Wallace and Bird Hosting soar: how they save on hardware while delivering more complex apps

Many of the cloud service providers that we are working with here at CA Technologies are small, but aggressive. These are the guys that know their business really, really well and are the ones who are targeting their niches pretty successfully. The ability to focus and be nimble are some of the key indicators of success in the service provider space.

We’ve been calling folks like these “Cloud Accelerators” – given how instrumental these service providers are being in the adoption of cloud computing -- and we have been profiling some of the more interesting ones.

Bird Hosting strikes me as a great example of one of these “accelerators.” They may not be on your radar screen yet, but Bird Hosting is a cloud service provider that’s nimble and all about the personal touch. They not only deliver cloud hosting and other key services to customers, you can find them answering questions on WebHostingTalk.com. They post reviews talking through the pros and cons of the newest rev of their cloud platform. They even run a hardware review site. (After all, there are benefits for a service provider to know this stuff.)

They do all this with 10 employees, 3 locations…and they have 3,600 customers.

Bird Hosting’s CEO, Michael Wallace, answered a few questions about their operations, what’s key for a service provider’s cloud platform, and even what’s up with their name. Read on:

Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: You’re a relatively small service provider. How many data centers do you need to effectively serve a nationwide customer base? What else is important?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: We started in Seattle. When you have a data center in Seattle and customers in New York, the content isn’t delivered as quickly as you’d like – content delivery speed is important. We saw a need for something more central in the U.S., and so we went to Dallas. We now have 3 data centers (Seattle, Dallas, Washington, D.C.) and can cover the whole United States effectively.

In fact, we have customers across the world. We have customers that range from small shared-hosting accounts to large corporations. For example, we support a travel organization in New York, a food chain also in New York, as well as Costco. We host and produce videos that have 360-degree views of sheds and playgrounds that Costco sells.

DCD: How did you get started in the service provider business?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: We originally started in 2005. My father was one of the pioneers of the Internet; he started an ISP in 1991. I started out doing web hosting with some big corporate website hosters. I found that they were subpar, both from how they presented themselves to the services they offered. So I decided to do my own. I had the knowledge to do it. And I had just returned from a lengthy tour of duty with the U.S. Air Force in Iraq and was ready to take a bold move and launch my own business.

DCD: A recent article in SearchITChannel by Carl Brooks talked about the fact that the market is starting to realize that enterprises who are building private clouds and service providers that are selling public cloud services have some very different needs. Can you talk a bit about what you think is important to have in a cloud platform for service providers like yourself?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: Two things that are very important are cost savings and flexibility. With CA AppLogic [what Bird Hosting uses], I’m not limited. It’s a platform that allows me to offer a full range of services. Before I had to have separate machines for each individual task. We had to have a box for Windows, a box for Linux, and when we added customers, we had to add more dedicated boxes. With AppLogic, you don’t have to be limited to a certain OS. You have a cluster of servers and it allows us to run all of our applications on top; it’s neutral. So that helps us save money – we are able to standardize hardware and we can even save power.

DCD: Speaking of saving power, I’ve heard you talk about how much you’ve reduced your environmental impact. Can you quantify what you’ve been able to do?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: When we first started our business, we sold a lot of dedicated servers. Each would have a power draw even when idle. CA AppLogic allowed us to take those boxes and cram them into a virtual environment. Customers on dedicated servers were able to run as virtual dedicated servers instead. Customers were paying for a given amount of resources; we would give them the resources and they would run their environment. We cut back from 6 full cabinets to just one cabinet in one data center.

We were able to take 200 boxes and put that into 10 boxes. In our Dallas facility, for each of our cabinets we have two power drops, which costs $960 per cabinet – just for power. We were able to cut back 10 power drops, saving us about $10,000 per month.

DCD: Service providers are all looking for ways to define a niche that they can own, build up new revenue opportunities, and grow their margins. What has your cloud platform decision and approach meant competitively?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: It allowed us to broaden our market. We could have stayed where we were and offered shared hosting and dedicated servers. But using AppLogic has allowed us to venture into more complex application hosting. It allows us to create more complex environments with ease. Those environments usually would have taken us a long time to set up if we were going to do it in a physical environment—running cables from an end gateway or a firewall to a hardware load balancer to machines. That’s what AppLogic does in software.

We can support more complex applications. We wouldn’t be able to offer as many value-added services without AppLogic. We can do so quickly and efficiently, scaling things up or down as much as they need. And then we can charge per resource.

DCD: Do you see IaaS providers like Amazon as competitors?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: I don’t consider Amazon a direct competitor – they can’t do what we can do. We have a running joke – customers come in and say “our uptime is 70% with Amazon Web Services.” We can give them close to 100%.

DCD: You also do a lot of stress testing with your hardware. What has that meant for customers? What have you found?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: CA AppLogic is designed to take a bunch of small systems and merge them into a cloud. With more cores and more memory on each machine, you can get more out of each machine without adding more hardware footprint. We decided to start a little testing to find out what are our limits, what can we do? We tested different types of hard drives and configurations, different controllers, to see what worked best.

Testing the efficiency of servers brought me into a whole new area. I now run a hardware review site on the side. The stress-test work helps us figure out what machines can handle without impacting performance.

[Note: you can contact Michael directly to talk about any of his results if you’re interested in more details.]

DCD: Do your customers know anything about cloud computing? Does it matter to them?

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: There has been a lot of confusion and debate with the cloud. When I started out, we heard concerns about sharing data. We see less concern about that now. They do see the power of cloud computing and interact with it if they are using our virtual private data center offering. We dedicate a given group of machines to a customer and they get access to the CA AppLogic portal so they can build applications the way they see fit. They use CA AppLogic to virtually build their infrastructure.

…

Thanks for the time, Michael.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the name, you’ll be happy to hear that I (of course) didn’t let that go. Here’s what Michael said about the name: “When we started looking for names, I was also looking for a mascot. That’s where Bird Hosting came from.” Did he try other more, er, ferocious names? “HostGator was taken,” said Michael. “And Dog Hosting was too gangster for me.”

The resulting mascot has an uncanny resemblance to Twitter’s feathered friend, if I do say so myself. Or the stars of a certain iPad game I’ve gotten myself hooked on.

But no Angry Birds here. Just a set of happy customers benefiting from Bird Hosting’s personal focus on delivering what experience dictates is required for service providers to soar: performance, reliability, and value.

You can read the Cloud Accelerator profile of Michael and Bird Hosting on the CA Technologies site. The site also features other luminaries who are setting the pace for cloud computing.

Watching cloud computing trends for 2010: the vision, customer reality, & downstream impact

We’ve crossed into a new decade (or not, if you’re a numbers purist), and it seems to be an appropriate time for a little reflection, and maybe a chance to get some feel for where things are headed in the 2010 for IT operations, especially as they look at what cloud computing is going to mean for them.

Last year, I rattled off a Top 10 list of Top 10 lists. This year, I, for one, am suffering from a bit of Year-End Top 10 Prediction Fatigue, so I’ll hold off on that for the moment. Instead, I thought I’d check the stats from this Data Center Dialog blog as a way to get a bead on things that people have been interested in here. That way I’m not just pulling commentary out of thin air. Plus, it’s more scientific that way, right?

So, to mark Data Center Dialog’s a-bit-more-than-one-year anniversary, here's a look back at the most popular posts over the past 6 months. My guess is it gives some indication of what people will be considering for the initial months of 2010 as well.

Beyond definitions: looking for vision…and then practical cloud considerations

It’s probably no surprise that the most popular new post here was also the one that explained a bit about the biggest news story to involve us (now former) Cassatt folks: the acquisition of the Cassatt assets and expertise by CA in June. I provided a bit of commentary on the acquisition just before taking an extended few weeks off in Berlin prior to starting my current gig at CA. It’s not too far-fetched to predict that in the months ahead there will be lots more details to talk about regarding what we’ve all been doing at CA since then. (That’s an easy prediction, for sure.)

Fumble! What not to do at a cloud computing conference – The endlessly repeated ploy of starting panel sessions at cloud computing events with the question, “So what is cloud computing?” finally took its toll on me in November. The result was a bit of a (popular) rant about why the people working on cloud computing need to move on to much more useful questions. At least that’s the only way I’m going to be able to sit through another cloud computing conference.

Judging by the numbers, I think you’re with me.

Not that talking about definitions was bad. 2009 was a year in which the definitions of cloud computing (public/private, internal/external, hybrid, and the like) came into focus as the discussion evolved throughout the year. To prove the point, the most popular entry of the last 6 months was the same entry that was the most popular of the first 6 months of the year: Are internal clouds bogus? That post was followed closely by one that described the shifts in the discussion toward hybrid clouds – and the speed with which the combination of public and private cloud computing was likely to become a reality (answer: it’ll take a bit; there are some missing pieces still). In fact, my highlight blog entry that tracked the evolution of the private cloud from the front row seat I’d had was also a favorite.

So, yes, there was a place for the definitional conversation. But real-world information about what customers are doing now was in great demand (and still is, say the stats). This pragmatism is heartening and it propelled reader interest in the entry I did on the 451 Group’s cloud computing customer panel at their ICE conference, alongside a post from earlier in the year listing actual customer questions that our field team had been getting about private clouds. There’s nothing quite like getting things from the horse’s mouth.

Here’s something that was perhaps part of that same trend about getting in better sync with reality: measurement of what is actually going on in data centers (even when it’s showing a trend toward upholding long-established patterns of inefficiency) was also of interest. I saw that as good news, especially since we also had lots of interest in our post from earlier in 2009 discussing the fact that many data center managers don’t actually know what their servers are doing. The first step to a solution is understanding what the problem is, right?

Notable Data Center Dialog interviews: Steve Hamm of BusinessWeek, Bill Coleman, and Mark Bramfitt

Some of the Data Center Dialog interviews (a feature I started at the beginning of 2009 with Al Gillen of IDC) were a few of the most popular posts in the second half of the year. The most read interview? It was one in which I turned the tables on a member of the so-called mainstream media and interviewed him: BusinessWeek’s Steve Hamm had some interesting insights on Silicon Valley in general. It didn’t hurt that he linked to the interview from his blog, too, of course. Interestingly, he has now done what many journalists are doing out of necessity -- changed careers. Steve noted via Twitter a few weeks back that he’s now at IBM.

Also interesting to our readers were the conversations I published about two folks well-known in the world of IT management talking about their Next Big Things. Bill Coleman, my former CEO, gave his take on where cloud computing is now (just Version 1.0, he said) and what he’s working on after Cassatt. Mark Bramfitt talked about his move from a leading role in PG&E’s data center energy efficiency programs to private industry in a two-part interview just published at the end of December. Both Bill and Mark included some candid thoughts on what’s gone well and not so well in their previous roles.

The longer-term implications of cloud computing

We also saw interest in some of the posts pondering what cloud computing might mean to the industry as a whole. Will it mean less will be spent on IT, or, in fact, help accelerate growth? And what about the oft-noted bogeyman of automation? Will the cloud finally mean that automation takes center stage without being cast as the human-hating Skynet from the Terminator flicks? That topic generated some interest for sure.

And, of course, Twitter…

And, as you might expect, our readers were in alignment with the rest of the industry (world?) in its interest in Twitter in the past few months. I used VMworld as a case study of 7 ways that IT conferences can be improved by using Twitter – and 2 ways it makes them worse. That one seemed especially popular with folks who found us via – you guessed it – Twitter.

So what does this all mean for 2010? I have no idea. But I’d bet a couple of these trends will continue to be important. The discussion around how private, public, and hybrid cloud computing will work will certainly continue. I’m expecting, however, that it becomes more focused around the day-to-day practicalities that end user IT departments need to know.

I’ll do my best to make sure I continue to interview folks of interest in the industry with useful perspectives that will benefit IT operations and those doing big thinking about the many ins and outs of cloud computing.

And, Data Center Dialog will continue to be a place to get a pulse on topics at the forefront of the way data centers – and IT in general -- are being run and managed. As customers continue their focus on cloud computing, this blog will too. Thanks for being part of the dialog.

PG&E’s Bramfitt: data centers can be efficient and sustainable, but we must think beyond our current horizons

Before heading off for a little vacation, I posted the first part of a two-part interview with Pacific Gas & Electric’s Mark Bramfitt. Mark is best known in data center circles (you know, the kind of people that hang around this site and others like it) as the face of the Bay Area utility’s efforts to drive data center energy efficiency through innovative incentive programs. Now that I’m back, I’m posting part 2 of that discussion.

In the first part of the interview, Mark talked about what’s worked well and what hasn’t in PG&E's data center energy efficiency efforts, the impact of the recession on green IT projects, and how cloud computing is impacting the story.

After the interview appeared, Forrester analyst Doug Washburn wondered on Twitter if PG&E might kill the incentive programs Mark had been previously guiding. The thought is a natural one given how integral Mark has been to the program. From my interview, it didn’t sound so far-fetched: Mark himself thought cost pressures on PG&E might cause PG&E to “de-emphasize…some of the industry leadership activities undertaken by PG&E…we may not be able to afford to develop new programs and services if they won’t deliver savings.”

In the final part of the interview, posted below, Mark gets a little philosophical about energy efficiency metrics, highlights what’s really holding back data center efficiency work, and doles out a final bit of advice about creating "inherently efficient" IT infrastructure as he departs PG&E.

Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: Mark, we’ve talked previously about the fact that a lot of the data center efficiency problem comes down to split incentives – often IT doesn’t pay or even see the power bill and the facilities guy doesn’t have control over the servers that are creating the problem. In addition, facilities is usually disconnected from the business reason for running those servers. How serious is this problem right now? What effective or creative ways have you seen for dealing with it?

Mark Bramfitt, PG&E: While I think we can all cite the split incentive issue as a problem, it’s not the only obstacle to success and it gets perhaps a bit too much air time. As much as I’d like to say that everyone’s focus on energy efficiency is making the split incentive obstacle moot, our experience is that there are only two ways that we get past that.

The first is when the IT management side simply has to get more done with less spend, leading them to think about virtualizing workloads. The second is when a facility runs out of capacity, throwing both IT and facility managers into the same boat, with energy efficiency measures often saving the day.

DCD: Many of the industry analyst groups (the 451 Group, Forrester, Gartner, etc.) have eco-efficient IT practices or focus areas now, a definite change from a few years ago. Is this a sign of progress and how can industry analyst groups be helpful in this process?


Mark Bramfitt: I can’t argue against the focus on energy efficient IT being anything but a good thing, but I’ve identified a big resource gap that hampers the ability of utilities to drive efficiency programs. We rely on engineering consultants who can accurately calculate the energy savings from implementing facility and IT improvements, and even here in the Bay Area, we have a hard time finding firms that have this competency – especially on the IT equipment side.

In my discussions with utilities across the U.S., this is probably the single biggest barrier to program adoption – they can’t find firms who can do the calculations, or resources to appropriately evaluate and review them.

So, I think there’s a real opportunity for IT service providers – companies that both sell solutions and services – to step into this market. I don’t know that analyst firms can do much about that.

DCD: I think it’s fair to say that measurement of the power and ecological impact of data centers has started and really does matter. In the (pre-CA) survey Cassatt did at the beginning of this year on the topic, we found that there were definitely areas of progress, but that old data center habits die hard. Plus, arguments among the various industry and governmental groups like the Green Grid and Energy Star over how and what to measure (PUE, DCiE, EUE) probably don’t help. How do you think people should approach measurement?


Mark Bramfitt: We’ve delivered a consistent message to both customers and to vendors of metering and monitoring systems that we think quantifying energy use can only have a positive impact on driving people to manage their data centers better. Metering and monitoring systems lead people to make simple changes, and can directly measure energy savings in support of utility incentive programs.

We also like that some systems are moving beyond just measurement into control of facility and IT equipment, and to the extent that they can do so, we can provide incentive funding to support implementation.

The philosophical distinctions being made around what metrics are best are understandable – the ones we have now place an emphasis on driving down the “overhead” energy use of cooling and power conditioning equipment, and have nothing to say about IT power load. I believe that the industry should focus on an IT equipment “utilization index” rather than holding out for the ideal efficiency metric, which is probably not conceivable given all of the different IT workloads extant in the marketplace.

DCD: One of the major initiatives you had was working with other utilities and create a coalition trying to push for similar incentives to those PG&E has been offering. I’ve heard Data Center Pulse is helping work on that, too. How would you characterize where we are with this process currently. What’s next?

Mark Bramfitt: The PG&E-sponsored and -led Utility IT Energy Efficiency Coalition [also mentioned in part 1 of Mark’s interview] now has almost 50 members, and I would say it has been a success in its core mission – to provide a forum for utilities to share program models and to discuss opportunities in this market space.

I think it’s time for the Coalition, in whatever form it takes in the future, to expand to offering the IT industry a view of what utilities are offering programs and how to engage with them, as well as a place for IT and other companies to list their competencies.

I’ll be frank, though, in saying that I don’t know whether PG&E will continue to lead this effort, or if we need to think about another way to accomplish this work. I’ve had conversations with a lot of players to see how to maintain the existing effort as well as to extend it into new areas.

DCD: Watching this all from PG&E is certainly different than the perspective of vendors, IT departments, or facilities folks. Any comments on seeing this process through the vantage point you’ve had?

Mark Bramfitt: Utilities primarily look at the data center market as a load growth challenge: how can we provide new energy delivery capacity to a segment that is projected to double every 5 years? There’s already immense national and global competition for locations where 20 or even 100 mW loads can be accommodated, and where customers want to build out facilities in months, not years.

PG&E’s answer to that is to actively work with customers to improve energy efficiency, extending our ability to accommodate new load growth without resorting to energy supply and delivery capacity that is expensive to build and not our best choice from an environmental sustainability perspective.

My larger view is that IT can deliver tremendous environmental benefits as it affects broad swaths of our activities – improving delivery systems, for example, and in my line of work enabling “smart grid” technologies that can improve utility operation and efficiency. But to get there, we need to have IT infrastructure that is inherently efficient and thereby sustainable, and we have a huge opportunity space to make that happen.

DCD: Do you have any advice you’d care to leave everyone with?

Advice? Every major achievement I’ve seen in this space has been due to people expanding their vision and horizons. It’s IT managers taking responsibility for energy costs even if they don’t roll up in their budget. It’s IT companies supporting efficiency measures that might in some ways be at cross-purposes with their primary business objectives. And it’s utilities that know that their mission can’t just be about delivering energy, they need to support customers and communities in new ways.

…

Thanks, Mark, for taking the time for the interview, and best of luck with the new venture.

As Bramfitt departs PG&E, where will the new focus for data center energy efficiency efforts be?

If you were in the audience at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit earlier this year, you were probably there (among other things) to hear Mark Bramfitt from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). Mark has been the key figure in the Bay Area utility’s efforts to drive improvements in how data centers are run to cut energy costs for the data center owners and to reduce their burgeoning demand for power.

But, Mark had a surprise for his audience. During his presentation, he announced he was leaving PG&E.

“The reaction from the crowd was impressive…and for good reason,” said John Sheputis, CEO of Fortune Data Centers, in a story by Matt Stansberry at SearchDataCenter. “Mark is an excellent speaker, a very well-known entity in the Valley, and among the most outspoken people I know of regarding the broader engagement opportunities between data centers and electricity providers,” Sheputis said. “No one has done more to fund efficiency programs and award high tech consumers for efficient behavior.”

Mark has stayed on with PG&E for the months since then to help with the transition. Before he moves on to his Next Big Thing at the end of 2009, I thought I’d ask him for his thoughts on a few relevant topics. In the first part of the interview that I’m posting today, Mark talks about what’s worked well and what hasn’t in PG&E's data center energy efficiency efforts, the impact of the recession on green IT projects, and how cloud computing is impacting the story.

Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: Mark, you’ve become synonymous with PG&E’s data center efficiency work and if the reaction to the announcement that you’ll be leaving that role at the SVLG event is any indication, you’ll be missed. Can you give some perspective on how things have changed in this area during your time on the project at PG&E?

Mark Bramfitt, PG&E: First, I truly appreciate the opportunity to offer some clarity around PG&E’s continued focus on this market, as well as my own plans, as I feel I’ve done something of a disservice to both the IT and utility industry nexus by not being more forthright regarding our plans.

My team and I have treated the data center and IT energy efficiency market as a start-up within PG&E’s much larger program portfolio, and we’ve seen a great growth curve over the past four years – doubling our accomplishments in 2008 compared to 2007, for example. We’ve built an industry-leading portfolio of programs and services, and I expect PG&E will continue to see great engagement from our customers in this space.

That being said, utilities in California are under tremendous pressure to deliver energy efficiency as cost effectively as possible, so some of the industry leadership activities undertaken by PG&E may have to be de-emphasized, and we may not be able to afford to develop new programs and services if they won’t deliver savings.

My personal goal is to see 20 or more utilities follow PG&E’s lead by offering comprehensive efficiency programs for data centers and IT, and I think I can best achieve that through targeted consulting support. I’ve been supporting utilities essentially in my “spare” time, in part through the Utility IT Energy Efficiency Coalition, but there are significant challenges to address in the industry, and I think my full-time focus as a consultant will lead to broader success.

DCD: Why are you leaving PG&E, why now, and what will you be working on?

Mark Bramfitt: It may sound trite, or worse, arrogant, but I want to amplify the accomplishments we’ve made at PG&E over the past few years, using my knowledge and skills to drive better engagement between the utility and IT industries in the coming years. PG&E now has a mature program model that can be executed well in Northern California, so I’d like to spend my time on the bigger challenge of driving nationwide activities that will hopefully yield big results.

DCD: You had some big wins at some big Silicon Valley data centers: NetApp being one of those. Can you talk about what came together to make some of those possible? What should other organizations focus on to get them closer to being able to improve their data center efficiency as well?

Mark Bramfitt: Our “big hit” projects have all been new construction engagements where PG&E provides financial incentives to help pay for the incremental costs of energy efficiency improvements – for measures like air- or water-side economizers, premium efficiency power conditioning and delivery equipment, and air flow isolation measures.

We certainly think our financial support is a big factor in making these projects work, but my project managers will tell you that the commitment of the project developer/owner is key. The design team has to want to work with the technical resource team PG&E brings to the table, and be open to spending more capital to realize expense savings down the road.

DCD: You made some comments onstage at the Gartner Data Center Conference last year, saying that “It’s been slow going.” Why do you think that’s been, and what was most disappointing to you about this effort?

Mark Bramfitt: I don’t have any real disappointments with how things of gone – we’re just very focused on being as successful as we can possibly be, and we are introspective in thinking about what we could do better.

I’d characterize it this way: we’ve designed ways to support on the order of 25 energy efficiency technologies and measures, absolutely leading the utility industry. We’ve reached out to dozens of VARs and system integrators, all of the major IT firms, every industry group and customer association, made hundreds of presentations, delivered free training and education programs, the list goes on.

What has slowed us down, I think, is that the IT industry and IT managers had essentially no experience with utility efficiency programs three years ago. It simply has taken us far longer than we anticipated to get the utility partnership message out there to the IT community.

DCD: The green IT hype was pretty impressive in late 2007 and early 2008. Then the economic crisis really hit. How has the economic downturn affected interest in energy efficiency projects? Did it get lost in the crisis? My personal take is that it certainly didn’t get as much attention as it would have otherwise. Maybe the recession caused companies to be more practical about energy efficiency topics, but I’m not sure about that. What are your thoughts?

Mark Bramfitt: I don’t see that the message has been lost, but certainly the economy has affected market activity.

PG&E is not seeing the level of new data center construction that we had in ’07 and ’08, but the collocation community tells me demand is exceeding supply by 3-to-1. They just can’t get financing to build new facilities.

On the retrofit side, we’re seeing interest in air flow management measures as the hot spot, perhaps because customers are getting the message that the returns are great, and it is an easy way to extend the life and capacity of existing facilities.

DCD: The other topic that’s taken a big share of the IT and facilities spotlight in the last year has obviously been cloud computing. How do you see the efficiency and cloud computing conversations playing together? Is the cloud discussion helping or hindering the efficiency discussion inside organizations in your opinion?

Mark Bramfitt: I’ve talked to some thought leaders on cloud computing and many seem to think that highlighting the potential energy efficiency advantages of shared services has merit. But with regard to our program delivery, the intersection has really been about how to serve collocation owners and tenants, rather than on the broader topic of migration to cloud services.

…

Be sure to come back for Part 2 of the interview. We'll cover a few other topics of note, including Mark’s thoughts on the philosophical differences over measurement approaches, the single biggest barrier to data center efficiency program adoption, and even a little bit of parting advice from Mark as he gets ready to leave PG&E.

Old habits die hard: the bad news on data center energy efficiency

Despite the batch of pretty good news I reported in my previous post about the trends we see in how data center managers are approaching energy efficiency from 2008 to 2009, there is some bad news. Isn't there always?

But before we get too gloomy, it should be noted that much of the media, vendor, and customer discussion about energy efficiency over the past few years seems to have paid off in getting the word out. As I discussed last time, more IT folks have "green" initiatives to leverage, and more are measuring their power consumption. Sure, that sometimes means that what they measure is pretty inefficient or problematic ("Um, guys...do you know we're out of power in our New York data center?"), but at least they're measuring.

The conversation has led many (including my own esteemed colleague and Cassatt chief scientist Steve Oberlin) to point out that the current cloud computing discussions can absolutely be seen as one way that data centers -- or at least the organizations that own them -- can become more green.

The "green IT" messages just might be getting through, but...

All this discussion seems to mean that organizations like the EPA's Energy Star program, the Uptime Institute, the Green Grid, and others are getting through to people who run data centers. For example, in this year's Cassatt Data Center Survey, slightly more (63.2% v. 61.4% previously) know that the EPA recommends turning off servers when they aren't in use. Even though it's just a slight gain, I'll take it.

However, our survey also uncovered enough backsliding from 2008 to 2009 that I'm still forced to point out that some old habits die hard. Even if some of those habits are hurting the operation of your data center. In fact, some of the concepts that Cassatt has been strongly advocating, are meeting some very stiff opposition. Chalk up a few points for operational inertia.

Example: many would consider shutting off idle servers, but the percentage has dropped

Here's an example of one case where the "business-as-usual" approach is still holding on pretty firmly: one of the simplest use cases for Cassatt Active Response has been to use our software to shut down servers when they become idle and then use our policy-based automation to turn them back on when needed. However, powering up and down servers has long been seen as a no-no in IT operations, despite a wave of sources (including the EPA and the Green Grid) recently advocating this approach.

Given the long-standing skepticism about fiddling with server power, our 2009 survey's result actually seems impressive: 55% of the folks who responded to our survey (IT operations, data center managers, and the like) could justify turning off servers. Seems significant, right? Well, it is, actually, if you have a good feel for the underlying conservatism of those charged with keeping the data center running. The sad news from our perspective, however, is that this number is down slightly from last year's figure (59%), showing that the entrenched management ideas are still very strong. That’s despite some pretty good savings estimates. (Our savings calculators conservatively show Active Power Management-driven cost reductions starting at around 23%, with potential for closer to 50% in many cases.)

Similarly, the "deal breakers" for server power management remain similar to what they were last year: application availability is the most important. Impact on physical reliability and application stability were tied for the 2nd most important. This year's numbers do show a surge in worries about the physical reliability of machines (36.3% to 42.5%) and in the potential application downtime that people perceive server power management might cause (45.3% to 51.4%). But if you end up with a heat-induced outage like Last.fm had today, suddenly some proactive server shut-downs to avert a literal data center meltdown may not seem so scary.

So, any signs that the conservatism in IT operations groups can change?

Actually, yes. Respondents seemed to have grown more comfortable with determining ROI around the topic of server power management. (And, no, I don't think our aforementioned savings calculators can be credited with that.) Also, despite an increase in skepticism regarding using automation for server power management, 36.7% still said they would be OK using automation to power manage a majority of servers in their dev/test environments -- exactly the kind of advice we have been giving prospective customers. Interestingly, 27.2% even said they'd do this for low priority production servers.

Though the IT/facilities gap remains, it is shrinking

By the way, one of the issues alluded to in nearly all writings on the topic of data center energy efficiency -- the alignment gap between IT and facilities -- is still there. But the gap is closing. When asked how integrated facilities and IT planning are, 29.7% said there was "no gap" and they were "tightly aligned," 37.0% said there was a "small gap" and that they speak with their counterparts in the other organization "somewhat."

Where was the improvement? Last year, 32.2% said they had either a "significant gap" in which IT and facilities touch base "infrequently" or a "large gap," meaning they "don't interact at all." This year those numbers dropped to 20.3%. Maybe these organizations are being brought together by smart companies looking for answers to their data center energy problems. Or maybe these guys are just taking the advice of Ken Brill of the Uptime Institute or various analysts and doing something as simple as taking their IT and facilities counterparts to lunch. I'm happy either way. It's amazing what a little communication can do.

So, are the 'experts' succeeding in being heard about data center energy efficiency?

One of the odd things we noticed in last year's survey was that, despite there being a great deal of independent, unbiased expert advice out there regarding data center energy efficiency, respondents got most of their information on the topic from entrenched system and power/cooling vendors. You know, the ones with a big stake in keeping the status quo. (Of course, it could be argued that these vendors have a good perspective on what's needed. However, these vendors just don't have the economic incentives to push radical change.)

And 2009? Same thing. Expert bloggers and media websites on the topic (like TechTarget's SearchDataCenter and others) did get significant mention. Peers and industry analysts did well, too. But the big guys are still the ones that folks are going to for guidance.

There was a curveball this year, too, however. The Uptime Institute, the Green Grid, the EPA, and even the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (which put on a great event about "green IT" last June) all did unexpectedly worse than last year when asked where folks go for data center energy efficiency guidance. Hmmmm.

Big problems take a long time to fix, so don’t expect instant improvement

The take-away from all this? I look at it this way: the data center power problem is a big, long-term one. The processes and approaches that have gotten us all into this situation are big, long-term ones. And, therefore, the solutions are going to need to be pretty fundamental, and, as a result, they will also take a long time to implement. So, we need to be in this for the long haul.

The good news, as I see it, is that the 2009 Cassatt Data Center Survey suggests that the magnitude of the problem is starting to be seen and understood. IT and facilities groups should be given credit for the initial actions they seem to be taking in the areas that they have under their control. It's a great start. Now, if you combine these small initial steps with a bit of economic pressure (which the outside world is adding to the mix quite effectively on its own right now), who knows? Maybe even some of these outdated habits will fall by the wayside.

If you'd like a copy of the 2009 Cassatt Data Center Survey results, e-mail me at jay.fry@cassatt.com.

Measurement matters: survey finds improvements in data center energy efficiency, but...

When we ran our 2008 Cassatt Data Center Energy Efficiency survey, the topic was really at the forefront of the industry conversation. Green IT was everywhere you looked. It was a perfect time to ask questions (and get some intriguing answers) about how data center managers were approaching their power issues.

Fast-forward a year to 2009.

As we planned out the questions for our 2nd annual Data Center Survey, the hard part was figuring out what not to ask. We expanded our survey questions to ask about cloud computing, virtualization management, data center efficiency projects, and even how people are finding and dealing with orphan servers -- changes that we felt matched the important data center trends to keep tabs on.

Even if it is unable to keep up with the kind of buzz being generated by things like the cloud computing hype train, the data center energy efficiency issue remains critical. Last year's survey provided us with a lot of insights into what people were doing and thinking of doing around green IT -- and even how they felt about "radical ideas" like turning off servers they weren't using (59% said they could justify it, by the way).

So, you'll be happy to hear, that we kept the energy efficiency questions in this year's survey. The trend data we now have by asking those same questions a second year in a row was worth the extra effort. (And, in the end, Cassatt's 2009 survey was only 4 questions longer than the 2008 one. We even had almost 100 more respondents this year.)

Here are a few insights I see from comparing the data center energy efficiency results from Cassatt's 2009 survey with those from 2008:

More awareness of the data center energy efficiency problem

All of the talk about energy efficiency has had some effect. More of our respondents have a corporate "green" initiative this year (46.9% in 2009, 40.4% last year). More have a handle on how energy-efficient their data centers are than they did last year: only 4% said they "didn't know" how they were doing on energy efficiency this year. Last year's figure was almost quadruple that (15.7%). I think it's safe to say that some people have been doing their homework.

Data center managers think their data centers are more efficient this year

Even better, respondents think their data centers are more efficient now. 30.8% believed their data centers to be "very efficient" or "better than average" in '09. That number was only 19.1% 12 months ago. Only 13.6% see themselves as "worse than average" or "poor" this year, down from 21.9% in 2008. There's still an amusing reporting bias that I've mentioned before in which way too many people believe they are average or above, but it looks like people believe they are getting better at data center energy efficiency. Is this optimism warranted yet? It might be; read on.

More good news: measurement is improving

For those of you who have been beating the drum to measure, measure, measure, our survey has some good news. They are. More people are measuring power consumption of their data center server environments this year than did last year, and they are measuring it with more granularity. Specifically, 19.7% said they don't measure power consumption, a drop from the 28.3% who said that last year. More people are measuring power consumption at more detailed levels this year: more by individual server, more by power distribution units (PDU), and more by server racks -- and fewer are just measuring at the server room level. That's all steady movement in the right direction.

But measurement uncovers a bigger problem

There's one potentially painful side effect of the increased measurement that's been reported in our survey, though: the problem of data center power capacity has gotten worse.

The data center power capacity problem is the topic that we here at Cassatt have found to be the main driver in kick-starting any sort of energy efficiency project. I've heard similar dire stats from Gartner and others, but here's what we found: 44.7% have a data center using 75% or more of its power capacity. That's way up from 28.6% last year. The percentage of those within >90% of power capacity at their most constrained data center more than doubled since last year (15.9% v 7.1%). There is an urgent need for these organizations to do one of two things: find a way to extend the life of their existing data centers, or figure out how, in this economy, to build another data center. It's not a comfortable spot to be in, and unfortunately it seems that more and more data center managers are finding that out. I'm also betting that some of the public cloud vendors are getting calls from these same organizations, looking for a Plan B. Or C.

And, it is exactly these power, space, and/or cooling constraints, as you would expect, that were once again the top reason for pursuing a data center energy efficiency project (noted by 34.6% of respondents this year). Pursuing this kind of project because of "environmental responsibility," however, dropped, falling from 22.1% to 14.0%. Maybe folks are tiring of the "green" message that they've been hit over the head with for the past 18 months. Or, maybe reality has stepped in: the "current economic conditions" was picked by 5.3% as the reason for pursuing energy efficiency projects for their data centers this year, too (a new choice in the 2009 survey). Green is nice, but IT has to react when the business (and its budget) is threatened.

So what green IT projects are they working on?

Almost exactly the same proportion as last year (63%) said that they are planning -- or are actually working on -- a data center energy efficiency project. The difference is that a few more of them are actually in progress this year (42.6%, up from 39.0% in 2008), rather than just having grandiose plans for IT "greenness" sitting on a shelf somewhere to keep their executives happy.

So what energy-efficiency strategies are people actually implementing? This year's list is nearly the same as last year's mix; everything is within a few percentage points of what we reported about projects being pursued last year: server consolidation/virtualization was noted by 73.3%, up from its already impressive numbers last year (69.2%). Some of the other projects, in order of popularity, are: storage consolidation/virtualization, more power-efficient servers, consolidate data centers, improve cooling, and server power management software.

We allowed respondents to tell us if they are working on multiple data center energy efficiency projects if that was the case. And it was. People, on average, had exactly the same number of projects this year as in '08: 3.4 per respondent. That's proof that people continue to confront this complex problem in multiple ways.

As for the future, virtualization continues to lead, but 34.0% were also considering purchasing "more power-efficient servers." That's an interesting answer, given the capital spending freezes on in many IT organizations. Also, one of the things Cassatt has always advocated remained on the list, too: over 20% of the respondents are considering server power management software of some sort.

Good news/bad news: progress, but a complex problem

As positive as a lot of the data above sounds, there's still a pretty big uphill climb that remains. The path we're on won't let data centers (nor the power grid) sustainably support the business computing that industry is expected to generate even within the next few years. The economy might slow that demand some this year, but probably not for long (at least, I hope that's the case, from a personal and macroeconomic point of view). I noted the slow progress on green IT back in a December post, and I'll delve into a couple more examples of it in my next post.

In the meantime, kudos to the IT ops and data center professionals who are taking on the data center power problem head-on. And, now that they've gotten good at this measurement thing, maybe it's smart to consider some more, easy steps for data center folks to work on next. After all, I bet they're looking for another project to tackle. In their spare time. (I can always dream, right?)

Amid the Cassatt hubbub, data center efficiency projects stay front and center

All of this week's hubbub about Cassatt's future has certainly kept me plenty busy, but I thought I'd take a break from all that to publish some of the feedback we received about data center efficiency projects from our 2nd Annual Data Center Survey. Data center efficiency is a topic that's near and dear to our hearts, but is not always at the top of data center discussions (and in a week swirling with speculation, doubly so). Often it's the technology du jour that grabs the spotlight instead, even when the end goal is, in fact, to make things run better. Here's hoping we can help change that.

(Oh, and in case you're scouring this post for hints or tips about what's happening with Cassatt, I'll let you know up front that you're likely to be disappointed. Unless, of course, you manage to decode all of the many double-secret messages I've encrypted within this post. Riiiiight.)

You did a survey about data center efficiency? Why?

If there's one thing that I hope came through in the many discussions about Cassatt this week, it's that everything we do (and have done with the organizations we've worked with throughout our history) boils down to this: improving data center efficiency. The interesting thing is how fundamental optimizing data center operations is for a number of the topics that are front-and-center for IT today. Yes, we have products in this area, but that's not the only reason to focus here. Data center efficiency is a driver for cloud computing. It's at the core of the energy efficiency and green IT work. And it's something that the economic downturn is demanding of IT departments.

Now, I'm not claiming we knew how serious and prolonged the recession would be when we were coming up with our survey questions, but now actually seems like an ideal time to talk about data center optimization. And our numbers support this: only 5.5% of our responders said they aren't pursuing a data center efficiency project.

So, with that in mind, here are some of the interesting things for the other 94.5% of you that we unearthed when talking to data center managers in our database:

Data centers: where everyone is "above average"

It's always fun to ask questions you know are going to lead to amusing results. When we asked how people rate their data center(s) in terms of IT operations efficiency, 41.2% said they were "average," 38.5% said "better than average," and 7% said "very efficient." That leaves only a little more than 10% who admitted they were "worse than average" or "poor."

OK, folks, maybe this whole conversation should start with a session on how to honestly assess where you are. Everyone obviously listens to too much Garrison Keillor. Having seen this "overestimation" problem in a lot of end user IT departments, we created a profiling service to help provide customers accurate baselines for improving operations. And so IT wouldn't have to rely on their gut feel that they're "doing pretty well." You're probably not.

So, what data center efficiency projects are going on in IT?

Definitely virtualization. And virtualization. Oh, and virtualization. That (and server consolidation) accounted for 42.4% of the data center efficiency projects underway. A few data center consolidation (12.7%) and energy efficiency (11.8%) projects were thrown in for good measure. (By the way, we have some '09 energy efficiency project data that I'll post later alongside a comparison with last year's survey results on that topic).

This trend toward data center consolidation was underscored in a separate question in which almost three-quarters of the respondents said they were moving toward fewer, more efficient data centers. But there are exceptions. 16% are actually expanding the number of data centers they are using. Some of the audience polls at the December Gartner Data Center Conference showed similar trends -- in both directions. One size definitely doesn't fit all.

Everything isn't going to be virtualized, though

I previously posted a bunch of the virtualization-specific survey results that we received. Here's one additional bit of data: exactly how pervasive will or won't virtualization eventually be? 4% of the respondents expect to virtualize 100% of their server environment, while another 26% figured they'd be between 75% and 100% virtualized.

The interesting answer, though, is the one at the bottom end of the scale: despite all of the in-roads virtualization is making (and it is everywhere, there's no denying it), 41% of data center managers we talked to said they would be virtualizing less than half of their servers. There was even a stodgy 6% saying they won't be virtualizing at all, thank you very much. I'd say that a big chunk of responders know what they're talking about, too, from actual virtualization experience: 43% have completed some virtualization projects, but still have more to do. These numbers continue to tell me that heterogeneous physical and virtual resources will remain the norm in big, enterprise data centers.

Why pursue a data center efficiency project? Economics, but not the economy

When we asked why folks were working on data center efficiency, one of the options was "current economic conditions." I figured this would be one of the big drivers. Who wouldn't at this point? In fact, it was not. The biggest reason for a data center efficiency project was that "there will be specific economic benefit, regardless of external economic conditions" (so said 35.8%). That implies that these data center efficiency projects are not a short-term fad, but in fact, likely to be an on-going activity. The only way to really tell will be to ask the question again in next year's survey. I'm hoping we get the chance to ask, one way or another.

The second biggest reason (32.1%) was capacity constraints on IT infrastructure (power, space, etc.). This matches what we've seen from our customers and prospects. The ones with the most urgency have consistently been the ones coming to us searching for a solution -- sometimes temporary, sometimes more permanent -- to a data center capacity issue (one organization wasn't able to add even a single additional server to a specific facility because they were out of electrical capacity). Only a little over 12% answered the "why" question by saying they were reacting to a bit of organizational arm-twisting, in the form of a corporate mandate to improve data center efficiency. Looks like many don't need that kind of incentive from above. They know an important issue when they see it.

Anything else worth noting…like, say, cloud computing?

And since no self-respecting data center survey would be complete without asking cloud computing questions, I'll post the answers we received on that topic shortly as well. No matter how things end up with Cassatt, I figure that continuing to post this data (you can see previous posts from the past few weeks here and here) could provide some useful insights for IT ops and the industry at large.

And keep the dialog going.

P.S. If you're looking for some more interesting data center (in)efficiency statistics, James Governor over at RedMonk passed on some dramatic ones from IBM that I link to here. For starters, 78% of data centers were built before the dotcom era, and one of James' sources figures supply chain waste from data center inefficiency is around $40 billion. More fuel for the fire showing why these projects are so important for data center operations.

VMware's Thiele: Never more data center change than right now

Making headway in running a data center is hard. Even if you've worked on it a lot. The guy I'm talking to in today's Cassatt Data Center Dialog interview is someone who -- despite the curveballs that IT and the business it supports can throw at you -- has been consistently making big strides in how data centers are run: Mark Thiele.

Mark is director of R&D business operations for virtualization giant VMware and as part of that job runs data centers in Palo Alto, Massachusetts, Washington, and Bangalore, totaling approximately 85,000 square feet. I've also seen Mark in action at his previous job, where his ideas and initiative helped shape parts of our Active Power Management technology and what became Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition.

I last saw Mark speak at the Gartner Data Center Conference in December where he and Mark Bramfitt of PG&E talked about the state of green IT. I used that as a starting point for our interview:

Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: In your panel at the Gartner Data Center Conference, you talked about how it's important to bring facilities and IT folks together for improved IT operations. You also touched on bringing operations and process management into the R&D organization and "stretching" people (including yourself) beyond their normal areas of expertise. Do you have some specific suggestions on how to do this or some examples of what's worked for you?

Mark Thiele, VMware: There's no simple answer here. I've been working in IT for a long time and as a result I'm biased in my belief that IT, when used appropriately can solve almost any problem. All joking aside, the reality is that many of the folks that work in IT look at how things get done a little differently than everyone else. An IT person's first reaction to a job that needs to get done is "how can I write a script to automate that?" I've utilized this to my advantage by looking at what are seemingly intractable "non-IT" problems from the IT perspective and shining a new light on them. This IT-centric focus helps to stretch non-IT folks and IT folks alike. As they work together to solve shared problems they come to realize the benefit of the shared experience and uncommon backgrounds. Once this happens, improving operations between groups becomes less of a headache.

DCD: You discussed having a "bridging the gap" person who can look at a data center as a holistic system. How do you find someone to fill that role? What skills should folks look for?

Mark Thiele: This can be a very difficult role to fill. The ideal person is someone who has a strong understanding of IT infrastructure, but an understanding of the importance of dealing with the entire data center as a system. In my case I was able to identify a strong candidate and convince them to take on the new role by explaining the potential opportunity for improvement and bottom-line impact for the company. The data center has become one of the most commonly referenced areas of opportunity in business today. There has never been more focus and change in data centers than there is right now. This kind of change and business importance can be very enticing to forward-thinking and career-driven IT staff.

DCD: One of the things you mentioned in Vegas was that there is a 3-5 year gap between when something is proven to be a good idea for improving IT operations and when people are actually using it. You said you’d like to find a way to shrink that time period. Any specific examples of things that seem "proven" but aren't being used yet? Any ideas how to shrink that time gap?

Mark Thiele: The dynamics of why it often takes years to implement new technology in the data center are many. These dynamics include risk avoidance, cost of entry, myth, intractable staff, and/or inflexible data center facilities. However, the aforementioned factors still don't explain why it often times takes 5 years or even more for proven technologies to be implemented.

The delays are associated with the inability to truly measure and understand the risk/reward of making change in the data center. As an industry we need to carry more responsibility for looking at the long term benefits of new technology vs. the short term potential for disruption in the environment.

Take virtualization as an example. You can pick any of 1,000 white papers that will explain why implementing a major virtualization strategy in your data centers is the best way to improve operations and drive down cost of doing business. Yet almost every day I talk to folks who say "VMware works great, [but] I just can't risk it in production" or "my software provider told me they won't support it on a VM." Thousands of world-class organizations have large "production" VMware solutions installed; how many more do we need before everyone agrees it works?

Part of this problem is aversion to any type of risk perceived or real. If the potential benefit is better Disaster Preparedness, faster provisioning, higher availability, and lower cost of doing business, it should be OK to accept a certain amount of calculated risk. As leaders in business and the IT space we should be obligated to ensure that our teams understand that intelligent risk is OK, in fact it's expected.

DCD: You suggested that people get started on energy-efficiency projects in bite-sized pieces, to show some quick wins. Any specific suggestions about how someone should approach creating that list or any particular projects you would suggest they start with?

Mark Thiele: There is a mountain of information available that can help with identifying power/efficiency opportunities in the data center. There's the Green Grid, APC Data Center University, Emerson's Efficient Data Center portal, LinkedIn groups like Data Center Pulse and many more. Once you've gone through some of the information on what can be done, you need to audit your current data centers to identify and prioritize the gap resolution activities. This prioritized list of gaps or opportunities should then be built into a program. I would highly recommend that anyone initiating a large effort like this should ensure they capture current state relative to space, power, and cooling so that you can measure and report the improvements to your management.

DCD: Who else within someone's company or organization should the IT operations people ally themselves with (besides facilities) to make progress on the data center energy efficiency front?

Mark Thiele: Finance is your friend. If you can demonstrate the potential savings and long term cost of doing business improvements, they will likely become ardent supporters of the effort.

DCD: What has surprised you most about what’s going on in this space today?

Mark Thiele: That it's taken so long for data centers to get this much attention. It's about time for the IT Infrastructure folks to be getting the attention they deserve.

DCD: You mentioned Data Center Pulse, the group of data center operations people that you helped found via LinkedIn. Given the wide range of existing organizations focused different aspects of the data center, why did you feel a need to create a new one?

Mark Thiele: Our primary driver for creating Data Center Pulse was to give data center owner/operators a chance to have a direct and immediate influence on the industry that supports them. We are effectively a working group that will deliver information and opportunity-for-improvement information to any and all vendors who support the data center space. I guess our primary difference from most other orgs is that we are not sponsored and we only allow owner/operators to join the group. We don't have any sales, marketing, business development, recruiting, or press folks in the group.

DCD: What are some of the immediate things you hope Data Center Pulse accomplishes?

Mark Thiele: In the near term, our first major accomplishments have revolved around making the group a functioning entity. We've established a board of directors, and we've grown the group to over 600 members. The members represent over 20 countries and virtually every industry. Our next big adventure is the upcoming Data Center Pulse Summit that will be held in February [next week, actually: Feb. 17-19, 2009 in Santa Clara, CA --Jay]. We will be presenting findings generated by the group at the following AFCOM chapter meeting and [Teladata's] Technology Convergence Conference.

...

Thanks, Mark for the interview. In addition to the data center energy-efficiency resources that Mark mentioned, we have a few up on the Cassatt site as well, with some focused on more general green data center information and some focused on recommendations around server power management issues.

Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge has also posted a more detailed overview of the Data Center Pulse Summit, if you want more information about the event.

The last of the year-end Top 10 lists

This year I sent most of my holiday cards out with a January postmark on them. Maybe it's only fitting, then, that I waited until today to post a year-end list of sorts here at Data Center Dialog. I figured I'd let everyone else have fun pontificating first, and then, after the, um, clouds had cleared, I'd publish a 2009 List of Lists for the data center/IT ops crowd.

So, here are some of the items I thought were worth noting from the What-the-Heck-Happened-in-2008 Lists, plus commentary on the How-in-the-World-Do-I-Make-Sure-Cloud-Computing-is-on-my-List-in-2009? Predictions:

Cassatt Data Center Dialog List of Lists for IT Ops Folks Thinking about Clouds

1. For a list of the things that went on in this space last year, check out the 2008 "Cloudies." John Willis put together this first annual awards list back in December. John noted a couple of the bloggers on our blogroll (congrats James Urquhart and Reuven Cohen) for their influence and probably for their prolific output about topics in this space. They are great people to follow if you want to stay in the middle of the cloud computing discussion. (I'm also proud to say we ranked alongside 3Tera as a "Best Private Cloud Vendor.")

2. Thoughts on the cloud computing trend: From Dave Rosenberg of The Register’s "A crack in the madness of clouds: Sanity check 09?": "What will we see in 2009? Sadly not a miraculous understanding [of the term "cloud"], but instead a glimmer of hope that the cloud can live up to the hype." That would make my year, certainly. Expanding from there: "...Does this [cloud computing] concept apply to a corporate data center? Absolutely. Internal clouds will come to fruition as companies uncomfortable with the security or offsite nature of internet clouds start to figure out ways to achieve a high – if not infinite – level of scale internally."

3. A bit of advice that we can all use, now and again: "How to be less stupid in 2009" from Dennis Howlett writing Irregular Enterprise at ZDNet. Two things from this one seemed valuable. First, a bit about IT and the business side of things working together: "If you're a geek, teach the suites something new. If you're a suit, then understand at least some of these guys know more than you do about running a business." The IT equivalent of "Can't we all just get along?"

4. And, also from Dennis, a bit about the cloud: "Don't get stuck in the cloud. There are plenty of people pitching cloud computing as the next big thing and maybe they're right. But recognize that this is only one face of enterprise computing. Just cuz we can do it doesn't always mean we should and despite the column inches to the contrary, Google and Amazon are not the center of the universe." Dennis starts to say no one's really going to adopt a cloud model, but backs off a bit. "I don't see too many CFOs giving up their precious financial apps to some cloud provider anytime soon. But...however you want to define The Cloud, we've been doing it for years. Think instead of _aaS. Service based computing offers the opportunity to move away from capex to opex. Given the state of the global economy that should be a no brainer. Even so, pick your targets carefully." Totally agree.

5. Network World rattled off their "Hot Technologies for 2009" and cloud computing made the list, as you'd expect. Green IT made the list, too. Some comments I liked from author Neal Weinberg: "As we arrive at 2009, cloud computing is the technology creating the most buzz. Cloud technology is in its infancy, however, and enterprises would be wise to limit their efforts to small, targeted projects until the technology matures and vendors address a variety of deal-breaking problems." He also notes the rise of private clouds, but I can’t say I feel he got the definition right. His pragmatism is dead on, though.

6. Green IT, Neal says while highlighting that topic for the same Network World article, is about a new worldview, especially with the economic downturn firmly taking a stranglehold. "Can you afford to be green? Can you afford not to?" he asks. "...[G]reen IT doesn't stop at the data-center door, and companies can't just pass the buck to facilities managers. IT departments can and should undertake a number of green initiatives -- which won't break the bank either." Neal lists a number of pretty broad but basic actions, starting with one of our favorites: "Power down unused servers or desktops." As hesitant as IT can be about this one, there's a lot to be gained from investigating this approach, especially in dev/test environments. As I've commented before, progress has been slow on green IT, but the benefits are there.

7. Martin Veitch from CIO Mag (in the U.K., as you'll see from the spelling) talked with John Mahoney of Gartner for his list of "New Year revolutions." The two things I pulled out of that discussion: "Start taking cloud computing seriously. Cloud computing uptake offers a completely new way of provisioning IT so it might pay to work on understanding it now, especially as cost saving is a key promise of the model. ‘Some organizations are already well down the road but the mainstream will be still in the "trough of disillusionment,"' Mahoney says. 'The cloud is susceptible to the conclusion that this is not terribly productive in the short term. Our strong feeling is that this is not something you can leave until later.'" His ending suggestion: build mini-cloud applications to get "hands-on" time with this key technology. Again, pragmatism.

8. Mark Fontecchio pointed me to TechTarget's just-published SearchDataCenter Products of the Year 2008. At least I'm not the only one publishing lists in late January! Lots of new approaches in the technologies they chose that change things about the way you run your data center. (Even if I am partial to ours, instead of some of the things they chose.)

9. "The 11 Stupidest Moments in Tech for 2008" from Mark Sullivan at PC World. Some classics here. And not a word about cloud computing, you'll be happy to hear. From Microsoft's Jerry Seinfeld-filled randomness to Princess Leia reporting live for CNN on election night, this is just a fun read. Though, the comment about the Twitter-spread rumor of Steve Jobs' death isn't so funny seen in light of recent revelations about his health.

10. Finally, where is this all headed? I'll leave you with a couple comments from our own CEO, Bill Coleman, and what he sees for 2009 as picked up by SYS-CON Media. "Prediction #1: In 2009, it's all about 'the cloud.' Save money, move fast, and...ooops. Expect some problems. But remember, it's only Cloud 1.0. There's still work to do. Oh, and virtualization alone is not enough to make it all work." He goes on to make more predictions for this year about Google, social networking as our "platform for life," and identity.

Happy New Year. Or maybe I'll make a resolution to be early for something: Happy Groundhog Day!

The 'Bio Data Center': working with Bull on data center efficiency in Europe

Back in November, I mentioned that we had been working with some big customers to improve the way they run many of the largest data centers in North America. With Tuesday's partnership announcement with Bull, Cassatt is expanding that focus to Europe as well.

If you didn't see the announcement, here's a very short recap: Bull has been working on a strategy to help its European customer base improve the efficiency of their data centers. They call it the "Bio Data Center." Sounds a bit esoteric, but the concept is very similar to what Gartner calls a real-time infrastructure.

In short, they are working on ways to improve IT operations processes, data center architecture, and power consumption. Which, of course, sounded very familiar to a lot of what we're trying to do.

So, after a bit of investigation (including some pretty serious technical evaluations), Bull is putting Cassatt squarely in the center of their efforts. The joint work will give European organizations a way to get access to the Cassatt Active Response software without having to wait for us to build out a European field organization. (Having lived in London for 3 years while with BEA, I'm hoping that a Cassatt presence in Europe comes sooner rather than later, but I'll be patient for the moment.)

The partnership means Bull will distribute our software in Europe and other select geographies. Our software, as a reminder, uses policy-based management to control and optimize the diverse data center resources that support your applications (hardware, software, virtual machines, networks) without requiring you to change any of the pieces.

The idea is to take incremental steps that drastically cut your operations costs (our models show most folks can cut 30% pretty easily for starters) with the goal of simultaneously making your infrastructure able to match your business much more effectively.

To help get started, customers in Europe will be able to turn to Bull for strategic guidance and implementation help. We're already working with them on detailed training so their people on the ground in France, Germany, the U.K., and other parts of Europe can be as up-to-speed on our stuff as they are on the issues that data center managers in Europe are facing.

That's something Bull is bringing to the party: direct experience in those European data centers, which I always found to be at different stages of IT evolution than their American counterparts.

Here are a couple examples of what Bull and Cassatt see "over there":

- A much more activist role of government in creating "green tape" (as the 451 Group calls it) -- government regulations around energy efficiency in data centers
- A more pervasive adoption of methodical, structured processes like ITIL. Many data center managers over there make us over here look like cowboys shooting from the hip.
- A slower adoption and healthy skepticism of cloud computing
- The recession has not hit markets like France with the immediacy and profound impact on IT budgets that it has here in the States. Yet.

We look forward to collaborating with Bull in the coming months and years. I’ll post updates as our work across The Pond progresses. If you’re a European organization interested in finding out more, drop us a line (info@cassatt.com).

Killing comatose servers: OK, but how?

One of the best sources of data center energy efficiency guidance available today is the Uptime Institute. Not only do they run some really focused, useful events on the topic, but their fearless leader, Ken Brill, is very visible and very direct with his recommendations. His recent article in Forbes took on one of those dirty little secrets in IT: there are a lot of servers in your data center doing absolutely nothing.

Given how serious of a problem that the current growth rates of data center energy usage will be, Ken and Uptime have given some serious thinking to how to curb the problem. Topping that list was the directive that served as the title of his article: "Kill comatose computers."

Call them orphan servers, comatose servers, idle servers, or whatever, Brill calls them "corporate enemy No. 1. Unless you have a rigorous program of removing obsolete servers at the end of their lifecycle," he writes, "it is very likely that between 15% and 30% of the equipment running in your data center is comatose. It consumes electricity without doing any computing."

Yikes. Numbers tossed around by Paul McGuckin at the recent Gartner Data Center Conference are similarly high. The solution? Brill has a simple answer: "This dead equipment needs to be unplugged and removed."

No arguments so far from me. In fact, doing work like this is one of the steps we recommend toward revamping and improving how you run your data center. The more intriguing question is one Ken also asks: why hasn’t this already happened?

The answer, unfortunately, is that most shops have worked long and hard on the steps for standing up servers, installing new components, and the like, probably because adding things to the data center is always done with some sort of time or business pressure. People are watching and they want their stuff up now. Rarely is someone breathing down your neck to unplug something. In the frenetic everyday life of an IT ops person, the decommissioning bit is the part that can wait while you handle the urgent fire of the day.

The problem is that after today's crisis comes tomorrow's. And though the orphan servers are using up power to keep them running and air conditioning to keep them cool, removing them isn't a priority. But as more and more data centers start to hit the wall for power capacity, that's going to have to change.

So, what do you do? As Ken Brill points out in Forbes, "after weeks or months pass and employees turn over, the details of what can be removed will be forgotten, and it becomes a major research project to identify what is not needed."

Unfortunately, identifying orphan servers is not something that will take care of itself. Here are some of things we've seen customers focus on to help solve this problem:

- Enable some sort of detailed monitoring on your servers
- Determine what time period is appropriate to watch for changes, based on your business and what the servers are likely to be doing
- Watch usage, users, processes, and other statistics that will be helpful in making decisions later
- Sift through the mountains of data you collect with someone who can translate it into useful information
- Engage the end users in the process

We've found that organizations sometimes want to do these steps themselves, sometimes they don't. When customers ask Cassatt to help with these steps, it's often because they are in need of the expertise or tested tools and processes for finding out what their servers are doing. It's something they often don't have internally.

The other thing we generally bring to the process is experience we've had working with some very large customers. Through our recently announced Cassatt Active Profiling Service, we've helped customers identify orphan servers, recommended candidates for virtualization, found candidates for power management, and located other servers that they could start to use as a free pool of resources to support a move toward setting up a sort of "internal cloud" architecture.

I guess that's the good news: with the data you get from a project like this, you can start to really make some significant changes to the way you manage your IT infrastructure. So, not only can you follow Ken Brill's advice and begin to kill off those comatose servers and save yourself a great deal of power, but you can also arm yourself with some unexpectedly useful information.

For example, if you know what your servers are doing (and not doing) at different times of the day, the month, and the quarter, you can use that information to start to set up some automation to manage your infrastructure based on those profiles. You can set up shared services to allocate or pull back servers for the applications which have the highest priority at any given time, based upon your priorities.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first step, then, is to find out what the servers in your data centers are doing. Then, if you don't like what they're doing, you can actually do something about it.

Marking green IT's progress: 'it's been slow going'

Two things got me thinking about the state of green IT today. First, with word "leaking" out about President-elect Obama's choice for energy secretary, I started wondering what sort of, um, change might be ahead in how the government will try to shape the energy footprint of data centers. From the energy-efficient data center work we've been involved with over the past 18 months, I'm hoping any actions build on the work that Andrew Fanara, the EnergyStar folks, the EPA, the DoE, and the like have been pushing.

Second, I saw mention of an IDC report yesterday at GreenComputing, predicting it will be a good year for green IT. That's despite the global economic worries. Energy efficiency work in IT will sneak in the data center's back door, according to Frank Gens of IDC, as "cost cutting" as companies look to adopt new technologies only if they have a speedy payback.

Both of those things led me to this question: what kind of progress (or lack thereof?) in data center energy efficiency have we seen in the past 12-18 months?

The Gartner Data Center Conference last week provided some good fodder for a report card of sorts. In fact, they had analyst Paul McGuckin, PG&E energy-efficiency guru Mark Bramfitt, and VMware data center expert Mark Thiele onstage for a panel that pretty much summed it all up in my mind. Some highlights:

"It's been slow going." Bramfitt kicked off his comments acknowledging that the incentive programs he's been running in Northern California for PG&E (the benchmark for many other programs nationwide) have only crept along, even though he has 25 things he can pay end users for. Most, said Bramfitt, are related to data center air conditioning, and not related to IT. Yet.

Despite the slow start, Bramfitt's asked his bosses for $50 million to hand out over the next three years, and was legitimately proud of a $1.4 million check he was presenting to a customer this week (he didn't name them during the panel, but I'm betting it was NetApp based on this story). VMware's Thiele noted that PG&E can actually be pretty flexible in dreaming up ways to encourage data center energy savings. He mentioned creating two completely new incentive programs in conjunction with PG&E in his current job and with previous employers.

People are realizing that energy efficiency is more about data center capacity than cost. Bramfitt noted that the real value of the incentive check that utilities can provide back to end users is not the money. It's the ability to "wave that check around saying, 'Look, PG&E paid me to do the right thing.'" More interestingly, though, "the people in my programs understand that energy efficiency has value for capacity planning and growth," Bramfitt said. "It's a capacity issue. It's not financial."

IT and facilities are only just starting to work together. Gartner's McGuckin said these two groups are still pretty separate. That matches data we published from our energy-efficiency survey from earlier this year. "I'm convinced," said McGuckin, "that we're not going to solve the energy problem in the data center without these two groups coming together."

Thiele talked about an idea that I've heard of being tried by a few companies: a "bridging-the-gap" person -- a data center energy efficiency manager -- that sits between IT and facilities. Thiele has someone doing exactly this working with him on VMware's R&D data centers. This is someone who looks at the data center as a system, an approach that, based on what our customers tell us, really makes a lot of sense. "So far it has been really, really well received," he said.

Mythbusting takes a long time. We started a page on our website of server power management myths back in late summer 2007. One of the first objections we encountered then was that it's bad to turn off servers. We still hit this objection over a year later. And I expect we will continue to for a while yet (old habits die hard!). At one point in the Gartner panel, McGuckin playfully asked Thiele about a power management comment he made: "You're stepping on another myth -- you're not suggesting shutting down servers, are you?"

"I am," Thiele said.

To help Thiele make his point, McGuckin then quoted Intel saying that servers can handle 3,000 power cycles, which translates to an 8-10 year life cycle for most machines if you turn them off once a day (Thiele noted that most get replaced in 3-5 years anyway). We're glad to help these guys do a bit of mythbusting, but I can tell you, it’s not a short-term project. "Things I considered to be gospel two years ago are being heard by people as new today," said Thiele. Having Gartner and other thought leaders continue to add their voice to this discussion can't hurt.

The best thing to do? Nibble at the problem. In the end, suggested Thiele, you need to work on energy efficiency in stages. Maybe that's a metaphor for the progress green IT is making overall. "Nibble at this," he said. "Don’t try to eat the whole whale at once. Pick a couple things you can get some traction on. Get some quick wins."

I know we've certainly adjusted our approach to help customers start small and even set their projects up as self-funding whenever possible. Quick, high-return "nibbles" are probably the best single way to make the case for energy-efficient IT -- and to ensure that next year shows a lot broader success throughout the industry than we've seen in the year that's gone by.