/07: http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp HP DL385G2 power consumption from HP Power Calculator for system configured with 2 x AMD 2220 2.8GHz processors, redundant PSU, 8 x 4GB DIMMs, 2 x HBAs and 2 x 146GB SAS drives, 80% utilisation on 6/4/07: http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp

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bad power & price comparisons abound in articles and tech analyst reports

Wednesday Sep 26, 2007

I'm seeing lots of bad comparisons abound in articles and tech analyst reports around pricing and power.

I see them talking about system price by only referring to processor/cores, and then...

  • not specifying memory size, or using lowest cost slow memory size
  • not configuring reasonable size fast memory
  • not specifying GHz (or talking Speed of at one GHz and cost of another)

I see them talking about importance of system wattage by only referring to processor TDP (Thermal Design Power of the chip, yes ignoring the whole system, making people assume the rest is all the same, which it isn't), and then...

  • not specifying system wattage
  • not configuring reasonable size fast memory
  • not specifying wattage on actual performance benchmark runs.

included above are hints on how they can fix them.

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Most worldwide feel big changes needed...

Tuesday Sep 25, 2007

The BBC reports that "Large majorities in many countries now believe human activity is causing global warming, a BBC World Service poll suggests."

It goes on to say, "A sizeable majority of people agreed that major steps needed to be taken soon to address global warming."

More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7010522.stm

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AMD, Intel, TDP, ACP...way too much on CPU, what about the system?

Friday Sep 14, 2007

I know AMD & Intel love to focus on the power used by CPUs in their high-stakes battle to gain server chip dominance. Both started talking TDP (Thermal Design Power) and getting people to judge systems based on TDP.

...wait a minute, buying a system based on the power of a CPU is a bit of misdirection unless the CPU is most of the power. This isn't the case any more. So CPU TDP should be ignored, unless you are designing your own product and are just buying CPUs.

First of all system power is what datacenters care about, so Intel and AMD should be talking about system power in realistic memory configurations. Memory draws lots of power these days.

Second,TDP was created so the manufactures of servers manufacturers would know much power the chip consumes in worst-case maximum-power cases so they could design power supplies, cooling, etc. That just isn't useful to datacenter managers.

AMD's marketing only slightly improved the situation by telling customers of SYSTEMS to look at the processor's ACP (Average CPU Power).

Two problems:

  • Focus on CPU power to avoid talking system power, but system power is what one needs to know, in average case to estimate electrical bills.
  • Focus on average CPU power not server maximums that datacenters need to design cooling on (see: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/watts_a_matter_with_their.

ACP of a CPU ...hmmm, do you know what a pain it is to just measure a CPU. AMD in their whitepaper , has to isolate the power consumed by the processor and that consumed by the motherboard -- this requires motherboard modifications and special instrumented server platforms!. way to much work to get a marketing message, all we want is server power on a variety of memory configuations and full-speed CPUs and actually running at good datacenter utilizations!

WARNING: Everyone loves to talk performance of high-GHZ CPUs and low-power of low-GHz CPUs, so watch for the confusing marketing and much worse "bait&switch." Also watts per core is useless marketing, it is the watt/perf for a system that counts. Also any vendor trying to sell power-efficiency on high-performance systems should report watt/performance along with their world record performance on that system.

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Saving the planet one datacenter at a time

Tuesday Sep 11, 2007

Huge reductions can be made in datacenters with existing technology by just changing a few datacenter practices & metrics!

Things that make a HUGE difference (factors = big percentages):

  • Turn off un-used servers, figure out how to turn more off
  • Drive up utilisation up to 60% utilisation on all servers (this can decrease power by a factor of THREE TIMES (even if you have the latest power throttling chip features!)
  • If you need virtualisation software to drive up the utilization get it, but make sure it is very efficient no overhead virtualisation like Solaris zones. Remember CPU overhead means your are burning watts, or at least measure the CPU overhead on your virtualisation software to pick the most efficient alternative.
  • Put the datacenters utility bill in the IT department! Motivate people!
  • ...spread the word, as this knowlege virally spreads larger and larger number of people get this happening in their datacenters!
Remember if you save watts at the server you save watts to cool it, and also save the inefficiences of getting the electricity from the powerplant to the datacenter! http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/power_from_utility_to_servers

Things that make some Difference (percentages):

  • datacenter layout (5-10%)
  • More efficient airflow & air conditioning (maybe 10-20%)
  • tune your application performance, the faster it goes the more efficiently it goes
What to measure:
  • server-watt/perf (just like $/perf), perf/watt is misleading!
  • judge servers by full configuration power utilisation
  • compare servers of the same memory size (more important that processor count)
  • IT budget improvements (HW, SW, & Utility bills).

    more details at: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/eco_actual_fancy_power_saving

    ...everything above this was above the line!


    Below the line.

    What NOT to measure:

    • Do NOT judge which server to buy by the TDP of the processor --- it is the whole server st*pid :)
    • Do NOT judge which server to buy by the in-lab measurements of the CPU-only --- it is the whole server st*pid :)
    • perf/cpu-watt is misleading, use server-watt/perf (just like $/perf)
    • Do NOT assume perf/watt is server metric, you must ask!
    • Do NOT compare servers at 30% utilization, that is like judging which commuter car to buy by looking at vendor stats that compare overloaded SUV uses less gas going up a 20% road grade?!? -- you need to look at the full-memory config/CPU MHz you are buying at the good utilization 60% or more that you should be running your datacenter at!
    • Do NOT judge which server to buy by looking at performance of fastest GHz CPUs at full utilization & full memory and then judging energy efficiency of low-GHz CPUs at 30% utilization and small memory. All benchmarks should have measured server watt/perf on every SPEC & TPC benchmark.

    I think the above hints are much more useful than the following story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/09/08/tech.green.credentials.ap/

    final note:
    Now go home and buy some CFLs, and turn off your lights when not in use...

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  • Disingenuous Dell and more Xeon & Opteron system wattages

    Wednesday Aug 22, 2007

    Disingenuous Dell vs. HP comparison? Dell has a power comparison with measured data, cool. But they try to compare three 16GB HP Opteron systems versus two Dell Xeon 32GB systems. Quite the easy way to it appear that Dell draws less power, by comparing a total of 64GB for HP and 48GB for Dell. Source:
    http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/dell2socket_vs_hp4socket_vmware.pdf

    • 32GB 4-chip Dual-core 2.8GHz Opteron = 730 watts
    • 16GB 2-chip Quad-core 2.66GHz Xeon = 445 watts
    Really memory is taking lots more than CPUs, I think memory size is more important than chip count. Prove me wrong, with data please!

    Regardless, we have a few more wattage datapoints.

    If Dell compared systems with the same size memories I would not have used the term "disingenuous."

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    Eco Actual fancy power saving features on

    Wednesday Aug 22, 2007

    I could hear the cries in the blogosphere as I posted the entry earlier today... "these graphs are based on what?"

    ...actually there were based on a real system, but I can't share the data. I searched and found the following public data(only 8 months old):
    http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2892

    they have graphs that show:

    • workload1: two 2.6GHz Opt 2218 8GB DDR2 that go from 260watts(100% util) down to 165 watts (20% util)
    • workload2: two 2.6GHz Opt 2218 8GB DDR2 that go from 275watts(100% util) down to 190 watts (20% util)
    • workload1: two 3GHz Xeon 5150 8GB FB-DIMMS that go from 325watts(100% util) down to 250 watts (20% util)
    • workload2: two 3GHz Xeon 5150 8GB FB-DIMMS that go from 325watts(100% util) down to 270 watts (20% util)
    ...Not hard to imagine going from 400watts with the latest power savings to 200 watts at 0% util, is it?

    They did make a mistake by graphing perf/watt instead of watt/perf. looking at their graphs we can make a table of the watt/perf:

    watt/performance workload1="DVD Store", 8GB servers
    %Util3 GHz Xeon
    2chip woodcrest
    2.6GHz Opteron
    2chip 2218
    20%37 watt/perf33 watt/perf
    40%22 watt/perf18 watt/perf
    60%14 watt/perf13 watt/perf
    80%11 watt/perf11 watt/perf
    100% 9 watt/perf11 watt/perf

    Not a huge difference between systems, but a huge difference between the same system running at 20% util vs. 60% util for example. In either case it is 2.6x more wasteful running at 20% util vs. 60% util. That means you use 2.6x more watts!!!

    This data is actually worse than what I showed.

    Get eco smart! Sure, turn on the power saving features. But if you really want save $ and be a hero you must put effort into driving up utilisation.

    I've been talking about single servers, but this is not about going one by one through all of your servers, any datacenter has RACKS and RACKS of servers, which should make it easier to drive up the utilisation en masse.

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    Eco smart Utilization" watt/performance graphs help your $/perf

    Wednesday Aug 22, 2007

    You will be mislead if you look at graphs of watts that do not show "zero watts" to "maximum watts". The graph below makes it appear that you start at max watts and go down all the way as your utilisation decreases.

    Below is a graph that is more like what modern servers can do with the latest power saving features.

    Poor graphs to make changes look bigger than they are.

    Finding where to save money actually requires a different graph. One needs to look at "watts per unit of work" which equates to "watts per performance". Looking at the graph below it now becomes quit quite clear how to save watts, you need to have your server at over 50% utilization even if you have the latest power-saving technology. This was discussed yesterday in this blog.

    You can see in this graph that five servers running at 10% utilisation uses 1200 watts/unit-of-work versus one server running at 50% utilisation only uses 400 watts/unit-of-work. The 10% case requires 3 times more power to do the same amount of work!

    Get eco smart, drive up your utilisation through good policy, or the correct use of consolidation and/or virtualisation.

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    Better policy is critical for Eco, watts good? ...virtualize

    Tuesday Aug 21, 2007

    Truly being Eco is about looking at the right things and highlighting them in a way so you can make real judgments that really make a difference.

    A fellow Sun employee gave me a great analogy, if you want to save power switch off the light! Obvious. But too often we try to use fancy technology to save energy when proper policy is more important.

    If you leave incandescent lights on all day, switching to CFL (compact florescent lights = better technology) can save energy. but if you "switch it off during the daylight hours" (better policy) you can save a lot more.

    How does this apply to datacenters? Everyone needs to change their policies to operate servers at not an insane 20-30% utilisation but to 50% or more.

    There are all kinds of virtualisation technologies that can be used if for some reason you can't simply drive up the load. Take two servers at 25% and consolidate them on to one server running at 50% utilization and "turn the other one off".

    There are lots of virtualisation technologies VMware, Xen, Solaris 10 Zones,... Another thing to consider is that Solaris 10 zones have no overhead for CPU, IO, and network. Overheads reduced performance but they also require one to burn more CPU watts. But use whatever technology suits your needs.

    ...more on using fancy datacenter power saving technology tomorrow...

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    Quick way to save datacenter energy costs

    Thursday Jun 14, 2007

    While this strikes me as very cool, it also bothers me a bit because we can all take action now, that could make a bigger difference

      "Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), has been joined by most of the biggest names in the computing industry, including Microsoft, IBM, HP, AMD, Dell and Sun, among others. The expressed aim is to make all computers being produced 90% efficient by 2010." ITwire: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12869/1023/
    Datacenter managers can save money even before all of this technology, and it is because they can change their policies.

    New Mantra:
    "I'm going to run my servers at 10% higher utilisation and turn off some old servers" (or even a higher % goal)

    or...
    "I'm going to consolidate and turn off some old servers"

    See the math...
    http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/the_total_tyranny_of_low
    http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/total_tyranny_of_low_utilization

    Then go home and buy some CFLs, and turn off your lights when not in use... :)

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