Little Miss Enviro Geek : Windows Server 2008

Some personal news...

biwirth — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:24:00 GMT

Hello Dear Blog Readers,

(hmmm....that kinda sounds like the beginning of one of those SPAM emails)

I wanted to let you all know I am moving on from Microsoft and shall no longer be blogging here. I'll be moving an archive of these posts to my website http://www.greenitstrategy.com and shall continue blogging there on Green IT.

So what will I be doing now?

Well, I have decided to take some time off, write a book and maybe look into starting my own business. Regardless, you can always catch me through my website and please do feel free to visit me there.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me with their Green IT questions over the past two years and gave me feedback. I really appreciate your support and good luck with your own Green IT initiatives.

Kind Regards,

Bianca AKA Little Miss Enviro Geek

TechEd 2009 US announces Green IT Track - first ever!

biwirth — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:01:48 GMT

For my fellow green geeks in the US, Microsoft have announced their first ever Green IT track for TechEd 2009. Nice! There are 9 sessions specifically on Green IT, including:

ARC313 - Understanding environmental compliance, policy and regulation for IT Leaders - I have seen a version of this internally and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to understand a bit more around how environmental management is achieved with technology.
ISB206 - What's Behind the Cloud: Microsoft's Data Center Transformation - Christian is one of the key people working with The Green Grid from Microsoft on Data Centres.
MGT201 - Microsoft System Center for the Datacenter
VIR206 - Virtualization for Sustainable Computing
WSV203 - Saving Power and Reducing Environmental Impact with Windows Server
WSV309 - Enhanced Power Efficiency and Power Management Capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 - this one should be very informative. Stephen Berard is THE man for power management in Microsoft.

To register and to check out the full list and session descriptions, click yourself into HERE.

New Microsoft Services for Green IT

biwirth — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:05:24 GMT

I had been speaking with a couple of the local Microsoft Consulting guys recently about their endeavours to setup services around Green IT, and then found globally we already offer a couple of services in this space:

Microsoft Architecture & Planning Services - focus on reducing costs, increasing IT control & management and reducing environmental impact through the development of a Sustainable Technology Roadmap, and assessment of server consolidation, desktop efficiency, business intelligence capability and unified communications. Check out the brochure HERE.
Sustainable IT Briefing - wherever there is a Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) there is a team who can run a one-day briefing workshop covering areas such as: how Windows technologies provide built-in energy efficiency, how to optimise resources using System Center & Virtualisation technologies, identification of opportunities to reduce carbon through unified communications, how BI can provide a platform for sustainability performance management, and how Software + Services can provide workload transference opportunities. The complete brochure is HERE.

If you are based in Australia, we don't have an MTC unfortunately however there are a couple of us here (including me) who can run a Green IT session for you as part of an Executive Briefing in our Sydney-based Executive Briefing Centre (EBC). If you are interested in this, contact your local Account Manager and ask them if you can setup an executive briefing with Green IT as one of the topics (there are lots of other topics we can cover in these types of sessions as well - we have a catalogue to choose from).

Also, a quickun' today: Microsoft Australia has recently launched their Environment site - check it out at www.microsoft.com/australia/environment.

Great new whitepaper: Power In, Dollars Out: How to Stem the Flow in the Data Center

biwirth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:11:47 GMT

First up - Happy New Year! :) I had a relaxing time (apart from the stupid oven cracking it halfway through the roast on Xmas day) and, when the mood struck me, I spent time updating my website with new features and content.

Back into the swing, in early December the Windows Server Performance <guys/girls/whatever> released a great new whitepaper with quite a lot of detail around optimisation of servers, as well as publishing their test results.

Some of the best practices covered include:

Shut down idle machines during off-peak times.
Opt for 2.5-inch instead of 3.5-inch disk drives.
Use low-revolutions-per-minute (RPM) disk drives where it is possible.
Select power-efficient processors and memory.
Install variable-speed fans and efficient power supplies in servers to reduce waste.
Use remote-controlled power strips to completely eliminate electricity flow to "powered-off" servers.
Ensure that Windows Server 2008 is configured to use the Balanced power policy.
Tune processor power management parameters to increase efficiency by up to 10 percent.
Consolidate workloads or combine server roles on idle and underutilized servers where it is possible.
Turn off hardware-based power management
Deploy the latest service packs and Windows Server releases.
Remove or shut down unnecessary roles, applications, and devices.

The 'shut down idle machines during off-peak times' section references a good article by Dave Ohara which provides some more practical suggestions for how you actually achieve this. However I do question the viability of turning off servers when they are not in use in **some** environments:

Issue number 1: I know that some of my customers have trouble even identifying what applications are running on certain servers and what the subsequent business impact would be if there were turned off. This sounds highly unlikely and slightly dark ages to some IT departments but I know from talking to others this is the case, especially on older hardware and OS' that 'just keep running in the corner'. This is not to say I condone not knowing what servers do - just pointing out that turning off idle machines is a more complex analysis process upfront for some.
Issue number 2: in regards to actually identifying some servers that don't need to be running at certain times of the day - I think this may be a nirvana situation in some less-than-leading-edge environments. Probably the 'easier-target' scenario I could see this working in is where you have a bank of servers, which Dave rightly points out - something like a Citrix farm in which each server may generally be configured identically and en masse (which would provide capability even at reduced performance until a new server(s) came up from being turned off, if that was necessary).

The whitepaper starts to get really meaty towards the middle of the document, covering some great detail on areas such as efficiency analysis, ACPI (C-States, P-States, T-States), interrupts, timers and test results for removing components to measure their power draw. A few good points:

Even when powered off, the test server consumed 27 watts - you might often hear a similar story along the lines of 'unplug your mobile phone because it draws power even when turned off at the point but is still plugged in'.
In the tests Memory consumed 54% of the total system power. Newer RAM consumes less power due to modern energy efficiencies.
Using 2.5" disks instead of 3.5" disks doesn't impact performance but does consume 50% less power.

Anyway before I give away the storyline, I'll let you go read the paper yourself: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/powermgmt/Svr_Pwr_ITAdmin.mspx

Also check out a related blog post by the team who wrote this whitepaper, focusing on tuning power processor performance: http://blogs.technet.com/winserverperformance/.

Enjoy the theme music to go with the blog post: Endless Sacrifice - Dream Theater; Songdust & Delerium - I Mother Earth; King of Terrors - Symphony X :-)

Hyper-Green: Calculate your energy & consolidation savings...now this is cool!

biwirth — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:43:30 GMT

I got a message this afternoon from our Windows Server and Infrastructure Product Manager with a hyperlink and a message: "Not sure if you have seen this but it is cool!" And I have to agree! We have released a new web site to help you calculate the energy / consolidation / carbon savings for your virtualisation business case...its called "Hyper-Green" - http://www.hyper-green.com/

Simply enter the number of servers; then move the dial to your estimated consolidation figure - in this case I chose 50% - which takes me down to 25 servers in total:

The click on Create a Virtualization Report to modify further details like:

Company Name
Country
Your average electricity cost per kWh

Click Update Report; then when you are ready, click Save Report.

Tick box the appropriate boxes on the next page indicating what products you already have in your environment and what the key business/IT drivers are:

Click Get Report and More. You'll then get the opportunity to email the report:

Be sure to check out the links to the Microsoft Virtualization ROI tool on the last page: this provides a really excellent model for calculating the details around ROI and business benefits. We use this inside Microsoft when we are helping customers prepare to put forward a business case for virtualisation:

And the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit will help you get a good understanding of how and what to virtualise in your existing environment.

Have fun! :)

LMEG

The groove that makes my fingers move: Laredo by Tomahawk & Pigs on the Wing Part 2 by Pink Floyd

NEW Learning Snack: Green IT & Virtualisation

biwirth — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:14:52 GMT

Microsoft have just released a new learning snack called "Green IT & Virtualisation" here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/_silverlight/learningsnacks/ws08/snack07/Default.html. Learning snacks are free, short videos/demos/animations about particular topics.

This 7-minute snack provides a good Green IT + Virtualisation introduction split into four areas:

How can virtualisation help Green IT?
What is Hyper-V?
What is SCVMM?
Learn more - provides further links to more "learning snacks", Windows Server 2008 power savings, green computing and in depth Windows Server 2008.

Windows Server 2008: Power Management Tuning

biwirth — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:31:50 GMT

While researching my talk for TechEd tomorrow, I came across a good Windows Server 2008 Performance Tuning whitepaper. There was a small section on power management which provided a good overview of how it works in Windows Server 2008. Essentially, where Windows Server 2003 didn't have a power savings plan implemented by default, Windows Server 2008 has the 'Balanced' plan which saves about 10% energy on baseline Windows Server 2003.

"High performance and low power usage are often conflicting goals, but by carefully selecting server components you can determine the correct balance between them. Table 3 contains guidelines for power characteristics and capabilities of server hardware components.

Table 3. Server Hardware Power Savings Recommendations

Component	Recommendation
Processors	Higher frequencies in a specific processor family cause increased power consumption when the processors are under heavy load. Also, processor families usually include low-power versions. Newer generations of processors expose more power states for the Windows power management algorithms, which enables better power management at all levels of performance.
Memory (RAM)	Memory consumes an increasing part of system power. Many factors affect the power consumption of a memory "stick" such as memory technology, error correction code (ECC), frequency, capacity, density, and number of ranks. Therefore, it is best to compare expected power consumption ratings before purchasing large quantities of memory. Low-power ("green") memory is now available, but a performance or monetary trade-off must be considered. If paging is required, then the power cost of the paging disks should also be considered.
Disks	Higher RPM means increased power consumption. Also, new 2.5-inch drives consume less than half the power of older 3.5-inch drives. More information about the power cost for different RAID configurations is found in "Performance Tuning for Storage Subsystem" later in this guide.
Network and storage adapters	Some adapters decrease power consumption during idle periods. This becomes a more important consideration for 10-Gb networking and high-bandwidth storage links.

The default power plan for Windows Server 2008 is Balanced, which tries to keep performance high while it saves power whenever possible. The other predefined plans are Low Power and High Performance, both of which are heavily weighted to different goals. But server BIOS settings can prevent Windows from accomplishing any of these goals, so make sure that you check whether power management by the operating system or by the hardware is a BIOS option. Windows Server performance lab tests show that Windows power management works very well when it is compared to hardware-managed power management on enterprise servers, so the operating system-managed setting is preferred. However, the most important guideline is to make sure that the BIOS settings on a specific server are well understood so that the administrator knows if the Windows power setting controls (including the High Performance plan) are actually usable."

It also provides tips on choosing RAID systems if you want to balance cost, capacity and power; as well as how power access affects RAID.

You can download the entire document HERE.

Green IT Video: Interview with Microsoft IT Manager Australia

biwirth — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:25:31 GMT

In May I interviewed Jonathan Lewis, Microsoft Field IT Manager in Australia on his views of Environmentally Sustainable IT and what Microsoft Australia is doing in this space.

LMEG interviews Jonathan Lewis, Field IT Manager, Microsoft Australia, May 2008

New Windows Server 2008 Power Savings Whitepaper & results published!!!

biwirth — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:18:00 GMT

Microsoft has published a new whitepaper on Windows Server 2008 power savings, and the results and methodologies of the tests run to develop the paper.

This is an excellent document, which outlines the test results (downloadable in separate spreadsheets) and the role of virtualisation in optimising energy efficiencies in your data centres.

Check it out at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61d493fd-855d-4719-8662-3a40ba3a0a5c&displaylang=en

Little Miss Enviro Geek : Windows Server 2008

Some personal news...

** TechEd 2009 US announces Green IT Track - first ever! **

***New Microsoft Services for Green IT***

**Great new whitepaper: Power In, Dollars Out: How to Stem the Flow in the Data Center**