server Archives

July 18, 2009April 27, 2025

Summer Weddings: EMC+Datadomain and HP+IBRIX

Storage I/O trends

Are you friend or family of the bride or groom?

That’s a question me and Mrs. Schulz were asked recently when we attended a wedding.

Summer months particularly June and August are known as wedding months (Hmmm, more merger & acquisition activity to come?). Summer is a nice time of the year for marriages at least in the U.S. and how ironic that we have already seen two well publicized IT data storage industry unions in the past couple of weeks, not to mention other smaller less publicized ones.

In one case, the California based bride (Datadomain-DDUP) had two courtiers (Massachusetts based EMC and California based NetApp, plus rumors of others). Fortunately one of those had a prenuptial that earned them a cool $57 million for their efforts (NetApp-NTAP) when EMC won the bride. Read more including some of my comments and perspectives among others about EMC, NTAP and DDUP here and here.

Yesterday, on a mid-July Friday, when things are normally quiet, in true wedding industry forum, news was released (here and here) that California based HP announced that it had bought Massachusetts based data and storage management software vendor IBRIX.

That’s a lot of activity involving California and Massachusetts in the past couple of weeks, not to mention the tornado sightings in the vicinity of EMCs Hopington Massachusetts headquarters coincidently around the same time the marriage to DDUP was formerly announced! What’s’ next, Aerosmith is out on tour, perhaps the Del Fuegos or Boston will perform at one of these wedding parties?

Within the data storage industry, publicly traded Datadomain (DDUP) is fairly well known to many for their role in helping to popularize the data footprint impact reduction technique refereed to as de-duplication (e.g. normalization, commonality factoring, intelligent compression, etc.). Adding to the awareness of DDUP was the recent highly public courtship with EMC eventually out-bidding NTAP with a dowry of about $2.1B USD. That type of press coverage and monetary amounts might normally be expected for the likes of a Madonna, Brittney Spears, Michael Jackson-RIP, Paris Hilton, Elizabeth Taylor or other celebrity unions covered by paparazzi with a similar number of attorneys involved.

On the other hand, IBRIX while known to some, is a lessor known entity compared to DDUP having taken a lower profile than even some of their close competitors. However for those who have been following and covering the clustered storage market (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here ), IBRIX is a well known entity.

IBRIX also has had ties to EMC having been involved in a pre-mari age affair with an reseller arrangement along with being "rumored" ;) to have been involved with ATMOS cloud or policy based storage solution formerly known as "Hulk". IBRIX has also quietly been involved with others like Dell as well as HP in similar to EMC reseller arrangements. Where IBRIX has been positioned is to address high performance, scale out parallel or concurrent clustered file system needs, both big and small I/O, sequential and random data storage and access. For example, in the media/entertainment and other industries along with enabling large Internet providers a bulk (low cost, high capacity) scale-out NAS (NFS & CIFS) option.

One of the reasons that IBRIX has been involved with the likes of EMC, Dell and HP among others is that unlike other vendors such as BlueArc, the once high-flying Isilon, NetApp, Onstor or Panasas, not to mention EMC Cellera NAS , is that those solutions are all bundled with proprietary hardware while IBRIX is software based. Where IBRIX Fusion fits is to enable NAS storage solutions using industry standard hardware (servers and storage) that are capable of being configured for both high performance compute (HPC) along with for low-cost general purpose bulk storage to support Web 2.0, social networking, home directories or on-line archives.

Consequently, and HP or Dell who just happen to sell servers, have had the ability of meeting large scale out and scale up NAS file serving applications by re-selling IBRIX installed on their servers or blade servers with either their own entry to mid-range lower cost, high performance and high capacity storage along with that of 3rd party vendors.

Ironically one of IBRIX’s competitors in the software NAS solution market was and remains PolyServe, software that HP acquired a couple of years ago to create their own scale out NAS solution (e.g. EFS). Other software based solutions include among others Lustre (Sun), CXFS (SGI), EMC ATMOS (I’m sure some will argue this is not scale out or NAS, will leave it at that for now) ;) not to mention those from IBM, Microsoft, Quantum (also re-sold by HP) or Symantec.

What does HP get with IBRIX?

Simple, the ability to own the IP (intellectual proprietary) that one of their competitors had been "rumored" to have been working with at one point, IP that their competitors had been reselling like themselves.

Thus HP gets more software IP that can and has been sold along with their hardware such as the Proliant servers and blade servers giving their customers choice, similar to what HP and other vendors do with their open servers. For example, HP had the ExDS9000 extreme storage system built on a blade server with high density, low cost, high capacity HP storage (e.g. HP Modular Disk System 600, HP MSA or even EVA).

This makes for a nice solution for bulk on-line and near-line storage applications where the emphasis is not as much on performance, rather massive scalability for storing on-line documents, archives, videos, images and other unstructured content which is where there is a lot of growth activity. The challenge is that the ExDS9x00 has only been available with the HP PolyServe software which works good for some environments, yet, for others, the clustered file system scale out capabilities of IBRIX were deployed.

With the addition of IBRIX, HP now should be able to provide their customers and prospects the choice of software to meet specific needs while maintaining an HP footprint, that is both hardware, software and services. HP has several different storage software stacks that they now own (e.g. Lefthand for clustered iSCSI, PolyServe for NFS/CIFS NAS, IBRIX for Clustered File system scale out NAS) not to mention those that it OEMS including among others Bycast (Medical Archive System) that is also OEM’d by IBM as their Medical Grid combined with IBM SOFS, Quantum StorNext and Microsoft Windows Storage Server and Sepaton (VTL and Dedupe) to name a few.

Do I think this was a good move by HP?

Yes as it gives them control over IP that they had been reselling as had some of their competitors who left IBRIX to HP to grab up. HP now has the IP which they can package with their hardware similar to how they have been doing, and giving customers choices to align the right hardware and software technology to the task at hand.

Whether it be Bycast for medical archiving, PolyServe or IBRIX for scale out NAS, Lefthand for clustered iSCSI, Sepaton for VTL and dedupe, Microsoft, Quantum StorNext for shared block storage serving or any of the other software packages HP offers with their industry standard servers, the customer has options.

For IBRIX customers and prospects, this move will give them a boost in a confidence that their decisions and investments are safe.

Ironically, vendors like Symantec with their Scaleable File Serving (SFS) clustered NAS solution that is also software based and runs on anyone’s open servers including those from HP gets a potential shot in the arm with HP validating the model and approach for bulk-storage and clustered NAS (Oh Mr. Salem, Mr. Dell is holding on Line 1, Mr. Chambers is on line 2 and Mr. Ellison on line 3 ;) )

Who’s going to be at the alter next? IMHO, I would keep an eye on (and this all just pure speculation) Bycast, Symantec, EMLX (Broadcom was a wake up call), Quantum, Sepaton, STEC, StorMagic, or ACS, maybe even 3PAR among other possibilities (think outside of the lines). I would not rule out a major game changer such as someone buying NetApp or the likes of an HP buying an EMC or Oracle buying a CSC, maybe even a CSCO buying someone like NTAP, how about Oracle buying NTAP and putting some attorneys out of work, not to mention, who will MSFT hook up with? Anything is possible as we have seen and traditional M&A wisdom is out the window.

Have fun at the next wedding you attend, go easy on the cake and wedding punch, especially if you will be doing any dancing (please, no You tube videos of the chicken dance) and be careful throwing rice or other items.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

July 1, 2009April 27, 2025

Green Storage is Alive and Well: ENERGY STAR Enterprise Storage Stakeholder Meeting Details

While Green hype and green washing may be on the endangered species list if not already extinct, there are many things taking place to shift the focus from talking about being green to enabling and leveraging efficiency and optimization to boost productivity and enable business sustainability.

The industry has seen and is seeing the shift from the initial green hype cycle of a few years ago to the more recent trough of disillusionment (or here) typically found with a post technology or trend hangover, to the current re-emergence, and growing awareness of the many different faces and facets of being green.

Granted there has been some recent activity by the U.S. government to add new climate control legislation (e.g. HR2454 – Waxman/Markey) to build on previous clean air acts of the 1990s as well as those dating back to the 1970s and earlier.

While the green gap (or here) still exists with confusion by IT organizations that Green is only Green if and only if it is about reducing Carbon footprints as opposed to the realization that there are many different faces or facets of being Green and efficient. For example, there is also a growing awareness that addressing power, cooling, floor-space or footprint to enable sustained business growth as well as enabling next generation virtual, cloud as well as traditional forms of IT service ennablement has both economic and business benefits. That is, determining energy usage, shifting from energy avoidance to expanding and supporting energy efficiency initiatives along with boosting productivity, doing more with what you have, fitting into and growing within current or future constraints on available power, cooling, footprint/floorpsace, budget or manpower constraints while improving on service delivery to remain competitive. (Learn more in "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) )

Regardless of if you are a eco-tech warrior or not, learning about and then closing the Green gap and how shifting a focus towards efficiency has both business economic and environmental benefits and helps to break down some of the perceptions about what Green is or is not.

One such activity is the U.S. EPA Energy Star program which is about as much energy avoidance as it is about energy efficiency You might be familiar with Energy Star logos on various consumer products around your home or office as well as for laptops, notebooks, desktop and workstations. Recently EPA released a new standard specification for Energy Star for Servers and is now currently working on one for enterprise storage. As part of the initiative, stakeholders or those with an interest in data storage are invited to participate in upcoming EPA working sessions to provide feedback and input on what is important to you.

Here’s the message received from the EPA via their mailing list this past week (in italics below):

Dear Enterprise Storage Stakeholder or Other Interested Party:

Provided below are additional details regarding the ENERGY STAR® Enterprise Storage Stakeholder Meeting scheduled for Monday, July 20, 2009 in San Jose, CA. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to use this opportunity to review feedback on the ENERGY STAR Specification Framework document and discuss initial plans for a Draft 1 specification. A conference call line will be provided to stakeholders who are unable to participate in person.

Date: Monday, July 20, 2009
Time: 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM Pacific Time (lunch will be provided)
Location: The Sainte Claire Hotel, 302 South Market St., San Jose, CA 95113, 408.295.2000, www.thesainteclaire.com
Conference Call Phone: Provided with meeting registration

EPA would like to thank the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) for providing lunch, refreshments, and logistical support for the ENERGY STAR stakeholder meeting.

For the convenience of meeting attendees, this event is being held in conjunction with the SNIA Technical Symposium being held July 20-23, 2009.

For more information on this event visit: ;

The Sainte Claire Hotel is offering a special room rate of $149/night for participants in the ENERGY STAR Stakeholder Meeting. Rooms can be booked by following the link to the SNIA Technical Symposium Web site.

Please note: Whether you plan to attend in person or via conference call, you must RSVP to storage@energystar.gov no later than Monday, July 13, 2009. Conference call information and a copy of presentation materials will be distributed to all registered attendees in advance of the meeting.

As a reminder, stakeholders are encouraged to submit feedback on the ENERGY STAR Enterprise Storage Specification Framework to storage@energystar.gov no later than this Friday, July 3, 2009.

The latest program documentation is available for download at www.energystar.gov/newspecs.

If you have any questions please contact Steve Pantano, ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com or Andrew Fanara, US EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov.

Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR!

Learn more at www.energystar.gov

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

June 27, 2009March 7, 2022

Big Fish and Small Fish – Fish story or the one that did not get away?

Its been a very busy year and we are not quite half way through 2009 yet. For those who follow or read this blog as well as other venues where I have material appear, or give interviews, quotes and perspectives, or have appeared in person, you probably have caught on that its been a busy year for me along with my book “The Green and Virtual Data Center”. However, all work and no play makes for a dull day and recently as things have finally settled down just a bit for a few weeks during the early summer time of the year, I have been able to get out and enjoy the out doors including fishing to which I must prefer over golf (I don’t have the patience for the game ;) ).

However, as is often the case when relaxing, some things can be come clear, new ideas come to mind and one such recent one is the notion of the big fish and the small fish. What caught my thoughts was that there is often the infatuation with the big fish, the big game vs. the fun of catching something small just for the fun of it.

Freshwater drum I caught near our home on the St. Croix River

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy deep-sea saltwater or even great lakes fishing, I enjoy the pursuit of the elusive walleye or other game fish, however a friend recently helped me to acquaint myself with the simplicity of catching small pan fish such as sunfish aka bluegills or pumpkin seeds.

What has become fun about this over the past week or two is one, the big game or sport fish have been elusive and instead of listening to stories of what got away or what’s not biting or how bad the fishing has been, me and fishing friend decided to change the game a bit and find what was biting or just for fun, do something different. Low and behold, about a week ago we set out to see how many species of fish we could catch in a day and we ended up with about three dozen sunnies (we threw almost all of them back, e.g. released), over a dozen bass including some large ones most of which were also released, a nice channel cat which was set free to find its friend cat-fish hunter, not to mention various others including a swamp shark aka northern pike, the cousin to the muskie and distant relative, or at least a perceived similarities to the barracuda.

Being a member of "The St. Croix Hookers, Catch and Release Division", most of the fish get released, however now and then we will keep some for dinner.

The other evening, I decided to try something different again which was to use very light tackle, an ice fishing rod to be precise and fish out of a kayak for sunnies, sure enough, it was not easy, the catch was not big, however the reward was fantastic in terms of getting into some backwaters we could not normally go with the regular boats, and yes, even caught a fish and yes, there were others that got away.

Greg fishing from Kyak - Photo courtesy of Karen Schulz (c) 2009 all rights reserved
It’s not a monster, however on light line, an ice fishing rod and from a kyak, it’s a blast! (Photo courtesy of Karen Schulz (C) 2009)

I find it interesting that so many vendors, especially startups are in pure pursuit of the big game, the big fish which of course should the catch it, they have a story to talk about.

However I have also seen where so many ignore revenue, footprint, mind share and success at the cost of big game fishing for what ever reasons. This is where I realized a similarity with fishing recently. The same elusive fish that everyone else from other startups to existing players are all in pursuit of, yet so often get neglected the other smaller fish that while it takes more of, help to add to the footprint and success stories to build on, not to mention gather experience.

Granted, its tough to make a meal on just small fish, however there is balance and even the biggest of vendors are showing an awareness of the need for balanced portfolio from SOHO to SMB to SME to enterprise offerings from servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software and services.

Food for thought when the technology fishing slows during the dog days of summer, change-up the game or the approach a bit, explore alternate opportunities, try old tricks with new techniques to keep things interesting and productive. Certainly don’t ignore where everyone else is fishing or pursuing, however, break away and try something different, or, perhaps an area or opportunity that others might be ignoring or forgetting about in their pursuit of the big one that may end up getting away!

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center”. (CRC)
Technorati tags: The Green and Virtual Data Center

Posted on June 14, 2009November 26, 2023

Shifting from energy avoidance to energy efficiency

I’m continually amazed at the number of people in the IT industry from customers to vendors, vars to media and even analysts who associate Green IT with and only with reducing carbon footprints. I guess I should not be surprised given the amount of rhetoric around Green and carbon both in the IT industry as well as in general resulting in a Green Gap.

The reality as I have discussed in the past is that Green IT while addressing carbon footprint topics, is really more about efficiency and optimization for business economic benefits that also help the environment. From a near-term tactical perspective, Green IT is about boosting productivity and enabling business sustainability during tough economic times, doing more with less, or, doing more with what you have. On a strategic basis, Green IT is about continued sustainability while also improving top and bottom line economics and repositioning IT as a competitive advantage resource.

There is a lot of focus on energy avoidance, as it is relatively easy to understand and it is also easy to implement. Turning off the lights, turning off devices when they are not in use, enabling low-power, energy-savings or Energy Star® (now implemented for servers with storage being a new focus) modes are all means to saving or reducing energy consumption, emissions, and energy bills.

Ideal candidates for powering down when not in use or inactive include desktop workstations, PCs, laptops, and associated video monitors and printers. Turning lights off or implementing motion detectors to turn lights off automatically, along with powering off or enabling energy-saving modes on general-purpose and consumer products has a significant benefit. New generations of processors such as the Intel Xeon 5xxx or 7xxx series (formerly known as Nehalem) provide the ability to boost performance when needed, or, go into various energy conservation modes when possible to balance performance, availability and energy needs to applicable service requirements, a form of intelligent power management.

In Figure 1 are shown four basic approaches (in addition to doing nothing) to energy efficiency. One approach is to avoid energy usage, similar to following a rationing model, but this approach will affect the amount of work that can be accomplished. Another approach is to do more work using the same amount of energy, boosting energy efficiency, or the complement—do the same work using less energy.

Figure 1 the Many Faces of Energy Efficiency (Source: “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

The energy efficiency gap is the difference between the amount of work accomplished or information stored in a given footprint and the energy consumed. In other words, the bigger the energy efficiency gap, the better, as seen in the fourth scenario, doing more work or storing more information in a smaller footprint using less energy.

Given the shared nature of their use along with various intersystem dependencies, not all data center resources can be powered off completely. Some forms of storage devices can be powered off when they are not in use, such as offline storage devices or mediums for backups and archiving. Technologies such as magnetic tape or removable hard disk drives that do not need power when they are not in use can be used for storing inactive and dormant data.

Avoiding energy use can be part of an approach to address power, cooling, floor space and environmental (PCFE) challenges, particularly for servers, storage, and networks that do not need to be used or accessible at all times. However, not all applications, data or workloads can be consolidated, or, powered down due to performance, availability, capacity, security, compatibility, politics, financial and many other reasons. For those applications that cannot be consolidated, the trick is to support them in a more efficient and effective means.

Simply put, when work needs to be done or information needs to be stored or retrieved or data moved, it should be done so in the most energy-efficient manner aligned to a given level of service which can mean leveraging faster, higher performing resources (servers, storage and networks) to get the job done fast resulting in improved productivity and efficiency.

Tiering is an approach that applies to servers, storage, and networks as well as data protection. For example, tiered servers include large frame or mainframes, rack mount as well as blades with various amounts of memory, I/O or expansion slots and number of processor cores at different speeds. Tiered storage includes different types of mediums and storage system architectures such as those shown in figure 2. Tiered networking or tiered access includes 10Gb and 1Gb Ethernet, 2/4/8 Gb Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), iSCSI, NAS and shared SAS among others. Tiered data protection includes various technologies to meet various recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) such as real-time synchronous mirroring with snapshots, to periodic backup to disk or tape among other approaches, techniques and technologies.

Technology alignment (Figure 2), that is aligning the applicable type of storage or server resource and devices to the task at hand to meet application service requirements is essential to archiving an optimized and efficient IT environment. For example, for very I/O intensive active data as shown in figure 2, leveraging ultra fast tier-0 high-performance SSD (FLASH or RAM) storage, or for high I/O active data, tier-1 fast 15.5K SAS and Fibre Channel storage based systems would be applicable.

For active and on-line data, that’s where energy efficiency in the form of fast disk drives including RAM SSD or FLASH SSD (for reads, writes are another story) and in particular fast 15.5K or 10K FC and SAS energy efficient disks and their associated storage systems come into play. The focus for active data and storage systems should be around more useful work per unit of energy consumed in a given footprint. For example, more IOPS per watt, more transactions per watt, more bandwidth or video streams per watt, more files or emails processed per watt.

Figure 2 Tiered Storage: Balancing Performance, Availability, Capacity and Energy to QoS (Source: “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

For low-performance, low activity applications where the focus is around storing as much data as possible with the lowest cost including for disk to disk based backup, slower high capacity SATA based storage systems are the fit (lower right in figure 2). For long-term bulk storage to meet archiving, data retention or other retention needs as well as storing large monthly full backups or long term data preservation, tape remains the ticket for large environments with the best combination of performance, availability capacity and energy efficiency and cost per footprint.

General approaches to boost energy efficiency include:

Do more work using the same or less amount of power and subsequently cooling
Leverage faster processors/controllers that use the same or less power
Apply applicable RAID level to application and data QoS requirements
Consolidate slower storage or servers to a faster, more energy-efficient solution
Use faster disk drives with capacity boost and that draw less power
Upgrade to newer, faster, denser, more energy-efficient technologies
Look beyond capacity utilization; keep response time and availability in mind
Leverage IPM, AVS, and other techniques to vary performance and energy usage
Manage data both locally and remote; gain control and insight before moving problems
Leverage a data footprint reduction strategy across all data and storage tiers
Utilize multiple data footprint techniques including archive, compression and de-dupe
Reduce data footprint impact, enabling higher densities of stored on-line data

Find a balance between energy avoidance and energy efficiency, consolidation and business enablement for sustainably, hardware and software, best practices including policy and producers, as well as leveraging available financial rebates and incentives. Addressing green and PCFE issues is a process; there is no one single solution or magic formula.

Figure 3 Wheel of Opportunity – Various Techniques and Technologies for Infrastructure Optimization (Source: “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Instead, leverage a combination of technologies, techniques, and best practices to address various issues and requirements is needed (Figure 3). Some technologies and techniques include among others infrastructure resource management (IRM), data management, archiving (including for non-compliance), and compression (on-line and off-line, primary and secondary) as well as de-dupe for backups, space saving snapshots, and effective use of applicable raid levels.

Green washing and green hype may fade away, however power, cooling, footprint, energy (PCFE) and related issues and initiatives that enable IT infrastructure optimization and business sustainability will not fade away. Addressing IT infrastructure optimization and efficiency is thus essential to IT and business sustainability and growth in an environmentally friendly manner which enables shifting from talking about green to being green and efficient.

Learn more on the tips, tools, articles, videos and reports page as well as in “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” (CRC) pages, “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC) pages at StorageIO.com.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Posted on June 12, 2009March 7, 2022

Catch of the day or post of the day!

Ok, I know, its been a couple of weeks since my last post. Sure I have been tweeting now and then, attending several briefings with new emerging as well as existing vendors for up-coming announcements, not to mention getting some other content out from webcasts, to podcasts, or videos, interviews, articles, tips and presentations at various events, pertaining to Green IT, virtualization, cloud storage and computing, backup, data protection, performance, capacity planning among other topics.

Anyway, for now a quick post as I have many others that I have been wanting to do and will be doing soon, however wanted to get a few things out sooner vs. later, and after all, all work and no play makes for a dull day right?

Well, last week after spending a couple of days in Chicago at Storage Decisions where I presented a couple of sessions and recorded several videos, I had a chance to get out and do some fishing and catching. Fishing is always great, however catching (and release) is even more fun, especially when you can catch some, toss some, and keep some for dinner which is what occurred last week when my friend Rob and me ventured out for a couple of hours and found where the fish were (see picture) on the St. Croix river.

Rob on left (Bruins warm up jacket for Bass fishing), Greg on the right (Mustang PFD Jacket)

From right to left, bottle bass (caught at the dock ;) ), stripped bass, northern pike (swamp shark), more stripped bass, and another bottle bass (also caught at the dock).

Ok, nuff fish talk for now, back to work, get a few things done, and then maybe this weekend, get another blog post done, maybe some fishing, and enjoying the summer weather before heading off to Toronto on Monday for Storage Decisions on Tuesday, then a couple of webcasts and web radio events on Wednesday among other activities.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Posted on May 8, 2009May 24, 2020

Determining Computer or Server Energy Use

Recently I posted a response to a question over at IT Knowledge Exchange (e.g. ITKE) about how to determine power or energy use.

In a nutshell:

Depending on what you are looking for, or trying to accomplish, you may, or may not need a formula per say.

For example, if all you need to know is how many volts, amps, watts, kva, or btu’s are used by a particular computer or other IT device for that matter, first things first check the “tag” or “label” on the device as well as included documentation, or, on-line spec sheets and documentation.

There are also some measuring devices including among others Kill A Watt that you can plug a device into and see volts, amps, watts, and so forth.

Ok, that might have been the obvious and easy part, now on to the next step.

Often a name plate may give kva however not watts, or perhaps amps and volts however not kva or some other metric. This is where the various conversion formulas come into play.

For example, if you know volts and amps, you can get watts, if you know kva along with watts, amps or volts, you can derive the others, or, if you have btus, you can watts, or if you know watts you can get btus and so forth.

Btu/Hour = watts * 3.413
Watts = Btu/Hour * 0.293
Watts = Amps * Volts
Volts = Watts / Amps
Amps = Watts / Volts
VoltAmps (Va) = Volts * amps
KVA = (Volts * Amps) / 1000

Here’s a link to some additional conversions and formulas that along with many others are found in my new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC).

www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com/greenmetrics.html

In “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC). book, there is an entire chapter on metrics, where and how to find them, formulas, conversions as well as other related items including determining energy costs, carbon footprints, cooling and more across servers, storage, networks, facilities along with associated management tools.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Posted on April 26, 2009January 23, 2019

U.S. EPA Energy Star for Server Update

Following up on previous blog posts, here’s the latest on the U.S. EPA Energy Star for Servers program (in italics below) that was received this week:

Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Industry Stakeholder,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) welcomes your input on the attached Final Draft ENERGY STAR® Version 1.0 Computer Server specification. Also attached is the latest version of the Power and Performance Data Sheet, referenced in Section 3.C of the specification. Please note that this is the final opportunity to comment on EPA’s proposal prior to finalization.

Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments on the Final Draft specification and Power and Performance Data Sheet to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com no later than May 8, 2009.

The data set used to derive newly proposed I/O Idle allowances will be available for download from the ENERGY STAR Enterprise Server specification development Web page at www.energystar.gov/NewSpecs within the next several days.

Stakeholders with questions or concerns can contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at (206) 553-6377 or fanara.andrew@epa.gov.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Posted on April 26, 2009January 23, 2019

U.S. EPA Looking for Industry Input on Energy Star for Storage

Following up on previous blog posts, here is some information that the U.S. EPA is looking for comments from industry on an Energy Start for enterprise storage program following on the heels of the Energy Star for Server program.

U.S. EPA Energy Star Wants and Needs You!

Here’s the message received from the EPA via their mailing list this past week (in italics below):

Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:

Please see the attached letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcing their intent to pursue development of an ENERGY STAR specification for Enterprise Storage equipment. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano, ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.

Thank you for your support of ENERGY STAR.

Here’s the intro letter excerpted from the above email notification (in italics below):

April 23, 2009

Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:

This letter is intended to inform all stakeholders that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to continue its efforts towards the development of an ENERGY STAR® specification for enterprise data storage equipment. Following is an outline of EPA’s general goals and next steps.

ENERGY STAR is a voluntary partnership between government, businesses, and purchasers designed to encourage the manufacture, purchase, and use of efficient products to help protect the environment. Products that earn the ENERGY STAR prevent greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy efficiency guidelines. Manufacturers that qualify their products to meet ENERGY STAR requirements may use the label as a tool to educate their customers about the enhanced value of these products.

To date:
•More than 2,000 manufacturers are partnering with ENERGY STAR,
•More than 40,000 product models carry the ENERGY STAR label across more than 50 product categories,
•More than 70% of Americans recognize the ENERGY STAR label,
•Consumers have purchased more than 2.5 billion ENERGY STAR qualified products, and
•Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved enough energy in 2008 to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 29 million cars — while saving $19 billion on utility bills.

In the last several years, the energy saving opportunities in data centers have been well documented. However, barriers to energy efficiency still persist and need to be addressed. EPA is pursuing a dual strategy to overcome these challenges by helping purchasers more easily identify energy efficient IT equipment with the use of the ENERGY STAR designation, and by encouraging organizations to benchmark the energy performance of their data centers.

In pursuit of this strategy, EPA will introduce an ENERGY STAR Computer Server specification in the coming weeks. In addition, EPA recently conducted a scoping effort to evaluate enterprise storage products for inclusion in the ENERGY STAR program. EPA reviewed available market research and facilitated discussions with product manufacturers, industry associations, and other interested parties. EPA concluded that IT purchasers would benefit from access to standardized information about the energy performance of storage equipment made available through the ENERGY STAR program. As a result, EPA intends to begin the specification development process. Details on this process will be forthcoming in the next several weeks.

To be added to the enterprise storage e-mail distribution list, please send your full contact information to Stephen Pantano at spantano@icfi.com. To stay informed about the ENERGY STAR specification development process for computer servers and other EPA data center initiatives please visit: www.energystar.gov/datacenters.

Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR and please direct additional questions to Andrew Fanara at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano of ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.

Sincerely,

Andrew Fanara
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Protection Partnerships Division ENERGY STAR Program Manager

My take on the Energy Star programs is that as long as they add value including reflecting how energy is effectively used both when IT equipment such as servers and storage are in use, as well as in energy saving or avoidance modes are reflected, they can and should be a good thing.

However industry will need to work together across different trade and focus groups as well as factor in how supporting metrics will be applicable and reflective thus accepted by IT data center environments. This means metrics and measurements for both active or working while in use energy efficiency modes such as IOPS, bandwidth, messages or transactions, files or videos per watt of energy, as well as metrics for in-active or dormant data such as capacity per watt per usable footprint. Check out Chapter 5 (Measurements and Metrics) in "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) to learn more.

Various industry trade and focus groups including Storage Performance Council (SPC), SNIA GSI, Green Grid, SPEC and others are working on various metrics and aligning themselves to work with EPA. If you are in an IT data center involved with servers or storage, consider getting involved with one or more of these groups to help influence and shape what these programs will look like or affect your organization in the future.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Posted on April 20, 2009March 7, 2022

IBM Out, Oracle In as Buyer of Sun

Following on the heals of IBM in talks with Sun that broke down a week or so ago, today’s news is Oracle has agreed to buy Sun extending Larry Ellison’s software empire as well as boosting his hardware empire from fast sport platforms to server, storage and other IT data center hardware.

What’s the real play and story here is certainly open to discussion and debate, is it good, is it bad, who are the winners and losers will be determined as the dust settles, not to mention as responses from across the industry, not to mention new product announcements and enhances slated by some for as early as this week. What if any role does Cisco wanting to get into servers and maybe storage play, does Oracle want to make sure they remain at the big table?

Regarding discussions of this deal, what it means, the twitter world has been abuzz already this morning, click here to see and follow some of the conversations, perspectives and insights being exchanged.

Nuf said for now, its time to get ready to head off to the airport as I’m doing several events speaking and keynote sessions this week on the right coast while the left coast is abuzz with the Sun & Oracle activity.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Posted on April 4, 2009December 29, 2025

Storage Decisions Spring 2009 Sessions Update

The conference lineup and details for the Spring 2009 Storage Decisions event (June 1st and 2nd) in Chicago is coming together including two talks/presentations that I will be doing. One will be in Track 2 (Disaster Recovery) titled "Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery" and the other in Track 6 (Management/Executive) titled "The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization" with both sessions leveraging themes and topics from my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC).

Track 2: Disaster Recovery
Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery
Presented by Greg Schulz, Founder and Senior Analyst, StorageIO
Server virtualization has the potential to bring sophisticated business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) techniques to organizations that previously didn’t have the means to adopt them. Likewise, virtualized as well as cloud environments need to be included in a BC/DR plan to enable application and data availability. Learn tips and tricks on building an accessible BC/DR strategy and plan using server virtualization and the storage products that enable efficient, flexible green and virtual data centers.

Topics include:
* Cross technology domain data protection management
* Tiered data protection to stretch your IT budget dollar
* What’s needed to enable BC/DR for virtualized environments
* How virtualization can enable BC/DR for non-virtualized environments
* General HA, BC/DR and data protection tips for virtual environments

Track 6: Management/Executive
The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization
Throw out the "green“: buzzword, and you’re still left with the task of saving or maximizing use of space, power, and cooling while stretching available IT dollars to support growth and business sustainability. For some environments the solution may be consolation while others need to maintain quality of service response time, performance and availability necessitating faster, energy efficient technologies to achieve optimization objectives. To accomplish these and other related issues, you can turn to the cloud, virtualization, intelligent power management, data footprint reduction and data management not to mention various types of tiered storage and performance optimization techniques. The session will look at various techniques and strategies to optimize either on-line active or primary as well as near-line or secondary storage environment during tough economic times, as well as to position for future growth, after all, there is no such thing as a data recession!

Topics include:
* Energy efficiency (strategic) vs. energy avoidance (tactical)
* Optimization and the need for speed vs. the need for capacity
* Metrics and measurements for management insight
* Tiered storage and tiered access including SSD, FC, SAS and clouds
* Data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe) and thin provision
* Best practices, financial incentives and what you can do today

See you in Chicago in June if not before then. Learn more about other upcoming events and activities on the StorageIO events page.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

Posted on March 31, 2009December 29, 2025

March and Mileage Mania Wrap-up

Today’s flight to Santa Ana (SNA) Orange County California for an 18 hour visit marks my 3rd trip to the left coast in the past four weeks that started out with a trip to Los Angeles. The purpose of today’s trip is to deliver a talk around Business Continuance (BC) and Disaster recovery (DR) topics for virtual server and storage environments along with related data transformation topics themes, part of a series of on-going events.

Planned flight path from MSP to SNA courtesy of Northwest Airlines, now part of Delta

This is a short trip to southern California in that I have to be back in Minneapolis for a Wednesday afternoon meeting followed by keynoting at an IT Infrastructure Optimization Seminar downtown Minneapolis Thursday morning. Right after Thursday morning session, its off to the other coast for some Friday morning and early afternoon sessions in the Boston area, the results of which I hope to be able to share with you in a not so distant future posting.

Where has March gone? Its been a busy and fun month out on the road with in-person seminars, vendor and user group events in Minneapolis, Los Angles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Minneapolis for CMG user group, Cincinnati and Orange County not to mention some other meetings and consulting engagements elsewhere including participating in a couple of webcast and virtual conference/seminars while on the road. Coverage and discussion around my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) continues expand, read here to see what’s being said.

What has made the month fun in addition to traveling around the country is the interaction with the hundreds of IT professionals from organizations of all size hearing what they are encountering, what their challenges are, what they are thinking, and in general what’s on their mind.

Some of the common themes include:

There’s no such thing as a data recession, however the result is doing more with less, or, with what you have

Confusion abounds around green hype including carbon footprints vs. core IT and business issues

There is life beyond consolidation for server and storage virtualization to enable business agility

Security and encryption remain popular topic as does heterogeneous and affordable key management

End to end IT resource management for virtual environments is needed that is scalable and affordable

Performance and quality of service can not be sacrificed in the quest to drive up storage utilization

Clouds, SSD (FLASH), Dedupe, FCoE and Thin Provisioning among others are on the watch list

Tape continues to be used complimenting disks in tiered storage environments along with VTLs

Dedupe continues to be deployed and we are just seeing the very tip of the ice-berg of opportunity

Software licensing cost savings or reallocation should be a next step focus for virtual environments

Now, for a bit of irony and humor, overheard was a server sales person talking to a storage sales person comparing notes on how they are missing their forecasts as their customers are buying fewer servers and storage now that they are consolidating with virtualization, or using disk dedupe to eliminate disk drives. Doh!!!

Now if those sales people can get their marketing folks to get them the play book for virtualization for business agility, improving performance and enabling business growth in an optimized, transformed environment, they might be able to talk a different story with their customers for new opportunities…

What’s on deck for April? More of the same, however also watch and listen for some additional web based content including interviews quotes and perspectives on industry happenings, articles, tips and columns, reports, blogs, videos, podcasts, webcasts and twitter activity as well as appearances at events in Boston, Chicago, New Jersey and Providence among other venues.

To all of those who came out to the various events in March, thank you very much and look forward to future follow-up conversations as well as seeing you at some of the upcoming future events.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

Posted on March 18, 2009December 29, 2025

Out and About Update

As part of the continuing on the road theme and series, this post is being done while traveling for this weeks adventures and events including stops in Atlanta, St. Louis and wrapping up the week in Minneapolis at the local CMG quarterly meeting event. At both last weeks events in Las Vegas and Milwaukee as well as this weeks events talking with IT professionals from various organizations, a consistent theme is that there is no data or I/O recession, however there is the need to do more with less while enabling business sustainability.

While VMware remains the dominant server virtualization platform, I’m hearing of more organizations using Citrix or other Xensource based technologies along with some Microsoft HyperV adopters in part to leverage lower cost of ownership compared to VMware in instances where not all of the feature functionality of the robust VMware technology is needed. This will be an interesting scenario to keep an eye on in the weeks and months to come to see if there are any shifting patterns on the server virtualization front while trying to stretch IT dollars further to do more.

On the Merger & Acquisition (M&A) scene, coverage of on again, off-again and recently rekindled rumored of IBM buying Sun is rampant from the Wall Street Journal to twitter and most points in between. There have been many storm clouds around Sun the past several years from a business and technology perspective, and perhaps the best thing is for Sun and IBM to combine forces and resources, bridging the gap between old physical worlds and new virtual cloud enabled worlds so to speak. Personally, I like the idea for many different reasons and think that some shape or form of an IBM and Sun deal either in entirety, or pieces is far more likely to occur and sooner, than seeing funds returned from either AIG or Bernard Madoff, the other top news items this week, nuf said for now about IBM and Sun.

Also this week, other activity included Cisco announcing that they are testing the waters to enter into the server market space to help jumpstart the converged networking space with some of my initial comments here and here. Check out StorageIO in the news page here for other comments on various IT industry trends, technologies and related activities including a recent piece by Drew Robb about The State of the Data Storage Job Market.

Lets see how this plays out with more to say later, thanks again for everyone who came out for last weeks as well as this weeks events, look forward to seeing and talking with you again soon I hope.

Cheers – gs

Technorati tags: Recession, Sustainability, Wall Street Journal, Data Center Bottlenecks, Performance, Capacity, Networking, Telephone, Data Center, Consolidation, Virtualization, VMware, Server, Storage, Software, Sun, IBM, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atlanta, CMG, AIG, Bernard Madoff, Cisco

Posted on March 8, 2009December 29, 2025

Work and Entertainment From Coast to Coast

A week ago I was in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami Florida for a mix of work and relaxation along with Karen (Mrs. Schulz), visiting with my cousin and her husband who lives in the St. Pete beach area for a few days before back to work. While in the St. Pete and Tampa area, for fun, we did an afternoon at Busch Garden including a ride on Montu. For those who have not ridden on Montu, here’s a video I found that someone recorded to help give you a perspective of the ride. Other fun activities included stops or time at Billys Stonecrab and Seafood joint, Kayaking, lounging pool-side, shelling at Ft. Desoto and St. Pete Beach as well as a visit to the Hurricane among others.

In Miami, the pool area at the Four Seasons including a nice cabana pool-side spot to escape the cool breeze made for a great relaxing and catch-up on some work spot while Karen relaxed in the sun. Some of the restraunts in Miami we visited when taking a break from work included Gordon Birsch and Rosa for some outstanding, made at the table side fresh Guacamole en Molcajet!.

Speaking of work, the Florida trip involved doing keynotes at events in both Tampa and Miami with a theme of IT Infrastructure Optimization with both events being well attended. Themes included doing more with less, or, doing more with what you have, addressing data footprint and data management to boost productivity, how to address the continued growth in data and need to process, move and store more data and information. A discussion point prompted the thought of if there is a data recession or not (See previous blog post and here). Other topics of discussion and interested included converged networking for voice, data and general networking, security, server and storage virtualization, performance and capacity planning, data protection and BC/DR among others.

This past week involved a lunch and learn Keynote in the Minneapolis area with a local VAR, before a quick trip to the other (left) coast for another IT Infrastructure Optimization session and keynote, this time in Los Angeles. Some common themes heard from IT professionals at this past weeks events echoed those heard in Florida as well as concern about managing encryption keys not to mention securing virtual environments and software licensing models in virtualized server environments. The trip to LA also enabled a quick visit with friend Bruce Rave of Go Deep fame who provided a great tour and sightseeing of the Hollywood music scene.

Hollywood stops included dinner at Genghis Cohens (The duck and cashew chicken were outstanding) followed by visits to the Cat and Fiddle and Infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill next door to legendary Roxy. People watching was great as was the music and ambiance including a Nikki Sixx of Motely Crew sighting at the Rainbow as well as Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN seen in hotel lobby minutes after appearing on Larry King Live.

Thanks too everyone who came out and participated in the seminar events in Tampa, Miami, Minneapolis and LA, look forward to seeing and hearing from you again soon. Now its time to get ready to head off too the airport for this weeks events and activities including stops in Las Vegas and Milwaukee among others.

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

Posted on March 7, 2009January 23, 2019

Update: EnergyStar for Server Workshop

Here’s an update from a previous post about US EPA EnergyStar program team looking for data center feedback on the draft specs for EnergyStar for servers.

Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Interested Stakeholder,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host an online stakeholder meeting on Monday, March 16 from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. EST to discuss the recently released ENERGY STARÒ Draft 4 Computer Server specification.

To participate in this online meeting, stakeholders must register no later than Thursday, March 12. Please RSVP to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com. If registering colleagues along with yourself, please include names, email addresses, and whether phone connections to the audio portion of the meeting will be shared. There will be a limited number of lines available so attendees representing the same company are encouraged to share a connection.

Instructions for joining the online meeting will be provided via email to confirmed attendees on Friday, March 13. The Draft 4 specification and supporting documents are available on the ENERGY STAR Web site at www.energystar.gov (Click on New Specifications in Development).

For those stakeholders who are unable to join the discussion, slides and meeting notes will be posted to the ENERGY STAR Web site.

Stakeholders with questions can contact Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at (202) 862-1266 or Andrew Fanara, EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov and (206) 553-6377.

Thanks for your continued support of ENERGY STAR!

There you have it, get involved if inclined, provide feedback, comments, critique or what have you.

Cheers – gs

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