Putting the Green into IT.pdf

Putting the Green into IT an IT Management eBook contents] [ Putting the Green into IT This content was adapted from internet.com's ServerWatch, InternetNews and EnterpriseITPlanet Web sites, and EarthWeb's EnterpriseStorageForum Web site. Contributors: Drew Robb, Paul Rubens, Pedro Hernandez, Marty Foltyn, and Jennifer Zaino. 2 5 8 5 8 Greening Your Data Center Paul Rubens Server Disposal Goes Green Drew Robb 11 15 11 15 Putting the Green into IT, An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. Green Is Hot For Storage Managers Marty Foltyn How Green Is Your Storage Jennifer Zaino 1 [ Putting the Green into IT ] Putting the Green into IT L et's just say for the sake of argument that your business is running at or near peak efficiency, your current business model is on or above target, and the organization is running smoothly. Even in this perfect scenario, the need to continue to push for improvements will persist and when it comes to IT, regardless of how small or insignificant a possible enhancement may seem, the effects are going to be compounded many times over. So let's take a look at a few easy ways for us IT professionals to push for a greener, more energyefficient work place. show that environmentally friendly businesses also raise employee retention and productivity rates. Office Space Let's start with implementing an effective and easy-toestablish, company-wide policy. First, have all employees configure their monitors to turn off after 20 minutes of inactivity, configure the hard drives to turn off after 30 minutes of inactivity, and the desktop computers or laptops to go into standby or sleep mode after 70 minutes of inactivity (this gives you 10 whole minutes to get back from lunch or that hour-long meeting). Next, purchase Smart Plug Strips for devices such as printers, monitors, calculators, or typewriters that do not need to have power reach them unless they are being used. These plugstrips cost about $10 to $20 each and they can reduce the Jupiterimages carbon output of your organization by up to 290 pounds each per year. Multiply that by each office or cubicle and you can get an idea of how much pollution and energy your business will For most businesses there are many changes their IT department can easily make to move in a more efficient, or green, direction. Saving energy on electricity-guzzling items such as monitors, computers, office lighting, and server farms is easy and always a costeffective method of reducing that dreaded carbon signature. The savings on the energy costs alone stack up quickly, and can be supplemented by possible incentives, environmental conservation, and a positive image. Studies Saving energy on electricity-guzzling items such as monitors, computers, office lighting, and server farms is easy and always a cost-effective method of reducing that dreaded carbon signature. “ ” 2 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ reduce by this simple investment. Putting the Green into IT ] Finally, install motion-detecting light switches wherever possible. Replacing wall switches with automatic motion detectors is an extremely effective way to cut pollution and energy costs from indoor lighting. This common sense approach to dealing with energy costs has other added benefits as well, such as sheer convenience and sleek appearance to employees, customers, and other visitors. Keeping the lights off when they're not in use can also extend the life of the bulb and reduce unwanted heat while keeping an average of 265 pounds of carbon per office out of the air each year. Installing a thermostat with a built-in timer to allow for higher temperature settings during off-peak hours when servers are not likely to overheat would be the safest approach. Also, having a rigorous maintenance schedule for the HVAC unit responsible for the server room space is also critical. These system filters, duct work, and monitoring systems should be kept in perfect working order at all times. And please, remember to keep the server room doors shut. The Data Center Now that we took care of the low hanging fruit in our offices, let's see what we can do in the computer room. While saving energy and reducing cost for the server farms, computer racks and other IT related apparatus may not be as effortless as clicking a button or even swapping out a light switch, it can be a enormous place to cut down on your overall carbon signature. And for anyone who didn't see the "Al Gore documentary," this is a good thing. Next are your servers themselves. All of the top processor manufacturers including Intel, AMD, IBM, and Sun Microsystems, are now focusing much of their resources into designing and building new energy-efficient processors and all are sponsors of the initiative known as The Green Grid, a consortium of technology companies Most businesses focused on energy efficient datacencannot afford to go ter power management. “ around upgrading their servers for the sake of preventing a few hundred pounds of carbon from escaping into the atmosphere each year. Most businesses cannot afford to go around upgrading their servers for the sake of preventing a few hundred pounds of carbon from escaping into the atmosphere each year. This method of conservation, however, should be at the top of your list when phasing out obsolete equipment. Since the top two issues for server farm efficiency are power management and cooling, let's start with the HVAC unit that you have keeping temperatures cool. Typically these are huge, redundant, energy-wasting beasts. The good news is these beasts can be tamed. So how do we improve cooling efficiency without compromising reliability? ” We start by setting the server room thermostat to a comfortable 75 degrees Fahrenheit or 24 degrees for all you folks measuring in Celsius. The recommended operating range for most business class servers is 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit (20° to 30°C) so there are some considerations to keeping the temperature setting at or near the environmental threshold due to increased temperatures in the server room during business hours. 3 And while we're speaking of obsolete equipment, every one of those computers, laptops, servers and even that Blackberry, PDA and mobile phone in your pocket contains heavy metals including lead and mercury which damage both the environment and human health. These devices continue to multiply exponentially with an estimated 130,000 computers packed into landfills each day with poisons that seep into our waterways and then into plants, fish and animals. And in case no one is paying attention, that's the stuff we all need to live. You can help by following the guidelines set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. If saving the world from climate change and toxins isn't incentive enough, then talk to your superiors about the one thing that corporations can relate to, and that's money. An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report in August detailing what's in store energy-wise for data centers in the next few years. According to the report, data centers consumed about 60 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006, roughly 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption. Of this, federal servers and data centers account for approximately 6 billion kWh (or 10 percent), at a total electricity cost of about $450 million per year, a press release summarizing the highlights said. The energy consumption of data centers (and servers) has doubled in the past five years and is expected to almost double again in the next five years. The report estimates it will reach close to 100 billion kWh. In other words, about $7.4 billion will be spent annually on power come 2011. Taking steps to conserve energy should be appealing enough to the corporate kings for the simple fact that you will not only appeal to your increasingly eco-savvy customer base and help your business to gear up for changes in the regulatory wind, but you'll also save money in the present. You can also mention that taking diligent measures now is sure to keep environmental and corporate watchdogs, various consumers groups, and the bloodthirsty media from centering your business in their crosshairs. You've all heard it before and the truth is that if we all did our part to help conserve energy and reduce pollution, we would all be better off in a multitude of ways. Just for starters, we would see reduced energy costs and a cleaner and healthier place to live and work for all. I 4 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] Greening Your Data Center by Paul Rubens The writing has been on the wall for some time. tions, and costing $2.7 billion - about the gross national product of an entire country like Zambia or Nepal. Unless data centers go green, energy costs could soon spiral out of control, according to Rakesh Kumar, a vice president at Gartner. In a report titled "Why 'Going Green' Will Become Essential for Data Centers" he says that because space is limited, many organizations are deploying highdensity systems that require considerably more power and cooling than last generation hardware. Add to that the rising global energy prices, and the proportion of IT budgets spent on energy could easily rise from 5 percent to 15 percent in five years. The mooted introduction of carbon taxes would make this proportion even higher. "When people look at the amount of energy being consumed and model energy prices, and think about risk manJupiterimages agement and energy supply, they should begin to get worried," Kumar said. E lectricity use in data centers is skyrocketing, sending corporate energy bills through the roof, creating environmental concerns and generating negative publicity for large corporations. Because IT budgets are limited and because governments in Europe and the United States may soon impose carbon taxes on wasteful data centers, something's got to give. Data centers are going to have to "go green." It's not as if no one saw this coming. The aggregate electricity use for servers actually doubled between 2000 and 2005, both in the U.S. and around the world as a whole, according to research conducted by Jonathan Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University. In the U.S. alone, servers in data centers accounted for 0.6 percent of total electricity usage in 2005. But that's only half the story. When you include the energy needed to get rid of the heat generated by these servers that figure doubles, so these data centers are responsible for about 1.2 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, equivalent to the output of about five 1000MW power sta- It's Not Easy Being Green Since most data centers historically have not been designed with the environment in mind, Kumar says more than 60 percent of the energy used for cooling Since most data centers historically have not been designed with the environment in mind, more than 60 percent of the energy used for cooling purposes is actually wasted. 5 “ ” An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT purposes is actually wasted. This is bad for the environment and reflects poorly on the organizations concerned - especially if, as increasingly is the case, they have corporate social responsibility commitments. And as a growing number of companies are adopting a "carbon neutral" policy (either out of genuine concern for the environment of for the positive PR this can produce) pressure from head office to reduce the carbon footprint of the data center, to help reduce overall carbon emissions, will become more intense. "There's no doubt that in the short term this problem is a financial one, but behind that there is the need of organizations to be seen to be green," he said. So what can be done to "green" the data center? "There is no one solution that will solve the problem this is a collective issue and it will require a raft of solutions," Kumar said. "You need to start by getting some metrics to understand the problem, because it's not going to go away," he said. The ideal solution is to start from the ground up by designing and building a new data center with energy efficiency in mind. This includes looking at the thermal properties of the building being constructed, the layout of the building for maximum cooling efficiency, and even the site of the building: Locating a new data center far from urban areas means that it might be more feasible to incorporate renewable energy sources such as wind turbines or solar panels into the design, for example. For more specific guidance, organizations can turn to standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. Vendor programs such as the Green Grid, an information network sponsored by AMD, IBM, HP and Sun, may also be a useful source of information. Assuming you're not quite ready to tear down your buildings and start again, there's still plenty you can do to reduce your electricity bill and reduce your carbon footprint. Perhaps the most effective action you can take is to reduce the number of servers in use at any one time. Each server you switch off can reduce your electricity bill by up to $500 per year (and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the air annually by perhaps 2000 pounds) directly, with about the same savings again realizable from reduced cooling requirements. It may be that you have servers that don't need to be on at all hours of the day and night, but it's more likely 6 Hearst’s Green Wireless ] W By Adam Stone hat's the only thing harder than building an environmentally friendly skyscraper? Rigging it up for wireless service. Opened in June 2006, the 46-story Hearst Tower in New York City boasts a range of "green" features. Activity sensors manage the lights. A rooftop collector reduces the amount of rainwater dumped into New York City sewers. A "diagrid" construction system reduces the need for vertical steel beams, and allows for more natural light. Thanks to MobileAccess Networks of Vienna, Va., the building also has about 856,000 square feet of wireless connectivity to provide coverage throughout the building. The network employs roughly eight access points on each floor. These in turn are managed and secured by four Cisco 4404 WLAN controllers, each of which can handle up to 100 APs. That part is easy. It's all those acres of glass that make the job tricky. As part of his environmental stance, architect Norman Foster made extensive use of natural light, and that created an aesthetic challenge for wireless designers looking for discreet locations to house access points. "You have an interior architecture that has a lot of glass -- it has a lot of very decorative areas," says MobileAccess CEO Cathy Zatloukal. "These are areas where you would not want to put a lot of active electronics in the ceiling, not because you would see them but because if you ever needed to do a maintenance action, it could be unsightly." This aesthetic concern directly informed the technological choices behind the project. First, MobileAccess technology fits snugly in a continued An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT continued that you can reduce the number of severs you need through virtualization. If you run corporate applications on separate servers, many may be only 10 to 20 percent utilized. Virtualization can dramatically cut the number of physical servers you need, while technology from companies such as VMWare can ensure that your virtual machines can be switched to higher-capacity physical machines during peak times. If you do retire some servers, it obviously makes sense to get rid of the older ones. This has the added benefit of increasing your overall server energy efficiency because newer multi-core chips can offer significant performance gains over older ones, whilst using almost 50 percent less power. Power management technologies such as Intel's Demand Based Switching can further reduce individual processor electricity consumption by up to 30 percent. Another area where you can make significant power savings is server power supplies themselves. That's because they can vary enormously in efficiency, especially under certain loads. Bad power supplies waste about half of the energy they consume (and thus the same again used by cooling systems to dissipate the heat generated by this wasted energy.) To compound this, power supplies running at a small fraction of their rated capacity are often even more inefficient. Look for power supplies with the 80 Plus certification - this means that the power supply will run at least 80 percent efficiency even when running at just 20 percent of its full capacity. Hearst’s Green Wireless telecommunications closet for discreet access. Moreover, the solution need not be tweaked very often, if all goes as planned. Zatloukal didn't want to create a solution that would require frequent re-working of infrastructure, with building owners having to alter the network each time wireless services went through changes and upgrades. ] Without a sufficiently robust solution, it would be easy to get locked in, to become a prisoner of every new change in the world of wireless offerings. "Say Sprint launches their WiMax network next year," Zatloukal says. "Now what happens? You have to deploy a whole new network." Zatloukal prefers what she calls a combined solution, one that integrates cellular and wireless infrastructure into a seamless whole. "If you do it right, these future services become just another blade plugged into the network," she says. As new protocols become available, it should be relatively easy to simply swap out access points, which are tucked away in wiring closets. By combining and "conditioning" cellular and WLAN signals, Zatloukal says, it becomes possible to extend a wireless network over substantial distances while maintaining signal integrity and leaving open the possibility of future uses. In the Hearst building, the present architecture should be able to easily incorporate a range of new mobility services, including location and asset tracking, voice over wireless LAN, advanced security and guest access, as such features evolve. I It's a Long Way to Tipperary The answer to the question "how do you make your data center greener" is similar to the traditional question from the Emerald Isle: "How do you get to Tipperary?" The answer in both cases is "If I were you I wouldn't start from here." What this means is that while you can certainly make savings by switching power supplies and switching off unused machines, the real solution requires a total rethinking of the data center. This ranges from the design of the buildings and cooling systems they contain, to the extensive use of virtualization to increase server utilization, all the way down to the use of energy efficient equipment, from power supplies to smart, power-managed processors. It's not a cheap undertaking, but one that may prove vital for the survival of the data center, the corporation, and perhaps - in a small way - even the planet. I 7 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] Server Disposal Goes Green by Drew Robb H istorically, IT equipment hasn't been environmentally friendly. Server vendors are only now working to change this. Getting the most publicity currently are multicore chips, in-rack cooling systems, and energy-efficient power supplies, which all help cut down on electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The IEEE and the EPA are no doubt driving this, as they develop benchmarks to show exactly how efficient servers are. But there are other environmental implications that IT managers must take into account, server disposal, being a prime example. Buying lots of new energy efficient gear is only an environmentally sound practice if one disposes of the old gear properly. "Compliance with environmental regulations and social responsibility are important," said Bob Houghton, president of Redemtech, a Columbus, Ohio, company that disposes of used data center gear. "You don't want to have to explain to shareholders or customers why the equipment is showing up in a dump in Pakistan or going to a blast furnace in Canada." Getting the Lead Out Bottle and can recycling programs have proven extremely effective. Not only has the percentage winding up in landfills dropped drastically, but roadsides are also no longer littered with discarded cans the way they were in the 1960s. Municipal toxic waste collection programs also help ensure that chemicals from batteries, motor oil, paint and household cleaners don't wind up in the ground water. Electronic waste, however, remains a growing concern. Cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) contain lead, and liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors contain mercury. Batteries and semiconductors contain cadmium. The flame retardant used in circuit boards is toxic, and Jupiterimages wires are coated with PVC insulation. This wasn't a big issue in the mainframe days, but it certainly is now. In the United States, nearly a billion cell phones were manufactured worldwide last year; the year before, 130,000 computers a day were trashed. Research firm Gartner said that it anticipates between 2006 and 2010, 925 million PCs and more than 46 million servers A large portion of U.S. and European waste is being sent to countries in Asia and Africa with lax environmental and employee safety regulations. 8 “ ” An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] will be sold, mostly replacing older equipment. As a result, more than 2 million tons of electronic waste is already going to U.S. landfills every year. Even worse is what happens overseas. A large portion of U.S. and European waste is being sent to countries in Asia and Africa with lax environmental and employee safety regulations. This transfers the toxic burden to third-world countries, despite agreements such as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal designed to prevent such actions. "Businesses need to figure out their policy and their plan for disposing of different types of equipment," said Gartner research vice president Frances O'Brien. "It is part of the ongoing cost of business, and they need to plan for it." cleanses, along with the tests showing the data was effectively erased. "The key to effective data management at the end of the lifecycle is the audit trail," said Houghton. "You should be able to say 'I took these 200 hard drives out of service, these are the serial numbers, and here is the record of sanitation.' That closes the information lifecycle on those devices." Handling the Hardware Once the data is cleansed, the next issue is what to do with the servers themselves. It is tempting to try to sell them and recover any residual value, but O'Brien said this is rarely cost-effective. "Some companies are skilled at selling the equipment, but more often than not they aren't," she says. "It involves a lot of labor and logistics." Data Destruction Creating a disposal plan starts with knowing what equipment the company owns and the data it contains. "Most customers have pretty good processes for procuring new equipment," said Daniel Ransdell, general manager of IBM Global Asset Recovery Services, which disposes of more than 22,000 machines weekly. "But when you ask them about end of lifecycle management, a lot of them look at you with a blank stare." A server asset management system must address both the hardware and the data. When a server is taken out of production, the data should be erased and the results fully documented. That evidence can then be given to auditors showing that the company is in compliance with regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA) in the United States or the Data Privacy Directive in the European Union. Disks can be degaussed or shredded, but server disposal specialists generally follow the U.S. Department of Defense's standard - three complete overwrites of the disk with random 0s and 1s. The overwriting software should then keep a record of all the disks it 9 Disks can be degaussed or shredded, but server disposal specialists generally follow the U.S. Department of Defense's standard ˜ three complete overwrites of the disk with random 0s and 1s. “ ” Instead, she recommends leaving it to a company that specializes in the area. If the equipment is leased, the vendor will simply take it away at the end of the lease period. If it is not leased, you can often get the company selling you the replacement equipment to take it off your hands. Jim O'Grady, director of Technology Value Solutions for Hewlett-Packard Financial Services is responsible for all of HP's lease returns, and as a result he also oversees the disposal of much non-HP, customer-owned equipment. "We find all the stuff that they were hiding in cubes, warehouses and closets," he said. "Then, we get them onto a refresh cycle that is more consistent and helps turn it into a value recovery proposition." There are also companies that focus strictly on equipment removal and disposal. Redemtech deals with a wide range of equipment, but others, such as Network Liquidators and Missouri-based PC Disposal, specialize in certain types of gear. Once an equipment disposal company receives the gear, it goes through a series of steps. First, it wipes An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] any data from the disk and reloads the operating system, if needed. Next, a series of tests is run on the equipment. If it is in good shape, it is repackaged and resold. "There is a worldwide market for data center equipment," said Houghton. "Some [hardware] that is no longer valuable in this country has value in developing countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East." Some equipment is more profitable to disassemble and sell as parts rather than as a whole unit. Anything remaining then goes through a recycling process to extract hazardous materials or precious metals, before sending the remainder to a landfill. Ransdell said that 15 percent of what IBM takes in is converted to parts, while less than 1 percent winds up in a landfill. When a company is on a regular equipment upgrade cycle, the old equipment may have some resale value. The primary concerns, however, are data security and environmental compliance. Gartner's O'Brien said that in most cases, you can expect to pay to have the equipment properly disposed of, but that is still less expensive than the fines and bad PR resulting from data breaches and toxic waste dumping. She advises IT directors visit the premises of any equipment disposal company they are planning to use to make sure they do the job properly. "You have to verify who you are doing business with is doing it in a safe environmental manner," said O'Brien. "Some companies haul the gear away but just dump it at the side of the road or in a landfill, and the customer then had to pay to get that equipment cleaned up." I 10 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] Green Is Hot for Storage Managers by Marty Foltyn T he concept of "green" may be cool, but pressure is heating up as storage and network managers around the world struggle with skyrocketing energy costs. IT departments can expect to spend half of their total budget on energy, according to an EPA draft report on server and data center efficiencies. One of the top issues for storage managers is to use energy more efficiently and meet environmental challenges while storing more data and retrieving it ever faster, according to Jonathan Storper, attorney and partner at Hanson Bridgett LLP. Evaluating and implementing new technologies that reduce energy use is a way for storage managers to contribute to business growth and the bottom line, and Storper said virtualization, tiered storage, and consolidation of data storage infrastructures are tools for increasing energy efficiency. In the last five years, companies have moved to consolidate data assets back to the data center and "manufacturers are being driven to come up with clever ways to store more data on a smaller footprint," said Tom Clark, member of the Storage Networking Industry Association board of directors and principal engineer at Brocade. "Combining technologies like server virtualization and storage virtualization can make significant reductions in energy costs." Server virtualization - running multiple instances of an operating system on a single platform - yields greater productivity, supports multiple applications, and reduces the need to purchase additional hardware. Storage virtualization can create infrastructures for information lifecycle management (ILM), where tiers of storage create different energy consumption points, reducing carbon footprints. Implementing virtualization can also pay off on the bottom line. California, Arizona, New York, and Vermont now have utilitybased rebate programs for nonresidential customers who implement virtualization and server consolidation projects, and other states are expected to follow. Jupiterimages Once assets are centralized, best practices such as poli- Evaluating and implementing new technologies that reduce energy use is a way for storage managers to contribute to business growth and the bottom line, and virtualization, tiered storage, and consolidation of data storage infrastructures are tools for increasing energy efficiency. “ ” 11 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. For Marriott, Green IT is Reality, Not Hype s one Marriott International technology leader told a crowded ballroom today at Storage Networking World in April going "green" isn't about environmentalism; it's about saving "green" -- money that is. [ Putting the Green into IT ] cy based-data administration and tiered storage can help maximize energy efficiency by migrating data from higher energy usage devices to lower ones, such as SATA, tape, or optical disk. Incorporating a tiered storage solution combines the potential for energy savings with the ability to meet business requirements of the data center, according to Mike Koclanes, chief strategy officer and senior vice president of sales and marketing at Plasmon. With new compliance and regulatory requirements comes the need to preserve for the long term increasing amounts of data that likely will not change over its preservation life. "A number of organizations do not have the luxury of adding more data center space," said Koclanes, "but still need to retain information like patient records, trade information, and client data." Archival solutions that incorporate technologies like Plasmon's UDO optical disk, he said, "offer the opportunity to meet both electronic data discovery requirements and green requirements by putting data that needs to be retained but less frequently accessed on more cost-effective platforms that meet retrieval requirements but require less space, cooling, and power." New technologies for file storage are also turning green, with a focus on reducing power requirements along with the total amount of storage required to contain corporate data. "We've been power efficient from day one in our architecture, and are now deploying energy-aware storage solutions for consolidating information from Windows, Unix, and Linux devices into one file storage environment," said Narayan Venkat, vice president of marketing at ONStor. ONStor clustered NAS solutions are part of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which sets aggressive new targets for energy-efficient computers and components, and promotes the adoption of energy-efficient computers and power management tools worldwide. ONStor's technologies, according to Venkat, save enterprises 50 percent on total cost of ownership, and deliver up to 95 percent power savings, 90 percent fewer devices to manage, and 90 percent space savings compared to traditional direct-attached and networked storage environments. An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. A By Judy Mottl "There's a statistic that about 29 percent of technology professionals believe that 'green IT' is just hype," Ed Goldman, vice president, technology strategy, for Marriott, told his standingroom-only audience. "I hope to lessen that number by sharing what we've been doing in the data center and throughout our computing environments." At Marriott, the IT team has not only jumped on the green bandwagon, it's driving it at an accelerated pace. Its efforts were noted by the organization being named one of the top 12 green firms in the country. The $13 billion dollar company, which employees 151,000 people as well as 120,000 franchise personnel, runs a "non for profit" IT organization, which charges user groups for everything from PCs to bandwidth in a "very cost-conscious" approach, Goldman explained. "When you can do 'green IT' on the grand scale like we operate, you can achieve substantial savings," said Goldman, noting that just swapping out old desktops for new think clients and energy-efficient hardware in data centers and network ops can be financially rewarding for a company. Marriott replaced 3,000 PC with thin clients, "turned the screws up" and virtualized about 40 percent of its server farms and 75 percent of its storage area networks. That virtualization effort saved 33 percent in future server costs, the IT leader said. continued 12 For Marriott… continued [ Putting the Green into IT ] A Global Perspective With many businesses now global, there is growing attention to worldwide laws and regulations on environmental issues. Current US policy may lag behind the rest of the world in energy efficiency regulations and incentive programs, but this will change within the next year or two. U.S. federal laws that took effect July 20 apply Energy Star version 4.0 ratings to desktop computers, integrated computer systems, notebook computers, tablet PCs, desktop derived servers and workstations. Midrange and large servers, thin clients/blade PCs, handhelds and PDAs are expected to be covered by January 2009. Congress is expected to take action on an EPA data center energy report in 2007, and has mandated that all federal agencies reduce their energy use by 3 percent per year, and 30 percent by 2015. "There are many different laws that cover environmental factors beyond the cost of energy, from recycling equipment safely to reducing carbon footprints," said Clark. "All this brings increasing pressure on data centers "to balance the business requirements driving exponential data center growth with cost and availability issues." E-waste is another green issue looming on the horizon. Recycling and proper disposal of computers and technological devices containing hazardous materials is critical, and legislators are responding to the challenge with laws that apply to both manufacture and disposal. One example is the EU directive on restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS), which requires the elimination of certain hazardous waste such as lead and mercury in computers and computer accessories sold or distributed within the EU. "Companies are now setting goals for new procurements with regard to RoHS compliance," said Koclanes, who said Plasmon's products conform to RoHS. RoHS takes on more importance for U.S. manufacturers and consumers with a recent extension that imposes a series of requirements on consumer electronics that are imported into the EU or otherwise placed on the EU market. And even companies with no international operations need to be aware of RoHS because of a California regulation that requires compliance with EU RoHS for products sold within the state. An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. In the data center, Marriott plugged in more efficient units to reduce cooling costs, as well as new flooring that directs airflow for maximum temperature efficiency. "Our data center is 20 years old and just a few years ago had 15-year-old boxers. We had to do more than replace them; we had to do a lot of work in the hot and cool aisles," he told the crowd. His team took down antiquated cooling towers on the data center building roof and replaced them with cheaper and more energy-efficient units. In the computing environment, the Marriott rolled out a standard desktop and laptop configuration to take advantage of built-in power options that allow IT to power down PCs when not in use. It replaced 10,000 laptops with new Energy Star–compliant models and will continue that effort as part of the company's threeyear device rollout program. "Where we're going is focused on saving both kinds of 'green.' We're continuing to move more applications into the online secured environment to save on data center costs. Right now 80 percent of our data center is virtualized," he said. The goal, according to Goldman, is a "gridlike" computing environment for users, and to make that happen he plans on using service-oriented architecture technology to include thirdparty applications to which users also need access. He's also working on reducing platforms from six down to three for standardization efficiencies. His team is working with a third-party provider to locate a recovery and development data center underground in a Pennsylvania cave. The ambient temperate of 50 to 60 degrees is perfect for heating and cooling purposes, and using remote online systems there is little labor or energy requirements, he explained. I 13 [ Moving Forward Putting the Green into IT ] Server, storage, and networking manufacturers are working together to measure energy efficiency in storage products. Industry organizations such as the Green Grid are advancing energy efficiency in data centers and computing ecosystems with industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics, and technologies that will improve overall data center energy efficiency. "The Green Grid focuses on the entire data center, while the SNIA's emphasis is on storage networking, including arrays and network components," said Clark. Many SNIA member companies are also members of the Green Grid, and SNIA "will be a great venue for developing industry-wide metrics that apply to storage networking," he said. "The availability of metrics that can be used to select equipment, design storage infra- structure, and keep costs under control will be very beneficial." Storper suggests that storage managers keep abreast of green storage issues in the three main areas that laws and regulations are focused: 1. Energy efficiency for servers and data systems. 2. Hazardous materials utilized in the production of computers and other technological devices. 3. Recycling and proper disposal of computers and technological devices containing hazardous materials. He also recommends that companies and individuals get ahead of the regulatory curve by considering voluntary action plans for energy efficiency, reduction of ewaste, and using less toxic materials in production. "Green law issues are here to stay," said Storper, "and there is no question that more regulations in this area will affect the storage and networking community." I 14 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] How Green Is Your Storage? by Jennifer Zaino I f 2006 was the year of the energy-efficient server movement, 2007 has been the same to storage platforms. A couple of weeks ago, HP announced new storage array technology designed to cut data center power and cooling costs by 50 percent, and IBM's Project Green is putting a billion dollars toward increasing energy efficiency across the data center. Meanwhile, Hitachi Data Systems is touting efforts such as its intelligent virtual storage controllers and Dynamic Provisioning software for improving utilization and saving power. Pillar Data Systems, the storage vendor funded by Larry Ellison's venture capital fund, has its own take on what's wrong with today's storage environment in terms of efficiency - and how to fix it. With the explosion in data only increasing, fixing it is going to become a priority for companies that want to lower costs, reduce complexity, improve utilization, and ensure performance doesn't suffer. Pillar's argument is that power and cooling make up only half of the green story. Physical space consumption is equally critical to storage efficiency, given the cost and expansion issues around data center space. With the acceleration of the ILM trend - in which companies design a storage architecture and infrastructure to handle different type of information, and to manage 15 that information with respect to its importance and value to the organization, appropriately migrating data from one platform to another as it ages or becomes less critical to present business requirements - individual storage devices have proliferated to meet the needs of each lifecycle stage. And these all consume space, power, and generate heat, and have to be cooled to let the equipment work efficiently. A Modular Storage Platform "ILM is a good notion in terms of reducing the cost of managing information and delivering the right level of performance and application of data, but it has also caused companies to buy special-purpose equipment to meet these requirements, and those consume space and power," says Russ Kennedy, senior director of marketing and strategy at Pillar. Jupiterimages Pillar's answer is to give organizations a modular storage platform that could handle all the different protocols to support their ILM needs. With unified storage (NAS and SAN), and multiple technologies (FC, SATA, fixed content) on one platform, companies could have a single system to consolidate different applications and needs across varying tiers of storage, establishing different performance levels for the different applications and data, it argues. "So you could serve up and manage tier-one applications like mission-critical database applications on the An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Putting the Green into IT ] same platform as is used for data protection, archive, backup, and different secondary storage requirements, without suffering performance penalties," Kennedy says. "People have to understand how to reduce the cost of managing information in an environment that's going to continue to grow. But you have to still deliver on your service level requirements, on application availability." Pillar says IT pros really are starting to care about the efficient use of space, cooling and power, with nearly 50 percent of respondents they recently surveyed saying these all matter a great deal in their storage purchases. In fact, he says, the market is driving more innovation among vendors, including Pillar's own sleepy drive technology, due in 2008, that spins or slows down drives to consume less power during times of inactivity. It's basically the same technology individuals have access to on their own desktops or laptops, but until now, "no one has let you power down pieces of a storage array and do so via policies, via active management of information," Kennedy says. "The technology is there because the individual drives have that capability. It just has not been applied yet." capacity drives in the same-size enclosures, and new motherboards and server boards within its arrays that have almost double the performance and half the power consumption of today's server components, it says. At the same time, Pillar is a participant in The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, as well as in the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). Along with other industry players, it's trying to drive some consistent and industry-wide measurements for measuring storage platforms' efficiency. Its own take on that is found in its EQ (Efficiency Quotient), which basically is the result of taking the utilized capacity of data used on a storage platform, times the performance of that platform, divided by the power and space consumption of that particular platform, and which Pillar says can be applied to any type of storage. "Associations are a bit of challenge in getting consistency and consensus in moving forward," says Kennedy, but he's confident progress will be made. "The consumer and IT market will drive it." I This content was adapted from internet.com's ServerWatch, InternetNews and EnterpriseITPlanet Web sites, and EarthWeb's EnterpriseStorageForum Web site. Contributors: Drew Robb, Paul Rubens, Pedro Hernandez, Marty Foltyn, and Jennifer Zaino. The Green Grid Pillar also is working on its own implementation of the thin provisioning concept, due before the end of the year in Version 3 of its platform, as well as higher 16 An Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2009, Jupitermedia Corp.