Archive for Bladesystems_insight_conference
May 13, 2008 at 11:15 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference, The Green Grid
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com and http://www.thegreengrid.org
The Green Grid presentation was quite cool, it was talking about what The Green Grid is working on and included some interesting comments, such as how power utilization is broken down in the average data center:
- IT equipment 57%
- Cooling equipment 34%
- Power distribution losses 7%
- Lighting/other 2%
There was also discussion of how to work out Data Center Productivity:
Useful work produced by data center/resource consumed producing the work=Data Center Productivity - I wonder what scores different data centers/organizations might get?
There was also the five ways to save server power:
- Identify legacy servers/servers not in use
- Enable power saving features
- Right size server farms
- Power down servers not in use
- Decommissions old servers no longer in use.
May 13, 2008 at 10:01 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference, environment
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com and http://www.intel.com
The Intel presentation was quite interesting in the respect that it highlighted the developments in energy efficient IT and how progress is being made in this area.
There was a mention of the power usage of a typical user, I’ve summarized this:
- 1015w - standard configuration pc with CRT screen
- 938w - if we swap the CRT for a TFT
- 655w - if we switch to a newer more energy efficiency processors
- 229w - if we use the newer more processors and enable power management
It illustrates how much of a difference can be made with small changes to system configuration, for example enabling power management, or even switching the pc off.
There was a great example showing two configurations:
2004
2007
As a result we have:
- Reduced floor space by 83%
- Reduced the energy cost by $53,000
- Uses 87% less power
There was also a presentation from Easystreet which talked about PUE, a very interesting concept which I hadn’t heard about. It’s a way of establishing how efficient your data center is. In summary, it’s:
- Total facility power/IT Equipment power=PUE
- The objective should e 1.0, the typical data center is 2.0
May 13, 2008 at 9:23 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
The power panel was interesting in the respect that the panel talking about the drivers for energy efficient with some dialog with the end users to illustrate this. Are we not looking at energy efficiency due to energy/cooling constraints rather than to be ‘green’ or to aid corporate social responsibility.
There was also discussion that IT needs to communicate more with the facilities, to understand the current power/cooling constraints, so that we can act accordingly.
The key challenge is cooling, that we can’t get the cooling in the volume we need to the systems that need it - the pockets of hot air issue. At the same time the best practices, the tools need to be used to enable better data center management and energy efficiency, a thermal assesment of the data center, the air flow etc.
May 13, 2008 at 7:42 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
The blade server vendor panel was an interesting conversation where there was talk about the need for more energy efficiency in the data center. It was interesting to hear the different vendors’ viewpoint on what technologies they’re developing, what tools and best practices they are using to help customers with their power and cooling requirements. I wont go into the vendor specific comments as each vendor have their own solution or way to help with this.
The general agreement seemed to be that there is a need to focus on power in the data center as a whole, to focus on not just the server, but the network, the SAN and everything else which is absolutely right. Attacking power and cooling from the data center viewpoint, of looking at the big or small changes you can take to improve efficiency or reduce utilization has to be the way forward. For example, using SAN storage to replace those disk shelf arrays, looking consolidating server/application roles where possible and even hardware refresh to replace those legacy systems that might be providing a very poor performance per watt ratio.
There was also a general agreement that virtualization can be a real enabler to achieving the business need as well as assisting with the constraints in terms of data center power and cooling. That we can use virtualization as a platform to deliver service, to deliver that virtual machine for accounts, rather than deploying more physical machines. An interesting panel with interesting conversations and questions, very cool.
May 13, 2008 at 7:28 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
The next keynote discussed how Pental had benefited from blade technology, transforming their technology to be much more on demand and resilient, meeting the business needs.
It was interesting to hear that the business was having similar issues in terms of performance and reliability from their legacy systems. As an example it was mentioned that email was delayed due to constraints with the anti virus software, as well as downtime to service with some of their application systems.
Using a mixture of blade technology (with HP’s C Class blades) and virtualization they managed to transform their infrastructure, getting rid of their legacy systems, improving performance by 80% and improving reliability. Great examples of using the technology as an enabler to your business, to being more on demand more able to respond to changes in business need, very, very cool.
May 13, 2008 at 7:14 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
Very cool, a keynote from Jonathan Kelly, the Director of Strategic Technology Development for the National Football League.It was a great keynote and I enjoyed listening to it. It’s always interesting to hear what issues people are having. The keynote mentioned how the NFL uses IBM BladeCenter technologies (including their BladeCenter S enclosures) as part of a range of technologies and best practices to meet their business needs.
The keynote included how virtualization is being used to achieve the functionality and flexibility required by the different stakeholders within the NFL, mentioning using appropriate technology for the task.
I particularly enjoyed the discussion about how defining the virtual machine and which platforms (rackmount or blade) are appropriate for the different server roles in the business.
The most valuable tool was virtualization, the key challenges were with finding the right skilled staff, licensing and the pre-existing barriers between production and development environments.
May 13, 2008 at 3:34 am · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
I’m listening to the keynote speeches at the Blade Systems Insight conferences, it’s very cool. Will summarize them and discuss the questions in the next few minutes.
Key topics I expect to be discussed are virtualization and blade servers, how we can achieve more using the technology as an enabler.
May 13, 2008 at 3:20 am · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
I’m registered as Bladewatch at the Blade Systems Insight event, if you see me and want to have a chat, feel free to get in touch!
It will be interesting to see what topics the different keynotes cover, what they talk about within the blade space.
May 12, 2008 at 6:17 pm · Filed under Apple type things, Bladesystems_insight_conference
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/
The PowerBook has been left at home, despite it’s new hard drive and the extra memory, I wanted something light to carry about and my ThinkPad X60 is half the weight and size.
There is a problem however, it’s this Windows operating system. Oh it works fine, with the IBM type tools it’s actually not bad, but it’s the little things, syncing my Nokia started getting complicated. The other thing is Internet Explorer went on its holidays this morning so back to Firefox.
Anyway, I’ve had breakfast and am preparing myself to play golf at the bladesystems insight conference.
May 11, 2008 at 8:03 pm · Filed under Bladesystems_insight_conference, blades
http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/ and http://www.flysilverjet.com
So was very pleased with my SilverJet flight, I arrived at Newark airport and as I type this I am waiting in the Continental lounge waiting for my flight to Tuscon.
A few thoughts I had about the conference:
- How do we maintain the momentum, the message about blade servers as a platform - I was having a chat with someone who was asking “what the big deal is?”
- How do the vendors see the blade server evolving - I wonder if there is not still a need for the blade light? Particularly if we think of convergence of SAN and network, not only can I virtualize the LANS, I can put storage through the same connection as well.
- How to encourage the green message in the right way - I was having a chat the other day with a colleage (I’m writing it up this evening), he was saying the green thing is all rubbish, it wasn’t until I re-branded the green message. I’m not saying switch everything off, I’m saying when you’re deploying that infrastructure have you thought of the low voltage version, do your development servers need dual power supplies or RAID? Could we not think of linking the green message to business enablement - by making slight changes you gain return on investment and a possible reduction in your operational costs.
- Maintain the virtualization message - do I seem harsh when I comment that I want everything either virtualized, in grid, Citrix or web based? We need to continue to evolve the platform, make what services we can offer more dynamic, easier to support and add capacity to meet the business need.
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