What happens downstream?: Scott Mattoon's blog

The Demand Response Research Center (DRRC) at LBNL provides a system that enables electric utility customers to automate energy load shedding during peak demand periods.  It's called Demand Response Automation Server (DRAS).  Basically, it takes a feed from the utility whose payload includes data for: Event Pending, Price levels, and Price Schedule.  The system can interface with environmental management systems to turn off lights and raise set points when curtailment events and price jumps occur.  It could also be used in combination with systems management software to automate data center load shedding, but has yet to be adopted for this purpose.   With advanced virtualization and automation technologies, there is ultimately no reason that workloads could not be migrated according to a demand / cost equation.

The barrier to DRAS adoption in the data center has been a mix of scant awareness, legacy perceptions, and a shortage of creative thinking.  But all that is changing.  DRRC is on a campaign now to build awareness among all eligible facilities and IT managers about the potential for DRAS.   And the old saw that says power cycling a computer reduces it's MTBF is just that: old.  Today's systems, for the most part, are engineered to withstand daily power cycles well beyond the typical useful life of a computer.  With the benefit of this knowledge and the findings of a Harris Interactive Poll commissioned by Sun, IT and facilities managers are inducing employees to turn off their computers when not in use.  But we still need more creative thinking.

While the traditional facilities folks appear to be abundantly creative with power saving measures (in a DRAS webinar last month, Aimee McKane from LBNL, cited one example where a bakery participating in DRAS bought more bread pans to avoid running the dishwasher during peak demand periods,) creative applications of DRAS in the data center are in short supply.  

Still, the conversations are happening, as Walter Bays demonstrated on his blog today.  If a courageous (and creative) company were to combine Dynamic Infrastructure technology from Sun and DRAS from DRRC they could begin to realize the savings possible in Walter's energy utopia.  Services from Sun and others specializing in Demand Response systems like EnerNoc, can help these first mover companies develop strategies for capitalizing on these huge energy saving opportunities.

News of LBNL's server energy use report, released last week refers to the study as recent, yet the most recent actual data used in the study is from 02005.

The purpose of the report, "to accurately characterize electricity used by servers in the U.S. and the world so that public debate can proceed based on accurate data," was fulfilled. The report also established a process for aggregating relevant data and attribution of power use to specific server models. Furthermore, Koomey and other LBNL scientists helped to dispel the myth that office use of IT equipment approaches 13-15% of total U.S. energy consumption, and they reinforce some of the widely held assumptions related to energy use in IT: 60-80% of energy supplied to IT equipment in data centers is consumed by servers, and 50% of total data center energy use goes to cooling. Most importantly, the study established that the growth in energy demand generated by servers doubled over the period 02000 - 02005, and, at current growth rates we can expect to see a 40% increase by 02010.

However, IT shops operating in today's business climate should be careful to not assign too much value to the report in their efforts to tackle infrastructure efficiency and carbon neutrality. Important innovation and policy change has occurred since Koomey's report was compiled, which are of much greater relevance to these eco and efficiency initiatives. For example,

• Sun released the UltraSPARC T1 processor, which powers our Cool Threads servers - the only servers eligible for an efficiency incentive rebate from energy utility Pacific Gas & Electric.
• Water cooled solutions to the chronic challenge of cooling data center are now becoming economically attractive.
• Congress has enacted HR 5646 specifically promoting the use of energy efficient servers, which has already accelerated the pace of innovation in server efficiency.

I knew I could count on Aaron to put it in the proper perspective relative to Sun, but other recent coverage of the study (Green Wombat, ars technica and Treehugger) omitted the relevance of recent innovations and the leadership role that Sun is playing in the advancement of data center efficiency.

Hats off to Koomey and his colleagues for establishing a comprehensive, peer reviewed baseline and methodology for aggregating the data and putting server energy use into a proper context. I am hopeful that Sun and other industry leaders will be able to apply the gains in understanding toward the challenge of solving contemporary business challenges.