Category Archives: Computing

Being Green Part III: Interesting Thoughts on Paper versus Cloud

March 4, 2011 – 3:36 pm by Don Douglas (CEO)

This is my third installment of “Being Green.” In it, I reference two fairly recent pieces of research to show how conflicting these reports can be. One illustrates the benefits of reducing paper and moving to digital services, while the other hits on the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions due to increased data center usage.

Helping to Reduce Paper

First the good, if 20% of us switched to electronic services, it would save more than: 151 million pounds of paper, avoiding the creation of nearly 1.5 million gallons of wastewater, save 1.8 million trees, eliminating the production of nearly 4 billion pounds of greenhouse gases and avoiding the use of nearly103 million of gallons of gasoline each year. Nice, right?

Yet even with these benefits, consider a counterpoint (though not an apples-to-apples comparison) below.

Cloud Update

The cloud is now getting attention from an unusual source. Greenpeace, in a recent report, links growth in the cloud to future sharp rises in greenhouse gas emissions and is calling on companies such as Facebook, Yahoo and Google to do more to help the environment. This report seems to lump data center services into the cloud. Though data centers represent just a small percentage of worldwide power consumption, Greenpeace estimates that the amount of power consumed by the world’s data centers and telecom networks will triple from 2007 to 2020.

So what do you think? Is a digital world really better for the environment or not?

These types of reports are often somewhat vague and leave readers pumped up one way or the other… until they read yet another piece of research with yet another perspective. The point is, nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems. And herein lies an example of unintended consequences—reports and statistics such as these don’t fully show how all variables are factored and what the offsets are on either side. Continued misinformation and confusion result.

My advice is to understand multiple perspectives, but tune out the noise and continue to focus on solutions that offer multifaceted benefits along with good ROI.

Posted in Business, Cloud, Green

Demand Response Helps ERCOT and CPS during Extreme Winter Weather

February 3, 2011 – 4:24 pm by Don Douglas (CEO)

 

This month offered our company a unique way to help out during the extreme cold that swept much of the nation in February.  As I have mentioned in my series of BLOGs on “Being Green,” we have tried to utilize a number of solutions to help lower our energy usage and deliver ROI to our company.  One of the programs I mentioned in a prior post was related to participating in our local demand response program.  Through this program, we curtail power usage by coming off the grid and generating our own power for a period of time.  While this is something we normally do during the summer months (when temperatures can reach into the 100s), we have never been asked to do this during the winter months before.

 Starting on February 2, we received notices from CPS (our local energy provider) that ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) was calling a “Power Emergency.”  In order to prevent blackouts, CPS asked everyone to shut off non-essential services and curtail usage.  They also began dropping circuits for 30-45 minute increments, classified as a rolling brownout.  The amount of power being shed in our area amounted to 7 percent of the Texas electric load, or about 70,000 customers that would be without power.  It’s our understanding that this problem was precipitated by the extremely cold temperatures, but exacerbated because a number of power plants in the state were currently offline for overhaul and maintenance.   

 After receiving this notice, we shut down non-essential systems and also switched over to our generator so that we could take additional load off of the grid.  Though these measures may be small, I was glad we were in a position to do something to improve the situation.  If your company is not currently participating in a demand response program, I highly recommend looking into it as there are important benefits for everyone involved.

Posted in Business, Green

Green Business Part II: The Data Center

November 30, 2010 – 1:53 pm by Don Douglas (CEO)

Earlier this year, I touched upon the topic of “Green Business” and offered many practical steps businesses can take to green up, and in many cases improve productivity.  As promised, I will now discuss some additional measures we are evaluating or undertaking in the data center.

Solar

We are currently evaluating a solar system which would help offset peak utilization. Solar energy systems are particularly beneficial during times of peak electrical demand when powering, heating and cooling is at its highest and most expensive (in most cities this occurs at the hottest time of the day normally in the late afternoon). Utilizing solar photovoltaics (PV) to provide a percentage of our electrical generation will reduce our electrical requirement from the utility. While this is useful, we are also designing the system to provide shading for the rooftop A/C unites thereby creating an additional benefit through cooling and energy savings. Though the pricing and energy yield is still not where I would like to see it for PV, there are some decent subsidies and credits available which can greatly reduce the payback period. Now is a good time to investigate what incentives are available in your geographic region.

Warmer Datacenters

Network equipment continues to improve. The average operating temperature on new gear averages 81 degrees which is up from the average of 72 degrees in 2004. Once you get to warmer temperatures, you have many more options to cool your equipment and reduce the number of chillers.  However, you still need to move air, so a reduction in cooling offsets some of the benefit  as you will end up losing some density. You must realize that running at higher temperatures also causes your equipment to work harder. Fans must run faster and will negate a portion of your overall savings. In this case, power consumption increases as the cube of the fan speed. Say the fan speed increases by 10%; that could mean an increase of power usage of more than 30%. This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker.  Higher temperatures have other advantages–such as limiting the need to build extra CRAC capacity for redundancy since the equipment can run at a higher temperature in the case of a failure– just realize that as with anything – there are always unintended consequences.

Liquid cooling on the chip is an interesting technology but this technology is not mature and is out of the price range to gain widespread adoption at this time. For now, the deployment of this technology will be limited to supercomputing. Today, density is no longer the only driver. As you double the computer density, you also greatly enlarge the footprint of the equipment to support it.

Hot and Cold Aisle Containment

In this configuration, drapes, partitions and/or doors are used to seal off hot or cold aisles [PC4] in an effort to better control airflow and temperature. Many data centers are looking at containment which allows about 25kw to be used per rack.

Energy Saving Tips

1)  Look for hot/cold aisle designs

2)  Review equipment specs when making new purchases. It’s amazing how different, though similar, a product can be in terms of power consumption from one vendor to another.

              a.  Variable speed fans

              b.  Energy savings power supplies

              c.  Power management

3)  Review equipment to see if you can operate in a warmer environment.

4)  Consider replacing aging hardware.

As opportunities arise to change and upgrade your equipment or make modifications to your infrastructure, consider doing so with an eye towards energy efficiency, energy innovation and cost savings. The changes and investments you make today can be the subtle differences that translate into greater productivity and competitiveness tomorrow.

Posted in Business, Computing, Green, Technology

Cloudy with a Chance of Rain

August 20, 2010 – 1:38 pm by Don Douglas (CEO)

Everywhere you turn people are talking about the cloud. I recently returned from an advisory board meeting and one of the key topics was the public cloud. Points of discussion included a variety of technologies and whether there was truly a market for many offerings currently on the drawing board. Others expressed nervousness over security and SLAs.

I firmly believe in the cost and flexibility advantages of the cloud model, especially when serving the needs of the SMB. But whether you believe the cloud hype is just the coming of ASP 2.0 or you are actually entertaining moving processes to a cloud provider, there are more than a few things to consider. Before continuing, let me state that our organization currently utilizes public and private cloud services, offers them to clients, has participated in the development of SAAS products, and has assisted in the implementation of these offerings.

While the ASP model never quite had the success Gartner predicted, it did lay the foundation for many SAAS “software-as-a-service” providers. Many of these early adopters had good success specifically in the CRM market where several companies have done rather well. That said, many providers (including some that have been around for a while) still seem to have some major issues to overcome. While recently interviewing and vetting a couple of potential vendors with interesting solutions, we became alarmed at their lack of a detailed security posture. One did some application testing with an open source tool but then tried to interpret the results without outside assistance. Another claimed they had never found any issues. Yet another had a rather small staff with limited training in security. Also of concern was the fact that they relied on a third party to host their application. When one of the underlying hosting vendors was contacted, they would not share how they patched their servers, whether they did penetration testing, how often this testing was being done if it was being done at all, how the system was backed up, what would happen in the event of a breach, etc. When we discussed this with the cloud provider, they were surprised at our concern and said that no other customers had brought this up yet. We loved the software and even offered some guidance on how they could correct the issues. So far both parties have been quiet.

What to Ask Cloud Providers

Based on these experiences and others, here is a quick checklist of things I think every cloud provider should be asked. Based on their responses you can make a decision with your eyes wide open.

1) Check to find out if they regularly test their applications and environments (including servers, OS, routers, firewalls, etc.).

2) Check to see if they use an outside vendor to help them analyze and audit these results.

3) Find out how and when they implement fixes when a problem is found. If they say they haven’t found any problems, this is a major warning sign that they are not doing enough.

4) Check to make sure all sensitive data is encrypted.

5) Find out if the vendor is seeking or has obtained any type of accredited standardization such as SAS 70 or ISO 27001.

6) Is the company financially stable? In this economy, it is better not to take chances with a company that might be forced to cut corners.

7) Understand the SLAs and what they really mean to your business.

8) Check to see if they have any customers using the service that require serious compliance measures to be operative such as HIPAA or PCI, and see if they have satisfied these requirements.

As a final note, understand that one of the biggest potential “gotchas” of the public cloud is the unknown. Since public cloud technology is relatively new, this in itself is a risk. Many publicly debate how well a public infrastructure can actually be secured and still serve the needs of the many at an affordable price point. At this point there really aren’t any industry-wide data handling and security standards for cloud providers. There are legal issues that haven’t even had precedent set yet. Many compliance measures such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley where not written to address public cloud architecture which makes it difficult to enforce them in these solutions. Until these issues are addressed, the public cloud computing movement will not be able to reach its full potential.

Posted in Cloud, Computing, SAAS