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1/13an Networking eBook

Bringing Order tothe Data Center


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2 Is Your Data Center an Ugly Baby?

4 The Five Stages o Highly E ective Data Centers

8 Why You Need a Fuller Data Center

10 Clean Your Data Center, Cut Your Electric Bill?

Contents

This content was adapted from Internet.coms ServerWatch, Developer.com, and InternetNews Web sites. Contributors: Kenneth Hess, Art Sedighi, and Andy Patrizio.

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Bringing Order to the Data Center


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2 Bringing Order to the Data Center , an Internet.com Networking eBook. 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.Back to Contents


Youve thought it but you didnt say anything. Youknow its an ugly baby but your sense o decen-cy prevents you rom saying what youre reallythinking. Your internal editor engages and dis-

connects your tongue rom your brain just in time. Un or-tunately, I dont have that same internal editor.

Your data center, a.k.a. your baby, is a mess. Not a messin the traditional sense everything has its place in a rackor cabinet, cables all neatly tied,

ans blowing, lights blinking but its still a mess. An ugly mess.Someone with no internal edi-tor tells you that its a mess andyou eel your blood pressure rise,your neck tighten, and your voicecrack when you respond, Weve

just poured hundreds o thou-sands o dollars into it, and nowyou say its ugly.

This kind o honesty isnt neces-sarily the best way to start a busi-ness relationship. Shakespearesaid o himsel , Though I am notnaturally honest, I am so some-times by chance, which brings tomind a related personal story o

honesty and an ugly baby.

The ConsultIn late 1997 I met with the CIO o a local health care man-agement company who wanted me, as a consultant, towalk through his acility and his data center and give himsome opinions on his services and a quotation or upgrad-ing his 800 desktop systems. I took a walk with him whilehe described the server systems, the cooling costs, the air

exchange rates, the call center, and that he didnt want tomove to Windows 95 or his desktop operating system.Say what? Thats right, he was still using Windows 3.11, andhe wasnt about to change to Windows 95.

He wanted to move to Windows NT 3.51. Yes, I know that

Windows NT 4.0 had hit the market more than year earlierand he was aware o it, too. However, he considered it tobe too unstable or production. I smiled, nodded po-

litely, and anticipated returningto my o ce to tell my employeesId just wasted two hours with anover-employed victim o nepo-tistic hiring practices.

The InsultI never gave the CIO a ollow-upcall, nor did I o er a quotatio

or any work. I decided the wholeexperience was a bad dreamand orgot about it until almosta year later. In September 1998,when I received a call rom theCIO asking me or a rm quotation to convert his desktops toWindows 98, I couldnt believemy ears. When the numbness in

my brain subsided, I let out a laugh that took him by sur-prise. Whats unny about that? he asked with child-likeinnocence. I explained to him that Windows 95B was arsuperior to the fedgling Windows 98. Alternatively, I sug-gested he consider Windows NT 4.0 Workstation insteado Windows 95B or Windows 98.

He disagreed but asked me to explain my viewpoint, and Ibelieve he used the words be honest somewhere in thesame sentence. That was his mistake.

Is Your Data Center an Ugly Baby?By Kenneth Hess


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You should never ask or honesty unless youre prepared tohear it. Honestly, you shouldnt.

I didnt want this job, so I elt ree to express my honestopinion o his bleeding edge (his words, not mine) datacenter and proposed Windows 98 in ested desktop uto-pia. A hal -hour later, his ear was tired, his heart was heavy,and his opinion o me had dropped aster than real-estatevalues in Orange County.

My actual words were, Your data center looks like youretrying to fy the Starship Enterprise using Wright Brotherstechnology, and youre sending smoke signals rom yourdesktops. The data center looked cool, but he was usingold operating systems and old server technology. I alsotold him that his desktops were only hal o his problem.Almost every server needed an upgrade or a re resh. Hemust have spent a ortune each month on service con-tracts or products that had surpassed their standard ven-dor support li e.

I told him he had an ugly baby. It was liberating and cathar-tic to tell him so. And, that was one ugly baby.

The ResultSurprisingly, he still wanted a quotation or the work. I

guessed he needed three quotations to satis y his corpo-rate work proposal requirements. I submitted the quota-tion. He didnt call back, Two weeks later, I saw a com-petitor at the acility per orming the upgrade. I stoppedto taunt my competitor and to check on the jobs progress.He rolled his eyes several times during the ve-minuteconversation stating that he was taking a beating on this

job because almost every computer needed hardware up-grades that he hadnt planned on when he submitted hisquotation. When I turned around, I elt vindicated in myugly baby assessment o the job, the data center, and the

misin ormed CIO.

What do you do i you have an ugly baby? You cant coverits ace and tell everyone its asleep until it reaches a cut-er age. Data centers dont work that way. I youve mademistakes, cut your losses and x whats broken. Pouringmoney into a bad plan doesnt make the plan better, but itdoes put your job and your companys pro ts at risk. Un-less your ather-in-law is the CEO, you need a better planthan covering up a bad plan with a worse plan.


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It is no longer enough to simply buy servers. Why?Not because you can never have enough servers, orblades, or workstations; but because you can never

have enough computing power. I you dont agreewith this statement, you should stop reading the rest o this article, and go and do something more valuable withyour time.

Management o compute-resources has become exponen-tially more challenging as the sheer number o resources isincreasing and the complexity o these resources is becom-ing less transparent. Resources are becoming more com-plex as accelerator technologies such as GPU and FPGAbecoming more prevalent and multi-core processors are

throwing a curveball to developers with the concept o aheterogeneous multi-core processor.

From the business side o things, requirements keep com-ing in and demands are more complex; new Quality o Ser-vice (QoS) requirements, new response time requirement,and so orth. How did we get here? Where are we going

rom here and how can we get there? One thing is or sure,and that is the act that there is no magic. Its a processand we have to go every step o this ( ve-step) process inorder to come out on top. Assuming that on top o your

game is where you want to be.

The Five StagesWhat are these ve stages that I am re erring to?

Chaos: Bunch o servers1.Organized Chaos: Management o servers; grid computing2.Uni ormity: Focusing on per ormance; cluster computing3.Understanding: Focusing on scalability and business needs;4.utility computing

Order: Seamlessness and adaptation; cloud and adaptive5.computing

Figure 1 urther illustrates these ve stages, and the rest othis article will be ocused on explaining these ve stages.

Figure 1: The fve stages o data center ma nagement.

The Five Stages of Highly EffectiveData CentersBy Art Sedighi


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Grid does add a layer o provisioning and management tothe in rastructure. The in rastructure is more proactive inthat it has some capability to seek proper resources or agiven job. In heterogeneous environments, this seek andyou shall nd mentality is very use ul. This model can result in lower network e ciency, but having more resourcesavailable at your ngertips will increase the quality o ser-vice (QoS).

Clusters: Uni ormityWants and wishes turn to requirements a ter a grid solu-tion has been deployed. These requirements usually have

a tighter response time and

better QoS de nitions. It turnsout that although grids abilityto tie together heterogeneousenvironments and make bestuse o underlying resources isdesirable; its inability to usethe network e ciently renders itsel problematic whenresponse-time requirementsget tighter.

A cluster environment is usual-ly composed o homogenousmachines in close proxim-ity such as a data center. Thistighter coupling o resourcesallows or a better responsetime, and the close proximityo resources allow or a rea

sonable recovery in case o ailure. You are, however, running the risk o lower utilization because you are excludingsome o your resources rom your cluster or per ormanc

reasons. The obvious next step here is to mix the two envi-ronments and make one large compute backbone or theenterprise.

First: There Was ChaosThe rst goal or the IT part o any organization is avail-

ability. Most o the time, this directly translates to the no-tion o buying two o everything and having a backup orevery major system. Not much is done in terms o man-agement or automation. When a server ails, the backuptakes over. The problem with this approach is the act thatat most one could only achieve 50 percent utilization (onesystem at 100 percent utilization, one system waiting a ail-ure at 0 percent utilization). The other faw with this server

arm approach is that the IT organization is mostly play-ing catch up; in other words, waiting or something togo wrong and then try to x

the problem. This is a reactiveapproach to the problem, andnot proactive. What makessense here is to be more pro-active and add a layer o man-agement to the in rastructure.

Grid: Chaos.Organized.Why is grid chaotic? The wholepurpose o grid is to increaseutilization o the resources.This is achieved by e ectivemanagement o the in rastruc-ture. This comes at a greatcost: availability. For an orga-nization to choose grid over aserver arm, it must evaluatethe trade-o s between avail-ability vs. utilization.

A grid in rastructure promises higher utilization o resourc-es. These resources are the disaster recovery (DR) re-sources purchased in case o a primary node ailure. Thegrid starts utilizing those resources (albeit to achieve a bet-ter Quality o Service), but this means those resources areno longer immediately available in case o ailure. The keyphrase here being immediately. Obviously, the propergrid in rastructure can increase the utilization o the exist-ing in rastructure, but we are ocusing on the utilization o resources in a data center, and o a speci c resource.


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Utilitarianism: Key to UnderstandingSharing is key! The ability to share resources o di erent

types among users is a power ul and yet mostly under-utilized concept. As discussed in the previous section,the goal here is to combine all resources: slow and ast,desktops and blades, and so on. A concept known mostlyas the single-system image (SSI) allows or both environ-ments (grid and cluster) to work side by side. Geographi-cally disjointed, but still accessible and can meet the QoSrequirements.

This is a di cult stage to get to because there are twoends o the spectrum to meet: on one end, you need to

meet tight requirements and meet stringent QoS require-ments; on the other end, you need to increase utilization o your resources and still not be heterogeneous and ad-hocin resource acquisition.

Adaptation: Cloud and BeyondWhats next or your data centers? You need to go beyondplanning and provisioning. I am not suggesting oregoingdata centers, but rather making them more adaptive. Thisis the promise o cloud computing: the ability to adapt tousers needs without intervention or much planning.

What is added here is the ability to oresee changes; anadded layer o sel -monitoring where changes are antici-pated; where sharing o resources goes beyond job place-ment but rather the ability to tailor underlying resources tomeet the need o your job(s). This is not as uturis tic as youmight think.

SummaryRecall what you seek at each stage:

Stage 1: Availability

Stage 2: Utilization

Stage 3: Per ormance

Stage 4: Scalability

Stage 5: Seamlessness

What you need is a plat orm that will guide you throughthese stages o enlightenment. It does not make any sense

or a large organization to go right to stage ve. Smaller or-

ganizations can skip a couple o steps, but a large organi-zation needs to go through the initial planning stages. Thisis due to the act that all large organizations have legacyhardware and so tware applications that need to be dealtwith. Its that whole migration and integration step thatprevents you rom jumping right into a cloud, so to speak.

Most commercial plat orms are able to add order to cha-os; some are able to achieve per ormance at the cost o scalability. Keep in mind that scalability and seamlessnessmust go hand-in-hand; in other words, avoid the scenario

where the next resource added to the data center is thestraw that broke the camels back.


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High-density readiness: Delivers superior cooling for blade

servers and switches; handleslarge cable volumes

Any-IT compatibility:Reduces the challenge of matchingoften incompatible IT products

Deployment-friendly design:Optimizes space, installation, anddeployment speed via standard features

Finally, custom data center capabilitieswithout all the customizing.

2010 Schneider Electric, All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric, APC, Legendary Reliability, InfraStruxure, and NetShelter are owned by Schneider Electric, or its affiliated companiesin the United States and other countries. e-mail: [email protected] 132 Fairgrounds Road, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA 998-2227

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A system for high-density data centers Todays data centers run on virtualization and high-density processing. To keep up,you need rack enclosures and rack PDUs that allow you to adapt easily to ever-changing technologies. Only APC by Schneider Electric delivers rack enclosuresand rack PDUs that are purposely designed as a system to enable integration of HD blade servers and large core switches, while also addressing correspondingpower, cooling, and space challenges.

Easy-to-deploy design with any-IT compatibilityEven though APCs NetShelter SX enclosure and rack PDU system canaccommodate a complex IT landscape, choosing and deploying the correct systemcouldnt be simpler. The integrated zero-U rear channels provide tool-less mountingof cable managers and low-profile rack PDUs, and the large-capacity cablemanagers allow simple routing and management of HD networking applications.

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The bridge to InfraStruxure APCs rack enclosure/rack PDU system is the bridge to our complete InfraStruxuredata center architecture. Its the essential first step toward building a truly flexible,efficient data center founded on Legendary Reliability.

Basic PDUAllows for remote

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Switched PDUMetered PDU Measures andmonitors potentialoverloads, withalarm warning

Puts power in therack enclosure nearthe equipment whereit is needed most

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No, you dont need more servers in your datacenter, more racks, or more anything. Im re-

erring to the Buckminster Bucky Fuller con-cept o doing more with less and, no, you

dont have to construct your data center inside a geodesicdome to reap the bene ts

o his design genius. A datacenter is similar to how Fullerdescribed himsel : A verb dynamic and evolving. Forthe sake o your pocketbookand sanity, simplicity and aminimalist approach are thegoals and Fuller-compliantto boot.

Data centers evolve, in stan-

dard evolutionary orm, romsimple, easy-to-manage en-tities into complex, unman-ageable behemoths. Theyreso complex that we must usemaps, codes, and port sni -ers to nd our quarry in oneo these modern spaghetti-wired menageries. Theres a need to return to simplertimes to create e ciency out o chaos to create aFuller Data Center.

Server ConsolidationEveryone who begins a server consolidation project muststart with gathering and analyzing per ormance statistics

rom the projects targeted systems. Dissimilar or comple-mentary workloads work best on consolidated systems.Consolidating web services onto a single system might

not provide the per ormance or redundancy youre look-ing or, so aim or complementary services instead. Thismeans that databases and web services happily co-existbecause they tap di erent system resources.

When looking or servers tha

need consolidation, look orCPUs less than 50 percent to60 percent busy and memoryin the less-than-60 percentutilized range. Systems withutilization consistently above70 percent should stay putas standalone servers. Highdisk utilization o ten requireseparation o logs rom applications to make things

run better, so dont assumehigh disk utilization preventsconsolidation. For example,database servers per ormmore e ciently by separating the databases rom theirlogs onto separate disks andcontrollers.

Virtualization Virtualization is o ten at the heart o a server consolidatione ort. Un ortunately, or some engineers contemplatinvirtualization, a one-to-one physical-to-virtual conversionis the norm. Remember that doing more with less is not

just about a physical-to-virtual conversion, but it is aboutapproaching a minimalist stature or your in rastructure

Virtualization helps move you toward a smaller hardwareootprint, but a concerted e ort o consolidation and vir

tualization should take place simultaneously.

Why You Need a Fuller Data CenterBy Kenneth Hess


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Look or a realistic 2:1 or 3:1 consolidation ratio when un-dertaking such a project, and stick to that goal as you makeyour consolidation and virtualization decisions.

O site MigrationHow about taking your hardware ootprint to absolute zerowith an o site data center migration? Moving all o yourservices to a cloud or server hosting provider is the ulti-mate in minimization e orts. Cleaning out your data centerin avor o an o site one might take some paradigm shi t-ing, but it will be worth the energy once it is complete. Andcertainly nothing motivates consolidation and minimizinglike paying a hosting provider or services. You might nd

that youll save a ton o money having someone else hostthose services or you.

Emptying your data center might not be rst on your list o to dos , but you should keep it in mind i consolidation andvirtualization dont meet your savings expectations.

Make do more with less your new mantra when consid-ering the current state o your data center. Per orm serverconsolidation, virtualization, and o site migration projecton paper rst, and then compare them judiciously be orecommitting to a particular strategy or set o strategies.Save enough money on this project and you might haveenough to build that geodesic dome house youve cov-eted since the 1970s.


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Many data centers are not well managed andcould become much more e cient withouthaving to spend a dime on new gear, accord-

ing to research by the Uptime Institute.

The common sales pitch orachieving data center e ciencyis to toss out all o the old andreplace with shiny new blinkingblack boxes. That might suit thelikes o IBM, HP, and Dell just

ne, but Kenneth Brill, execu-tive director o the Uptime Insti-tute, an organization dedicated

to improving data center powere ciency, said thats not whatsneeded.

This is not a technology prob-lem, its an economic and leader-ship problem, he told Internet- News.com . The economics o IT has undamentally changed.Those companies that dont getit will start to see an economic

impact.

Currently, data center acilitiesaverage around 8 percent o total IT expenses, with someas high as 15 percent, and that will go to 20 percent inthe coming years. One reason or that is data centers havemoved o site. In the company o yesteryear, the datacenter was one room in the corporate o ces with an IBMmain rame on a raised foor.

Today, companies have their rows upon rows o x86 servers,switches, backup systems, and storage housed in separate

acilities, and are putting so much into brick-and-mortar

acilities that pro tability is being a ected, said Brill.

Under One RooThe rst problem is that these

acilities are not managed by IT,they are o ten managed by an-other part o the company thathandles acilities. IT never seetheir own energy bill, said BrillThe CIO needs to be more eco-nomically aware o these things.

Facilities and IT expenses aresiloed and kept separate romeach other in most organizations,which Brill says has to changeCompanies need to move acili-ties and IT under a common or-ganization so IT has a motivationto x the brick-and-mortar parto the equation, said Brill. Facilities used to be a trivial expense,but as data centers grew to thesize o ootball elds, its not triv

ial anymore, he added.

Dean Nelson, senior director o global lab and data centerdesign services or Sun Microsystems, mentioned this veryissue in a discussion o Suns high e ciency data center inColorado.

Clean Your Data Center,Cut Your Electric Bill?By Andy Patrizio


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I would say i you dont have someone in my job, youneed one, because the job is to translate between the a-cility and IT groups, and i you dont they become oppos-ing orces, usually, because they have di erent agendas,he said.

The acilities side wants to keep things small and they dontwant to build i at all possible, while the IT side is all aboutper ormance, so they are asking or density, which acilitiesdoesnt want to pay or.

I moved out o IT and engineering or the company andinto real estate. It was a really interesting transition but Imglad we did this because it gave me a completely di er-ent perspective as to what they need on the real estateside. Also, we brought the competence around IT into realestate so we can make more in ormed decisions, saidNelson.

It makes a di erence. Nelson said that a ter Suns restruc-turing in Colorado, the power usage e ciency (PUE) rat-ing o the data center dropped rom 4 to 1.28. PUE is ameasure o how much power goes to cool the data centervs. running it. The rst digit is the operating power, and

everything above 1.00 is power or cooling.

Uptime estimates the typical data center to have a PUE o 2.5, which means or every watt o power used to power adata center, 1.5 watts is needed to cool it. Suns old PUE o 4 meant 1 watt to power a server, three watts to cool it. A1.28 means 1 watt to power a server, 0.28 watts to cool it.

Google, which builds its own data centers and virtually ev-erything inside them, claims its data centers have PUEs aslow as 1.19 and 1.16.

Clean HouseThe next thing that has to be done is get your house in

order, literally. Many data centers are ull o gear that is or-phaned, not used, redundant, or abandoned. The most a-mous example came in 2001, when the University o NorthCarolina ound a missing NetWare server that had beenaccidentally walled in by construction workers some ouryears earlier.

The server kept running right along without a hitch, a tes-tament to the company that made it, even though theschools admins had no idea where it was.

Uptime estimates that between 15 and 30 percent o whatis consuming power in your data center right now can beturned o with no harm ul e ect. A lot o these comnies have no clear inventory o what theyve got, said BrillServers are cheap, so who cares about keeping track o them? But the long-term e ect o not caring is becominga consequence.

Secondly, virtualization should be done on low-utilizationservers. Proper utilization is an asset, said Brill. Manyservers are running at literally 1 to 3 percent utilization,

which is to say, they are idling. How do you de end 1 to 3percent o an asset?

Through combined management, proper inventory, andvirtualization, Uptime ound a 40,000 square oot datacenter can, over a our-year period, save $144 million in ex-penses, reduce 112,000 tons o greenhouse gas emissions,and save six megawatts o power.


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Energy EfficientCooling forData Centers:

A Close-Coupled RowSolution

Now, cool at the row level with thefirst-ever variable-speed fan technology.Todays data centers are really heating up.Racks are packed with more and more equipment, driving the highest-ever rack powerdensities. The result: unprecedented heat levels, row by row. Meanwhile, virtualizationis everywhere, leading to more dynamic loads and shifting hot spots. Tackling thischallenge with traditional raised oors and perimeter cooling alone poses a realstruggle: How can you locate enough cooling exactly where its required? Too often, theresult is inefciency, worsened by soaring energy costs. Whats the efcient and effectivesolution? InRow cooling from APC by Schneider Electric.

Variable-speed fans target heat and improve efciency.Rack-mounted sensors monitor the temperature, giving you real-time information onwhere heat is hiding. As heat loads shift around the room, unique variable-speed fansautomatically adjust to meet the demand. By closely matching cooling with the heat load,you use the cooling thats required in the right place at the right time, reducing waste bypreventing hot-and-cold air mixing and eliminating hot spots. You improve efciency andavoid overcooling.

Modular design delivers maximum exibility.Scalable, modular InRow cooling units can be easily deployed as the foundation of yourentire cooling architecture, or in addition to current perimeter cooling for a high-densityzone within an existing data center. With this kind of hybrid environment, there is no need tostart over, and installation is quick and easy.

So go ahead: Pack the racks without fear of hot spots or inefciency. Intelligent, efcient

InRow cooling handles high-density heat at the source.

Only APCInRow coolingactively adjusts toeliminate hot spots.

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2010 Schneider Electric, All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electr ic, APC, InfraStruxure, InRow, and NetworkAIR are owned by Schneider Electric, or its aff liated companies in the United States and other countries.

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