If you would like to learn about a new power supply technology for reducing server energy usage there is an upcoming IDF session that may interest you. The title of the session is “Cold Redundancy – A New Power Supply Technology for Reducing System Energy Usage”. As you can probably guess from the title, we are calling this new technology “Cold Redundancy”. There has been a lot of research done to figure out ways of reducing the input power of a server when it is in an idle state. After all, an idle server is just a very expensive space heater sitting there doing nothing other than consuming energy and producing lots of heat. This is important because some utilization studies have shown that servers can sit idle for a considerable percentage of the time. So anything that reduces the input power of an idle system will have a very significant effect on the overall yearly energy usage - and ultimately save on operating costs.

This presentation will describe, and demonstrate, the cold redundancy technology we have been working on here at Intel® to reduce system idle power.

One great thing about this new technology is that everything can be kept inside the power supply. No changes to the system software will be needed so the only additional requirement to implement this would be using a power supply that has cold redundancy technology inside it. This will make it easy to integrate into systems in the future because it could become a “plug ‘n play” power supply upgrade option.

Since cold redundancy is a power supply technology, I’ll cover some basic concepts to get things started.

There are two different types of power supplies called redundant and non-redundant which are used in computers.

A non-redundant supply has only a single module which provides all the power needed to keep the system operating. This means there is no backup so if the power supply fails, the system shuts down until the supply is replaced. Desktop computers typically have a non-redundant supply in order to keep the costs low.

Most servers on the other hand, have a redundant type of power supply. That means there are extra (redundant) power supplies in the power subsystem so if one supply fails the server will continue working normally. This is for applications where getting maximum system uptime and reliability are worth the additional cost of putting in the redundant supplies. In a case like this though, the redundant supplies are not really needed until one of the supplies actually fails. The drawback with having the redundant supplies turned on until needed is that the supplies still use a lot of power which increases the system operating costs.

Cold redundancy reduces system idle input power by putting these redundant supplies into an almost off (standby) condition or “cold redundancy” mode, as we call it here at Intel®. Because of how cold redundancy works, the more redundant supplies there are in a power subsystem the more effective it is and the more energy that can be saved. The general idea of powering down redundant supplies is not new, but the problem has always been how to turn the supplies back on fast enough so that system operation is not affected in case of a failure. We have come up with a solution to this problem by developing cold redundancy technology. Cold redundancy has the ability to put the redundant supplies into a standby state to save energy at system idle while still being able to turn them back on fast enough in case of a failure to keep the system operating normally. It really is the best of both worlds, saving energy while maintaining the same system uptime and reliability as conventional redundancy where all the power supplies are running all the time.

If you are interested in learning more, the session number is ETMS001 and will be presented at the fall Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on September 22^nd at 10:15 AM in room 2006 of the Moscone Center. This session will be a combination of lecture and live demonstrations. We decided that having a couple of demos during the lecture would help make the concept more understandable and the presentation more interesting as well. One thing to keep in mind about this session is that we will not be discussing theoretical possibilities or projects planned years in the future but real products that will be available soon. The live demonstrations use a production ready cold redundancy enabled power subsystem that is being integrated into a product Intel® plans to release in the 4^th quarter of this year. It doesn’t get much more real than that.

The demonstrations will show how the control logic works and what power and energy savings are actually possible. This will be done by measuring the AC input power to a four module power subsystem and running the same output load profile with and without cold redundancy enabled. By comparing the two input power graphs the advantages of implementing this new technology can be immediately seen and quantified. I think you will find this to be a very interesting and informative session but then I’m probably biased just a little bit. J

Hope to see you there,

Andy

Presenters:

Viktor Vogman – Power Architect

Andrew Watts – Test Automation

Intel's RK Hiremane & Sun's David Caplan discuss Xeon 5500 blade servers virtualization ROI

Join experts from Intel, Sun Microsystems, and Ziff Davis Enterprise on August 20 for an informative eSeminar, where you will learn:

• How Sun’s Network Express Module technology works
• How easy it is to achieve high availability and near-instant failover
• How to reduce network cabling by a factor of 10:1
• How to simplify network and storage management.

We created a server refresh ROI estimator tool to help IT managers make sense of the significant OpEx savings they can achieve by making targeted investments in new server hardware. In my previous blog when we introduced the ROI tool back in April 2009, I talked about the capabilities of the estimator and the benefits of server refresh.  In the first 3 months, we have had nearly 4,000 users of the ROI estimator and of those users almost 800 users have printed reports to share with others in their organizations. The feedback we have received from users has been very encouraging. 

• CIO for major US hospital: “This would help my IT staff justify the financial value of the technology investment they are proposing. This has been a barrier to freeing up capital internally”
• IT Manager for major US bank: “I used to have regular funding for technology refresh projects. It was a given for my budget.  However, with the increased constraints on capital, I now have to justify this type of spending”
• Technology Sales Consultant: “This tool helped me work better with my customer to gain a deeper understanding of their server environment and allowed us to jointly identify high ROI investments to improve their infrastructure”

I have also heard many constructive suggestions for improvement.  As a result, we have continued to evolve the tool based on feedback from users.

Tool Training – How to Use: We heard that the benefits of using the Savings Refresh Estimator spanned many functional roles, making us realize that the use models for this type of tool and what users were looking for would vary dramatically from person to person.  This has challenged us to look at ways to streamline the user interface (something we continue to work on) for different users and analyses.  In the interim, we are in the process of developing a video training guide to help users understand how to use the tool to get maximum benefit.  We have a pdf training guide today that can help you get started now.

PowerPoint Output: What would we do without powerpiont? J We received feedback on the desire to make the output of this tool more sharable inside IT organizations and with business partners in a powerpoint format as a way to communicate the opportunity and benefits for server refresh investment.  So, we now have a powerpoint output option in the reports section that breaks down the benefits of server refresh for a variety of audiences from executive staff to facilities to finance.  Everyone inside your business can benefit from server refresh and now you can show them how.

Secure Analysis: We received feedback that many users wanted access off-line either as a way to use in meetings when connectivity was challenged or to protect internal data from exposure online.  We now have the ability for you to run the tool on your laptop to support these use models.

More … More … More Functionality. We heard lots of requests and ideas to expand the level of functionality and analysis capabilities.  We have to balance scope, complexity Keep these requests coming.  The following changes are incorporated into today’s estimator.

• Virtualization to Virtualization Refresh Scenario – now included
• Virtualization Loading: Can edit and change VM/server new and old
• Custom Performance Data – enter you own performance data to better model what you expect to see in your biz
• Depreciation Cycle – no longer fixed at 4yrs .. can adjust
• Memory Sizing: information added to allow user analysis
• Processor Description: allows user to cross reference data to other more familiar terminology.

Accuracy / Approach: We have also heard some feedback challenging us on different ways to look at refresh scenarios, especially as we learn more about how people are looking at and using virtualization and sizing their environments after refresh.  Sizing is a very customer-centric and application specific task that is difficult to model in a one-sized fits all.  We won’t be able to model every sizing situation, but are planning some future enhancements intended to help you self-evaluate. 

I want to thank everyone in the community for their input on this tool and helping us to deliver a better product over time.  Keep the ideas coming.  Feel free to respond with comments here.

Chris

twitter: @chris_p_intel

•          Arizona Public Service Company

•          Austin  Energy

•          Avista

•          BC Hydro (Vancouver, BC)

•          Bonneville Power Administration

•          Energy Trust of Oregon

•          Idaho Power

•          Los Angeles Department of Water & Power

•          Manitoba Hydro

•          Northeast Utilities

•          Oncor Energy

•          Pacific Gas and Electric

•          Sacramento Muni Utility District

•          San Diego Gas and Electric

•          Seattle City Light

•          Silicon Valley Power

•          Snohomish PUD

•          Southern California Edison

In addition to the savings that can be achieved just by consolidating multiple older servers with newer Xeon® 5500 (Nehalem) servers, getting additional cash back from the utility companies can make the decision to refresh your server infrastructure that much more lucrative.

Let me know if you are aware of other rebate or incentive programs offered by your utility company (U.S. or another country).

Competition, Comparison, Self Improvement, Benchmarking.

We do them in business. We do them in our careers. We do them in our leisure. ... and if you are like me you like to watch them on TV or live as well. Who is watching Lance Armstrong? or Tiger Woods? or their favorite sports team compete regularly.

IT professionals are no different.  Today, one of the business emhpasis points for IT is energy efficiency.  Now there is a way for you to quickly compare your own IT organization against itself and others.  This IT self-assessment tool takes about 2-3 minutes to complete and will answer these three questions

1. How efficient is your server infrastructure today?
2. How do you compare to your peers?
3. How much more efficient could you be?

The Community Window: Server Efficiency is a tool hosted on the Intel Premier IT Professionals website (http://ipip.intel.com) where registration is free and so is the information and best practices shared by other IT professionals throughout the industry.  Join and conduct your Server Efficiency self assessment today.   Chris

Yes.

I had the recent opportunity to work on this case study published jointly by Intel, Dell and Motion Computing that reviewed how information technology investment by Correctional Health Services Corporation in Puerto Rico drove a transformation of their health services in their prison system.

There are tons of case studies out in market and web but to me this one stood out in it's dramatic impacts from improved efficiency of employees and workers at the prison, improved health care of inmates, the ability to meet minimum documentation standards, and a lowering of costs to manage the IT infrastructure.

If you read one case study this year .. this one is recommend.  Definitely a feel good story all around. http://www.intel.com/references/pdfs/Correctional_Health_casestudy_LRs.pdf

Chris

http://www.twitter.com/chris_p_intel

Today, I watched a video from Gartner where they shared insighs from their recent CIO survey and offered recommendations for 2H.  In the survey, about 1/2 the CIOs saw a drop in budget this year (no surprise there) and they reported the average budget was about 7% down.  However, Gartner also noted that moving forward, these CIO budgets appear stable.

Recommendations from Gartner to CIOs

1. Be Decisive - CIO Must Make Tough Decisions in the downturn (don't have time or resources for lengthy analysis)
2. Be Resourceful - Change the way you work .. to be more efficient (more with less mentality)
3. Prioritize - Do First Things First and Faster (accelerate the things that are important)
4. Focus on Greater Results (ROI, Benefits, payback, savings, productivity)

In my opinion, server refresh is ripe to capitalize on these Gartner reccomendations (boosting efficiency, must act to get benefits, and the benefits are big with estimated 8 month ROI when using then new Xeon 5500).  The good news is that with the server refresh estimator (www.intel.com/go/xeonestimator), you don't have to reinvent the wheel.  This tool helps you estimate the benefits of server refresh and helps you communicate those benefits to a variety of stakeholders in your organization including business heads, finance, facility managers, sr management and others. Getting everyone behind refresh is critical since server refresh affects everyone, and positively.

For Intel, proceeding with server refresh in 2H is worth $19M in savings http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3271

Waiting on Server Refresh Means Wasting Valuable Resources.

Chris (http://twitter.com/chris_p_intel)

The debate on how to best increase system capacity to accommodate growing applications has raged on for years; “scale up” with more CPU, memory, and I/O, or “scale out” with loosely connected systems.    Scaling out by adding networked systems to increase capacity has been a good economical solution for many IT managers because it allows them to grow by using less expensive, industry standard building blocks.  However, there are some notable exceptions to this line of thought.  One is that the class of applications that require shared memory and large database support are much better suited to run on a single, expandable system that scales up.  These are typically transaction processing, business intelligence and ERP solutions.   Until now, IT managers running applications that require scale-up systems larger than 4 or 8 CPUs have had limited platform choices and most were proprietary and expensive RISC-based servers.

The other problem with the scale out approach is the people, facilities, software and overhead costs and complexity of managing very large numbers of servers, which can grow to a point where the costs outweigh the performance and system cost benefits.  The industry solution to achieving better ROI has been to consolidate multiple scale-out servers onto single industry standard scale-up servers with virtualization solutions.  This is a good solution, but is limited by the number of application loads the IT manager feels comfortable placing on a single server, given the need to maintain peak performance and availability for each application.

Well, it looks like the scale-up, scale-out debate is about to take another turn.  In the server product update Intel gave on May 26th, they talked about new levels of system scalability and choice supported by the upcoming Nehalem-EX processor.  This processor will support systems that scale up to 8 sockets natively (shared memory, without any additional silicon), and up to 16 sockets and higher with node controllers from system manufactures that allow single systems to share memory beyond 8 sockets.   So far there are over 15 different designs from 8 OEMs that offer 8 socket or higher scalability.  But of course, for the class of application where scaling is important, socket count doesn’t tell the whole story of what’s needed for scalable performance.  Thread support, key for transaction processing and virtualization, scales at the rate of 16 threads per socket with 8 cores and Hyper Threading (2 threads per core).  That would be 128 threads for an 8-socket system, and 256 threads for 16 sockets.   And in order to keep those threads fed with data close to the CPU, each processor supports up to 24 MB of shared cache (1.5X current generation Xeon), and an impressive 16 memory slots per socket or 128 DIMMs on an 8-socket system.  In addition, the Scalable Memory Interconnect gives these systems 9 times the memory bandwidth of today’s top Xeon processor.  Finally, four QuickPath interconnect links per socket allow for high-bandwidth sharing of data across the system.

So the net of it is that the industry is going to see a broad selection of highly scalable, next-generation servers that significantly extend the economic advantage of industry standard scale-up solutions for business-critical, large database, and high-end virtualization/consolidation deployments.     I would expect these systems to give IT managers a very cost-effective alternative to the much more expensive and proprietary RISC-based servers they use today.

What are your thoughts?  Mike

Related Topics:

• NHM-EX Press Fact Sheet
• NHM-EX May 26th Press Briefing Video – condensed version
• IBM 8Socket Demo Video
• NHM-EX--A New Standard