Have you ever had one of those MacGuyver moments? You know – you have a problem to solve and a collection of items at your disposal, and if you use can figure out how to use those items, you can save the day.

Earlier this year Intel, HP, IBM, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Emerson Network Power & Wunderlich-Malec collaborated on a California Energy Commissions sponsored MacGuyver-ish project call Advanced Cooling Environment (ACE) to solve an issue that many data centers face – overcooling their data centers beyond the needs of the servers and other IT equipment running inside of the facility.  You see, IT equipment is designed to run within a temperature envelope. If the air coming into the server is warmer than the envelope, you run the risk of overheating. If the air coming into the server is colder than the envelope, you are spending too much money on cooling the air, which does nothing other than needlessly increase the cost of operating the data center and reduces the energy efficiency as well.

The team surveyed the items at its disposal and determined that they could link data from the front panel temperature sensors (server instrumentation) on the servers to the control systems of the computer room air handlers (CRAHs – essentially air conditioners) via standard data center management communication protocol.   The CRAHs could then dynamically adjust the speed of the fans and the temperature of the air to the requirements of the servers. The results: servers received the appropriate temperature air, power costs for cooling went down and the energy efficiency of the data center went up.  Problem solved….and they didn’t even use a paper clip or shoestring.  The real beauty of the project is that all of the items used are commercially available today for you to instrument your data center and improve the energy efficiency of your operation.

To learn more about ACE at the upcoming Intel Developer Conference in San Francisco, check out the “ECOS003 Advanced Cooling Environment (ACE) Technology: Controlling Data Center Cooling with Servers” or stop by the ACE demo in the Eco-Tech Zone of the Tech Showcase.

I took a look at my calendar this morning and was surprised to see that Fall Intel Developer Forum 2009 is nearly upon us - just a scant 30 days until the doors of the Moscone Center open up to innovators, customers, press and the public to learn about how technology innovation is changing how everyone works, lives and plays.

IDF is going to be big for the Intel Server Group - along with our industry fellow travelers, we will put on over 30 classes & panels and more than 20 demos in the technology showcase that will explore the future direction of server products and technologies.  To build awareness and attendance, we will be trying something new by using the Server Room to give you a preview of server related IDF content taking a goal of having 30 tech experts deliver 30 blogs between today and the start of IDF on September 22.

I hope that you find this series of blogs to be both informative and helpful in planning you use of time at IDF.  If things go as planned, you should see 7 or 8 blogs a weeks for four weeks.  Look for blogs tagged with "idf_2009" and "idf_30in30" over the course of the next month, and send any comments along that you might have if you get the chance.

Looking forward to seeing you in SFO!

Dave

Intel and Emulex will be hosting a webinar on June 3 ant 9am PDT to discuss how Emulex adapters and Intel Xeon 5500 processor based servers can help manage server sprawl, lower capital & operating costs and enable deployment of larger virtual servers & increase the number of VMs per server.  During the webcast the speakers will discuss new technologies, share benchmark results and provide tips and tricks on how to supercharge your virtual server.

Event Synopsis:

Challenging economic conditions are driving requirements to optimize performance and reduce costs in the data center. Since a majority of IT costs are related to the number of servers deployed, it’s imperative that servers are selected which provide scalable performance, automated energy efficiency and superior virtualization ratios. The time is right to leverage new technologies from Emulex® and Intel® to drive critical IT initiatives.

The webcast registration link can be found at http://www.emulex.com/company/events/webcasts.html and selecting “Next-Generation Server Technologies from Intel and Emulex”.

kW of Power.  BTU of Cooling. Square feet of Datacenter Space.  What do they have in common?

Power, Cooling and Space are resources – more specifically, constrained resources that are available to support the delivery of compute capability. As datacenter managers look at their projected compute capacity in the coming years, it becomes clear that these scarce resources will eventually run out – in fact it’s estimated that 70% will run out of power or cooling capacity in the next two years. Adding power or cooling capacity is expensive and there likely isn’t any budget for that, especially in today’s economic environment. If there isn’t budget for adding resources, there surely isn’t funding to build additional datacenter space. So how does IT get past this impasse?

By making more efficient use of the constrained resources with Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500.

In the launch announcements and blogs over the course of the last week, you have heard about the cool features and improvements delivered by the Xeon® 5500.   9X the performance of older single core products.  Significantly reduced power consumption at all points of the load line between idle and max utilization.  Interesting nuggets by themselves, but when taken in the context of the datacenter, they are powerful capabilities that IT can use to address their resource constraint issues.  Let’s look as two scenarios at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Scenario 1: Same Compute, Less Resources – Assuming an installed base of single core servers, you can replace the legacy servers with approximately 89% fewer Xeon® 5500 servers – fewer servers take up less datacenter space, consume less power and require less cooling – in fact, now you have headroom to add servers to meet growing compute requirements moving forward.

Scenario 2; More Compute, Same Resources – For those that that crave all of the compute capacity they can get their hands on, deploying Xeon® 5500 servers would increase compute capacity by 9X in the same power, cooling and floor space constraints (again, assuming a single core installed base) and consume approximately 18% less power than the legacy servers.

The kicker is that although it seems somewhat counterintuitive, when you run the numbers it actually makes financial sense to refresh old servers with Xeon® 5500 servers.  We estimate that the power and OS savings associated with Scenario 1 can pay off the investment in as little as 8 months, and those OPEX savings continue for the life of the server.

For both scenarios, Xeon® 5500 also delivers improved energy efficiency with Integrated Power Gates and Automated Lower Power States, which automatically and dynamically adjusts power and performance to the specific needs of the work being done. Throw in system level instrumentation capabilities to report and cap system power, and you can further reduce your operating costs by adjusting the HVAC output to the specific heat output of the servers in real time.

Power, cooling and space resources aren’t likely to start growing on trees, but Xeon® 5500 is a key to enabling a more efficiency datacenter,  to getting more out of every kilowatt, BTU and square foot that are available and to driving Datacenter Efficiency.

So are you among the approximately 40% of data center managers that are projected to run out of power or cooling capacity in the next 12-24¹ months and need new options to deal with ever increasing demand for compute capacity? In my discussions with IT professionals, it’s clear that a “business as usual” approach to the design and operation of the data center is no longer sufficient.

In the coming weeks, you will see a number of bloggers write about using Intel Xeon Processor 5500 (Nehalem) servers to refresh the data center – a concept first discussed on this site back in late 2007 - to more efficiently use limited power, cooling and floor space resources in the data center. Today, I want to touch on another means of addressing these issues at hand - using instrumentation as a source of data and controls to better monitor and manage the data center.

Individual pieces of the data & control picture have steadily come into the mainstream via instrumentation of individual server components. Think processors that allow power & frequency to be modulated. Power Supplies that report system level power consumption. Memory that reports its temperature. Fans that can scale RPMs and power to the actual air flow requirements. Really cool capabilities, but these somewhat fragmented sources of data and control don’t provide the capability to manage at the rack or data center level. The challenge at hand is to take all of these individual points of component instrumentation and develop system and data center level capabilities – what I call extended instrumentation – to provide unique and innovative tools that data center managers need.

One of the more exciting extended instrumentation capabilities that has evolved is power capping. Power limits or caps defined and communicated by console management software are enforced by system level functionality, enabling the ability to limit system power in a dynamic fashion. Applications of the use of power capping range from increasing performance density to temporarily shedding compute load to ride through power or thermal events in the datacenter to enabling power based dynamic resource balancing. Power Capping gives IT managers a tool to squeeze additional compute performance out of their existing data center – making more efficient use of their limited and valuable power, cooling and floor space resources to lower costs, improve availability and extend the life of the current data center.

Are you evaluating this capability? Are you using it already? I’m interested in discussing your thoughts on instrumentation and power capping.

1. http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/26/Datacenters-heading-for-cash-crunch_1.html

Energy consumption and energy efficiency issues are becoming more prevalent in the datacenter. This short podcast hosted by the Register provides some insight on topics that IT manager should consider to improve energy efficient performance in the datacenter.

http://www.podtech.net/home/5116/energy-consumption-in-the-data-center