Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

This one is a neat article, although you would like to work on the figures yourself. What can we learn from this model? First, we see that power costs not only don’t dominate, but are behind the cost of servers and the aggregated infrastructure costs. Server hardware costs are actually the largest. However, if we look more deeply, we see that the infrastructure is almost completely functionally dependent on power. From Belady and Manos’ article Intense Computing or In Tents Computing , we know that 82% of the overall infrastructure cost is power distribution and cooling. The power distribution costs are functionally related to power, in that you can’t consume power if you can’t get it to the servers. Similarly, the cooling costs are clearly 100% related to the power dissipated in the data center, so cooling costs are also functionally related to power as well. We define the fully burdened cost of power to be sum of the cost of the power consumed and the cost of both the co...

My talk today at a dutch congress, was about security and compliance. Funny thing to see is the bewilderment of the public. This first initial nudge by the EU is a mere reminder that a very resounding governmental interventionism is definitely in the offing. Compliance will come in many ways: There will be strong focus on an organization's CSER policy, one may be asked to demonstrate it periodically GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) will play major role in every strategy and organizations will be tested and funded (under-funded) accordingly A snippet on the expected compliance w.r.t Data Management and Security The EU is asking data centre owners and operators to "voluntarily" sign up to a Code of Conduct (CoC) which will include oversight of their energy efficiency in what could be green regulation through the back door. The European Commission has issued its Code of Conduct for Data Centres Energy Efficiency and invited data centre owners and operators to sign u...

And you guys know who he is , right? :-)I've never seen Sam speak personally. There is however an email waiting for him in his mailbox from me. I sent it a few months back. See the video

Cool video but... - Everything that is being done at the kernel level will eventually (if not already) pass on to the hardware. Virtualization has gone to the chipsets and the chipsets will also do the following: - DPM - Fabric Motion (lot faster) - Fabric Security - Fabric Privacy So you see, all the intelligence is going into the fabric and eventually the OS and the hypervisor will not only be thinned to bare minimum but may virtually vanish as they, or should I say their critical function (OS: host applications, Hypervisor: host OS and Apps stack) gets absorbed into the hardware. But for now, this video may give you the idea of where we're eventully heading for.

Microsoft Corp.'s most technologically advanced data center opens today in Westover Hills. It's a massive $550 million, 470,000-square-foot building that will contain thousands of computer servers, which will begin serving up e-mail, Web pages, pictures, software applications and videos to customers online. “San Antonio is a key hub for Microsoft in its North American distribution system,'' said Mike Manos, Microsoft's senior director of data center services. Microsoft has built two nearly identical buildings under one roof on its 44-acre site. The servers in the first building go live today. The second half of the building is almost done, Manos said. It's expected to be complete within the next few months, he said. Microsoft's facility with 75 employees also has helped to ignite a data center building boom in Westover Hills. Six other companies — Frost, PowerLoft, Stream Realty, Lowe's Corp., Valero Corp. and Christus Health — have projects under wa...

Hardware and services giant Hewlett-Packard, chip-maker Intel and web portal Yahoo! are to build “a globally distributed, Internet-scale testing environment”. This will comprise six giant data centres, located around the world and based mainly on HP and Intel kit, each containing between 1,000 and 4,000 processor cores. This platform will be used as a test bed for experimental ‘cloud computing’ services. Research partners include the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. “With this test bed, not only can researchers test applications at Internet scale, they will also have access to the underlying computing systems to advance understanding of how systems software and hardware function in a cloud environment,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research.

However, a person close to British Energy said EDF had been told earlier of the objections and should not have been telling the press it was a done deal when there were still problems. “Calling a press conference was stupid. They knew the [price] issue was there,” the person said. One EDF board member said on Friday his group thought the UK government’s support for the deal would help persuade the rebellious fund managers. “The French are used to a much more interventionist state. When the state says yes or no, the others follow,” the board member said. The collapse of the deal caught the UK government unawares. John Hutton, the business secretary, had been poised to hail the EDF acquisition today as a significant step in delivering Gordon Brown’s pledge of a new generation of nuclear reactors. Instead, the government must now deal with what Mr Hutton on Friday admitted is a “disappointing” setback to its nuclear strategy. At the press conference that EDF had expected to use for the de...

I've been on two excellent weeks in Normandy , France ( Isigny Sur Mer ) with wife and kids. And obviously I was NOT blogging, although I bought daily the Financial Times newspaper to keep up with the latest news on: - M&A - Globalization and lots. So obviously I have already figured out how we can move from our stove-pipe global economy to the Novo- Global Economy with the " Regulated Jar'ing '). I drew sketches at the back of the newspaper and will soon be posting the framework online as soon as I have the images copied from my cell phone to my laptop. But the vacation was great, we were at a camping and had a great time drinking Cider , Calvados and eating lots of local delicacies, like dairy products etc. Expect power blogging to resume.

CO2 emissions has been the sole cause of eliminating life in the past and it will take our life once again. On a mass scale unless we act. NOW! Following shocking revelations from the past tell us tales that we are in the eye of the storm already. Hundreds of millions of years ago, a sharp rise in CO2 led to mass extinctions. Today humans are witnessing and are responsible for that sharp rise. This is calculated with GEOCARB. Temperature variations since the past 400,000 years. These are changes in CO2 level since industrial revolution.

Satyam Foundation’s CSR activities in Visakhapatnam began in February 2008, when initiatives to help local communities were taken up as part of Satyam’s 20-year anniversary celebrations. Today’s launch will reinforce those efforts to enable social transformation in and around the city. Initial efforts in Vizag include encouraging volunteerism and creating enabling platforms, alliances, and partnerships with the community, NGOs, government agencies, and businesses. These efforts will help identify and prioritize Satyam Foundation programs, which extensively leverage key Satyam differentiators, such as technology, innovation and leadership “Wherever Satyam has a significant presence, we lead programs that serve both the corporation and society,” said Naveen Yelloji, the chief executive officer and director of Satyam Foundation. “The incubation of the Call 104 Health Helpline and the subsequent scaling up of comprehensive health services to all residents of Andhra Pradesh are excellent ex...

You must understand hindi!

Data Center Knowledge first reported Microsoft’s interest in container-based data centers last May, and late in 2007 Microsoft confirmed that it would use container-based data center solutions in the new $500 million, 500,000 square foot facility in Northlake, Illinois. Microsoft’s Debra Chrapaty said the containers could support power densities beyond 1,000 watts per square foot. The layout of the first floor of the Chicago center will feature rows and rows of containers parked at a 45 degree angle. Manos said the facility will accommodate between 150 and 220 shipping containers, which will be shipped and dropped off by trucks. That approach led Microsoft to consult with parking lot operators to address the design logistics of enabling large trucks to navigate within the facility. Shipping containers have been used for years by the U.S. military. In 2006 Sun Microsystems (JAVA) introduce Project Blackbox (now the Sun MD S20), the first effort at a “data center in a box” incorporating ...

O’Brien told Siliconrepublic.com that the Windows Server 2008 is 10pc more efficient than the 2003 version of Windows Server. “We’ve seen customers virtualise 16 machines down to one machine – there is opportunity there to ensure massive consolidation and make savings in terms of cooling and more efficient servers.” He said while 5pc of servers in the Irish market are currently virtualised, some 60pc of Microsoft’s customers currently have a virtualisation evaluation project under way. “This is a hot area right now and offers a lot to business’ bottom line and capability.” Early adopters of the new Windows Server 2008 software include Ryanair, UTV, Hosting 365, Netforce, Merill lynch, University College Cork and Nissan Ireland. Nissan Ireland is implementing the software to help reduce energy costs. “Virtualisation with Hyper-V will allow us to reduce power consumption, build an R&D environment and will form a core part of our business recovery plan,” commented Rory Donnelly, CIO, ...

Press Release here: Fuel-efficient engine The People’s Car has a rear-wheel drive, all-aluminium, two-cylinder, 623 cc, 33 PS, multi point fuel injection petrol engine. This is the first time that a two-cylinder gasoline engine is being used in a car with single balancer shaft. The lean design strategy has helped minimise weight, which helps maximise performance per unit of energy consumed and delivers high fuel efficiency. Performance is controlled by a specially designed electronic engine management system. Meets all safety requirements The People’s Car’s safety performance exceeds current regulatory requirements. With an all sheet-metal body, it has a strong passenger compartment, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat belts, strong seats and anchorages, and the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body. Tubeless tyres further enhance safety. Environment-friendly The People’s Car’s tailpipe emission performance exceeds regulatory requirements. In te...

Hu has something to tell about it: In September of this year Hitachi ltd, our parent company announced a program in Japan that is known as CoolCenter50 which is targeted at reducing power consumption in their Yokohama and Okayama data center by 50% in 5 years. This effort encompasses all of the groups in Hitachi including, air conditioning, power generation, IT equipment and management software. In support of this goal, Naoya Takahashi, the Executive General Manager and Vice President of the Information and Telecommunications Group announced last week the Harmonious Green Plan which aims to reduce 330,000 tons of CO2 in the next 5 years through the development of power saving IT products. Dr. Takahashi is the same Takahashi who is credited with the development of the USP storage virtualization platform and its predecessor, the Lightning 9990. So when Takahashi-san states that this is the goal, there is a track record that gives it a great deal of credibility. The amount of reduction ...

Got this comment by Eredux folks. Check out the CO2 footprint per state.

Hitachi's new Dynamic Provisioning software is meant to enable customers to allocate virtual disk storage based on their anticipated future requirements without dedicating physical disk storage up front. If the need for additional physical disk arises, capacity can be purchased at a later time-at a lower cost-and implementation occurs transparently, without any disruption to mission-critical applications. Link

I have opened a question on C limate Change in LinkedIn and got this reply from a Programmer @ Fedex who also gave a link to this site. Quoting the NewScientist.com: Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors. Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences. Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up....

General Introduction Virtualization has come a long way, it has come from the cradle of the developers to the masses. It has happened right under our noses, and then we are talking about the noses of all the big business firms that ignored the trend. It has happened and exploded while many of the vendors were sleeping, and now it is taking over the x86 servers, 95% of the market yet to be capitalized, and soon it will proliferate into the desktops, mobile devices and who knows, some day into your daily appliances such as washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, TV sets, Green Vehicles, Oven/Microwaves, all apparatuses that consume energy. And it will come to all of us, even to you, as a consumer, who will be held accountable for your energy consumption at work, but also at home. I see it as an "optimization phase", with the advent of windows we saw a visible shift from “Centralized Computing Environment”, the mainframes computing where everyone got its own “space” on the ...

Responding to growing customer demand for integrated hosting and network services, SAVVIS, Inc. (NASDAQ:SVVS), a global leader in IT infrastructure services for business applications, today announced plans to open two new data centers in the Boston and Chicago metropolitan areas. The new centers will provide a broad range of IT infrastructure services, including colocation, managed hosting, virtualized and utility computing, managed networks, and security, to meet the growing needs of enterprise IT. Which is not a bad thing as long as others, clients thus, keep shutting down theirs! Link