"Earth Hour" in Your Data Center?

On March 29, nearly 60 million people worldwide switched off their lights for one hour in order to show their concern for global warming. (Complete story) From Sydney to San Francisco, people manually turned off lights in office buildings, street signs, and homes. This symbolic gesture was intended to focus attention on rising carbon emissions from human sources, such as office buildings.

I'm sure there were plenty of idle servers on Saturday that could have participated in "Earth Hour." There are probably some idle servers right now in your data center (or engineering lab) that could be powered down. Most data centers are sized for peak traffic/workload that is generally 5-10 times the average traffic/workload. And once you get outside the production environment, there are even more servers in dev/test environments and engineering labs. And you know that those servers aren't being used 24x7.

What if you could power off those idle servers when they're not needed? Better yet, what if your data center or engineering lab could power down idle servers and then power on additional servers as they're needed? The solution is here today and easy to implement. (Read more)

Building a New Data Center Ain't Easy (or Cheap)

Recently, InformationWeek published photos from Google's newest data center that is being constructed in Iowa. (Yes, Iowa.) The two-year project started last year and will cost $600 million. Now that's a lot of click-throughs to cover the construction cost!

I've been involved in some discussions with a customer who's also maxed out their data-center capacity. They still have floor space in the data center, but they've run out of power. And they're in one of those states where electricity is cheap and plentiful. However, the cost of pulling power into the data center will still cost into the high 6-figures (and that's dollars not Yen).

So they're exploring ways to use their data center resources more efficiently. As they deploy new applications, they deploy more servers. (Sound familiar?) However, not all those apps are needed at the same time. Some apps are provisioned to support the maximum traffic. Other apps are cyclical ones that are only during certain time periods.

So this customer has realized that they can still deploy more applications (and servers) by powering off servers that are not needed. This is an easy step that can be done without changing any of their infrastructure or changing the way they deploy their applications. So, they're able to get more headroom out of their existing data center without having to build a new one. Remember, not everyone has a $400 stock!

Introducing a New Social Networking Site

Social networks are all the rage these days. Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook are great ways to stay in touch with friends and colleagues. And you can turn to your network for answers to questions or referrals.

Yesterday, some friends of mine just went live with MyPetStreet, a new social network for pet owners. MyPetStreet provides some unique features for pet owners:

• Aggregated content and news feeds related to pet health, news, and product information.
  
• An repository of pet service providers and resources from the local community.
  
• A forum where users can find expert opinions, share pet owner insights, and ask questions to other pet owners.
• A unique lost-pet service that uses a combination of Web 2.0 technologies and old-fashioned plastic tags.
  

From a technology perspective, MyPetStreet is implemented with some pretty cool technologies. (Sorry, the inner geek takes over.)

• Searching for service providers is implemented using AJAX and Google maps. You simply put in your zip code, search criteria, and voila! The service providers pop up on a map. (Check it out)
• Content management is provided using Drupal, an open-source content-management framework.
• The site is implemented using LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
  

As an owner of four parakeets, I've already checked out MyPetStreet. The directory of service providers in the BayArea is pretty comprehensive, and there's already a pretty sizeable base of content. And, the site is pretty nice implementation as well. Very cool. You should check it out for yourself.

Server Marketshare from Enck and Claunch at Gartner

At the Gartner Conference, John Enck and Carl Claunch (both Gartner analysts) presented some interesting trends in server operating systems. Based on worldwide server shipment revenue, two operating systems are growing in marketshare:

• Windows: $19 billion in 2007
• Linux: $8.6 billion

UNIX marketshare is declining, but was still $16 billion in 2007. The total server shipment revenue in 2007 was $54 billion. Among mainframes, IBM z-Series is growing, while other vendors are decreasing.

Based on a poll of the audience (~300 members),

• 40% were reducing the number of server operating systems at their enterprise.
• 19% were increasing
• 41% were remaining steady

Based on another audience poll for use of blade architectures in the data center:

• 13% are researching blades
• 13% are testing blades
• 54% have deployed blades
• 20% have no plans for blades
  

Some other interesting highlights from this presentation:

• Itanium is viable for only the HP-UX platform but not for other operating systems.
• 80% of all x86 servers deployed in data centers run Windows.
• Solaris, AIX and HP-UX are stable UNIX platforms. Other UNIX platforms are dying.
• Gartner sees a resurgence of physical appliances. Appliances must integrate with existing monitoring and management tools.
  

Leadership Lessons from Commander Mike Abrashoff

At the Gartner Conference, one of the keynotes was from Mike Abrashoff, a former Navy Commander. During his talk, which was titled "It's Your Ship!," he focused on leadership and how you can change the performance of an organization. He used anecdotes from his command of the USS Benfold.

When he took command of the ship, he found that performance suffered from:

1. Infighting among the 5 deparments on the ship
2. Training was cut, due to budget reasons
3. People would complain about things not under their control
4. Tradition: Things were done as they had always been done

Abrashoff worked for William Perry, whom he described as "excellent without being arrogant." He modeled his own leadership after the way Perry treated people.

He spoke about how to instill a sense of urgency. Each month, a different division would "be in the spotlight."

Abrashoff would routinely walk around the ship and talk with sailors. He would ask:

• What do you like most?
• What do you like the least?
• What can we improve, within budget?

Abrashoff instilled a culture where anyone on the ship, regardless of rank, could make a suggestion. Here are some of the suggestions that he implemented:

• Change the bolts on the ship from iron to stainless steel. Instead of painting the ship every 2 months, the ship could be painted every 10 months. This best-practice was then implemented throughout the US Navy.
• Thursday evenings, the crew would gather on the flight deck and listen to jazz and watch the sun set. This improved morale and was relatively cheap to implement.

Abrashoff believes in setting limits and letting people take action within those limits. He also believes in recruiting people everyday even they're already on-board. During his command, the Benfold became one of the top ships in the US Navy based on different performance and productivity criteria. It all starts with leadership!

Gartner's Infrastructure Operations Maturity Model

At Gartner's Data Center Conference, Donna Scott and Jay Pultz, both Gartner VP Analysts,

announced the new Gartner Infrastructure and Operations Maturity Model. There are 6 levels for an organization:

• 0: Survival
• 1: Awareness
• 2: Committed: sufficient resources available (people, capital)
• 3: Proactive
• 4: Service-Aligned (SLA’s defined as IT services)
• 5: Business Partner

From a poll of the audience (~2000 attendees), 60% are at levels 1 and 2, 7% are at level 0 (survival), 19% are level 3 (proactive) and only 1% are level 5 (business partner).

Level 2: focuses on customer satisfaction. Organizations invest in project management, incident management and service support.

There are three components to the IO Maturity Model: People, process and technology. Technology changes are the easiest to implement, followed by process changes and finally followed by people changes (e.g., training and having the appropriate staff).

Technology changes needed for the different levels:

• 1: Asset management system in place
• 2: Consolidation, standards in place
• 3: Automated failover and architecture in place
• 4: End-to-end service levels
• 5: Dynamically change the infrastructure

Levels 2 and below are not sustainable levels. By the end of 2012,

• 35% of large enterprises will be at level 3 (proactive), compared with 25% in 2007.
• 14% will be at service-aligned, compared with 9% today

Bittman Talks about Data Center Sprawl

Okay, this post is a little late, but hey, it was hard to get work done after hours in Vegas. We had booth duty until 8:30pm at the show, followed by a long dinner. I'm not much of a gambler, but I did drop $40 in slot machines, hoping for the big payout. So I didn't break the bank, and I'm back to blogging.

Here are some highlights from Tom Bittman's opening keynote at the Gartner Conference:

Data center sprawl (physical and virtual) can be managed by creating pools of resources. Automation of the Real Time Infrastructure will be the trend if 2010-2016. Virtualization is becoming a commodity. By the end of 2008, the hypervisor will become free. By the end of 2009, there will be 4 million x86 VM’s. Managing those VM's will be the challenge, and where most vendors should focus their efforts.

Real Time Infrastructure

• Resources are shared.
• The interface is business policy and SLA’s.
• Provides agility to applications and services.
• Inputs are service requirements, servers and storage. The outputs are IT services.

CMDB’s must be used with well-defined process. Organizations must make changes to culture and process for CMDB’s to be effective.

Run Book Automation: workflow of operations and process. This is not really technology.

Virtualization enables alternative delivery models:

• Cloud computing / grid
• Software appliances
• Containers
• Infrastructure as a service

Power and cooling are problems. Demand drives an increase in energy requirements. Virtualization solves a short-term, tactical problem. However, virtualization increases the long-term demand for energy, since the barrier to entry for deploying new servers (as VM’s) is reduced.

Over the next few days, I'll try to post about the other sessions I attended. Stay tuned.