Environment

• Server News – Getting Greener with 80 PLUS, Busting Benchmarks

  Wed. Jun. 25, 2008
  by David Graves, Editor—Inside IT

  Great news from the server team today:

  First, Albert Esser, our VP, Power and Infrastructure Solutions, posted on Direct2Dell that we are the first in the industry to achieve 80 PLUS Gold-certification for a server power supply. The cool part is that it meets July 2009 Climate Savers targets for servers more than a year ahead of schedule, which require 92 percent minimum efficiency for the power supply unit at 50 percent of rated output.

  Up next…Dell’s PowerEdge™ 2900 III server now tops all competitors with a new number one ranking for price/performance on the TPC-C benchmark.

  · The leading price-per-transaction (price/tpmC) TPC-C result achieved 97,083 transactions per minute with a price/performance of $.68/tpmC.¹

  · The PowerEdge 2900 III achieved the new TPC-C price/performance world record benchmark result with Oracle® Database 11g Standard Edition One running on Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, and utilizing one Intel® Quad-Core Xeon® 2.83 GHz processor.

  · Dell’s two-socket tower or 5U PowerEdge 2900 III server provides customers with a versatile platform designed for handling the most demanding workloads and application requirements. The 2900 III can be used for a variety of purposes including database, messaging and virtualization.
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• Green Shout Out from ZDNet

  Fri. Jun. 06, 2008
  by David Graves, Editor—Inside IT

  In case you missed it, ZDNet "GreenTech Pastures" writer Heather Clancy gave Dell some green props this week in her post, "Dell's Esser: Green Tech is Not Just About the Data Center."  

  No doubt energy efficiency is critically important in the data center - but there's a lot of other places we need to be looking too. (Gartner says 40% of carbon emissions come from client systems and monitors)

  Also of note - we're the first IT vendor to attain Silver status under the 80 PLUS power supply designation.

  Thanks, Heather, for the kudos and for your continued focus on the subject of Green IT.
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• No Retiring From Technology

  Fri. May. 23, 2008
  by David Graves, Editor—Inside IT

  Brett Ortega faced a challenge. He is the redevelopment and project manager, of American Baptist Homes of the West.

  ABHOW's mission is to enhance the independence, well-being and security of older people by providing housing, health care and supportive services.

  Brett discusses their increasing technology needs - all over wireless access, adding more servers without adding data center space are a few examples.  His team of 8 IT pros and 7 technicians did it. And saved a bunch of money and went green at the same time.

  Format: flv Duration: 4:12

  Downloads WMV  MP4  OGG
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• Using Green IT To Get Into the Black - A How To Guide

  Wed. May. 14, 2008
  by David Graves, Editor—Inside IT

  "Nowhere are the potential benefits of a green strategy more compelling than in the data center." That's according to our power & cooling guru, Dr. Albert Esser in his new article "Using Green IT To Get Out Of The Red And Into The Black" that was just published in The Environmental Leader.

  Also important in driving down costs is how an organization approaches power management across its PCs. A 2007 Gartner study estimates that 40 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions are due to PCs and monitors, while 23 percent are due to servers and associated cooling technology in data centers.

  Statistics like this are among the reasons why we continue to take aggressive steps in providing with the most energy efficient products in the industry. Today, we just announced a 25% energy efficiency improvement commitment for our laptops and desktops. Read more here.

   
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• Green economics from the Uptime Institute Symposium

  Thu. May. 01, 2008
  by Albert Esser- VP, Power & Infrastructure

  I spoke this week at the Uptime Institute’s Symposium 2008. Green IT is a topic that undoubtedly is becoming more top of mind among CIOs and data center managers.

  Research from the Uptime Institute indicates that enterprise greenness is both socially responsible as well as economically smart. I couldn’t agree more.

  Greening your data center for efficiency is both good for the environment, since you’re lowering your overall CO2 emissions, and good for your pocketbook, since you’re able to reduce power consumption across your IT infrastructure. And this can be done without sacrificing performance. Dell analysis has shown that customers can lower their data center energy consumption by 45 percent while maintaining the same compute performance. This is the result of taking a holistic approach to data center energy efficiency which takes into account the synergy between hardware, power utilization rates, cooling and software solutions.

  Dell’s position is that you cannot afford not to be green. And the Uptime Institute would agree that the time to begin greening your data center isn’t sometime in the future – it is now. What questions do you have around the topics of Green IT or power & cooling? Let me know, and I’ll be sure to get back to you with answers.
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• How much can you turn off?

  Fri. Apr. 25, 2008
  by Marc Farley, Inside IT Lead Blogger
  Technorati Tags: ken brill,uptime institute,greenbiz,Blades,Dell,Energy conservation,Green benchmarks,Green technology,HP,Hardware,IBM,Open Source Systems (OSS),Power consumption,Power supplies,Sustainable IT

  GreenBiz radio has an interview with Ken Brill of the Uptime Institute.  Its a bit long, but all the text is there so you can speed read through it if you want.

  One of the more interesting things that Brill claims is that lots of energy can be conserved by turning off equipment that isn't being used.  Here's a quote from the interview transcript:

  KB: Well, the institute believes that IT could radically reduce its energy consumption, and it would save money in the process. And there are a number of things that people can do and we're gonna be talking about these at our upcoming symposium. But the first thing that people can do is to go through their data center and identify what is running that could just be turned off. Between 10 and 30 percent of the energy consumption in a typical data center is for servers and storage and other things that is no longer in use.  And it could just be turned -- I mean, as literally, as simple as turning the switch.

  Ken has some interesting things to say about blade servers too. Just like any other technology, there are important differences in blade server designs.
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• How should we measure Earth Day?

  Tue. Apr. 22, 2008
  by Albert Esser- VP, Power & Infrastructure
  Technorati Tags: Data Center,Data Centers,metrics,earth day

  Earth Day is a day to reflect on our planet’s condition and to re-dedicate ourselves to the work that lies ahead. One of the keys to effective conversation is having good metrics that indicate the progress we are making. That’s why we became one of the founding members of The Green Grid, an international consortium of companies dedicated to improving energy efficiencies in data centers and business computing ecosystems. One of the first Green Grid initiatives was to develop standard measures of infrastructure efficiency. As we said in an earlier podcast, there was no standard way to determine if you had a data center that was wasting energy. During its first full year, The Green Grid has been very successful in promoting the first set of these measures: Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE) and Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).(PDF link)

  DCiE and PUE are reciprocal metrics that describe how efficiently a data center powers and cools its equipment. A DCiE of 33% (the equivalent of a PUE of 3.0) means that 33% of the total power use is going to the data center. A PUE of 3.0 means that 300 watts into the facility in order to deliver 100 watts to the IT equipment. The other 200 watts is overhead. Obviously, efficient data centers look to reduce that.

  Why are these measures so important? You can only improve what you can measure. Standardization is essential to the development of benchmarks, which then can be used for improvements. Individual companies cannot do this all alone, which is why The Green Grid is having such a seminal impact on improving efficiency in data centers. DCiE and PUE are just the beginning. We’re looking forward to expanding our work to include data center productivity, methods for assessing data center designs, operations and technologies to improve data center efficiency.

  Dell believes The Green Grid helps our customers directly address the power and cooling issues that they face. These efforts, along with our own, will not only increase data center efficiency, but provide the ReGeneration for a much more sustainable computing ecosystem. The February issue of Power Solutions magazine has a number of excellent articles to read (PDF link) that can bring you up to speed.
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• “Ask Albert” – Your Green IT, Power & Cooling Questions Answered

  Fri. Apr. 04, 2008
  by Rebecca Thorburn, Green IT/ Power & Cooling

  If you’ve glanced through other posts we’ve made thus far on Inside IT, you probably quickly realized that green IT and power & cooling are much talked about topics. While we’re intent on becoming the greenest IT company on the planet, it’s also extremely important to us that we enable customers to achieve new levels of “greenness” across their operations.

  As part of sharing our green IT/power & cooling expertise with you, we’re beginning an ongoing series of posts today under the heading of “Ask Albert.” Dr. Albert Esser is Dell’s resident green IT/power & cooling guru. He’s our evangelist when it comes to helping customers understand the importance of simplicity behind revealing their hidden data centers. Trust us – if you have a question related to green IT or power & cooling, he has an answer for you. Folks in the media also have increasingly been turning to Albert for his insight on the subject – check out his recent commentary in this Financial Times article, "Is Your Data Centre up to Speed?"

  So, we want to know what your green questions are. Send them our way so that Albert can share his answers and help point you in the right direction on power & cooling challenges that you might be facing.

  Here’s a question Albert received recently from Jeffrey Huskamp, vice president and chief information officer at the University of Maryland, regarding best ways to help make their data center more energy efficient.

  Format: flv Duration: 7:35

  Downloads WMV  MP4  OGG
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• It Ain’t Easy Being Green – We’re Getting There

  Wed. Apr. 02, 2008
  by David Graves, Editor—Inside IT

  Dell just announced a very cool green initiative. The company will now run its 2.1 million square-foot global HQ campus – home to more than 10,000 employees - using “green” power exclusively. Obviously, that includes a lot of IT infrastructure to power, not to mention keeping the lights on or the building cool in the Texas heat.

  What is green power and where does it come from? According to the EPA’s definition – “ green power is a subset of renewable energy and represents those renewable energy resources and technologies that provide the highest environmental benefit. EPA defines green power as electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact small hydroelectric sources. Customers often buy green power for avoided environmental impacts and its greenhouse gas reduction benefits.”

  In this case, Dell will be getting the power from two sources. Dell is using all of the power generated from Waste Management’s Austin Community Landfill gas-to-energy plant, meeting 40 percent of Dell HQ needs. The remaining 60 percent comes from existing wind farms and is provided by TXU Energy.

  Full news release, Dell’s 2008 carbon neutral commitment. Dane Parker, Dell’s director of environmental health and safety, has a post and video about creating a clean energy future on Direct2Dell.

  Good for the environment. Good for the company. Good all around.
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• Our Global Green IT/Power & Cooling Discussion

  Fri. Mar. 28, 2008
  by Albert Esser- VP, Power & Infrastructure

  I've been on the road in China most of this week and had a great opportunity to meet with journalists and analysts during an event in Beijing. My discussion with them focused on how we help customers address power and cooling challenges that they face in their data centers. This is a growing global issue - one that IDC refers to as the number one challenge faced by data center managers today.

   Dell takes a comprehensive approach to power and cooling in the data center, taking into account the synergy between equipment, power utilization rates, cooling and software solutions. By doing so, we help customers to "reveal their hidden data centers" - essentially enabling them to identify and take advantage of previously unutilized compute capacity within the same power envelope. Analysis we've done shows that we can help customers increase data center performance by 97 percent using the same space. This holistic approach to energy efficiency enables customers to extend the life of their existing data centers and helps them avoid or postpone costly rip-and-replace infrastructure upgrades or building new facilities.

   You can hear more details from my recent discussion on this topic during The Register's Green Computing Debate. I'm also interested in hearing and answering your questions related to Green IT and power & cooling. Please send your questions my way so we can help you properly address energy efficiency and take the next step toward revealing your hidden data center.  
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