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Advantages on Green Cloud Computing

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Advantages of Green Cloud Computing

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Carbon Emissions Fall as IT Adopts Green Cloud Computing

Green IT Strategies Could Lead to Hefty ROI

A growing number of organizations are becoming more green-conscious as there are several advantages of green IT. In this e-guide, brought to you by SearchDataCenter.com, our experts will look at how shops switching to a green cloud can help lower the carbon footprint of IT across the globe. Also, we’ll look at how green IT technologies are allowing CIOs to cut costs and improve data center ROI.


The advantages of green cloud computing are many: lower costs, faster

updates and simpler maintenance. And there’s also a nod to the socially

conscious because it’s less taxing on the environment due to lower carbon

emissions.

―Energy use is certainly an important consideration in the data center, and

cloud solutions are more efficient than traditional systems,‖ said Eric Woods,

research director at Pike Research Inc.

That’s important because recently, IT’s carbon footprint has been expanding.

Between 2011 and 2020, worldwide information communication

technology (ICT) equipment and services’ carbon emissions are expected to

double from 2% to 4% of total emissions, according to market research

firm Verdantix.

How now, green cloud?

A green cloud solution is more efficient than a traditional premises-based

system in three ways. The first is more efficient provisioning. Historically, IT

departments deployed more server, networking and storage infrastructure

than needed. Businesses wanted to avoid potential capacity problems during

peak usage periods. Consequently, they designed the systems to adhere to

maximum usage periods; often, systems sat idle or underutilized.

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Business dynamics also played a role. Corporations sometimes had difficulty

understanding and predicting demand growth and peak loads, so they

purchased enough capacity to be safe rather than sorry. And since corporate

budget policies often encourage departments using all of their available

funds in a given year and threaten a smaller allocation the following fiscal

year, finances are also partly at fault for underutilization.

Multi-tenancy is another green cloud advantage. Shared infrastructures

operate more efficiently than autonomous ones. Just as multiple tenants in

an apartment building often use less power overall than the same number of

people owning their own homes, multiple tenants of a cloud-provided

infrastructure reduce their overall energy use and associated carbon

emissions. In fact, disparate demand patterns from numerous companies

flatten overall demand peaks and make usage patterns more predictable.

Using a cloud strategy also saves energy by improving server utilization – the

measurement of the portion of a server’s capacity that an application actively

uses. Large-scale cloud providers run their infrastructure at higher and more

stable utilization levels than corresponding on-premise operations, so the

same processing volume can be completed with far fewer servers. A typical

on-premise application may operate at 5% to 10% average utilization rate,

but the same application in the cloud may attain 40% to 70% utilization, thus

dramatically increasing the number of users served per machine.

While it is true that servers running at higher utilization rates consume more

power, the resulting increase is more than offset by the relative performance

gains. Increasing the utilization rate from 5% to 20% will allow a server to

process four times the previous load, while power consumed by the server

may only increase by 10% or 20%.

Wallet-based motivation for a green cloud switch

So, what are the potential savings? Currently, there are no precise metrics,

but market analysts have outlined what they see as potential reductions in

carbon emissions – as well as energy costs.

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A Verdantix survey projects that moving to a green cloud would enable

corporations to cut carbon emissions by 85.7 million metric tons per year by

2020 and also reduce energy bills by $12.3 billion.

Pike Research forecasts that cloud data centers would consume 139.8

terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020, a reduction of 31% from 201.8

TWh used in 2010. This number also represents a significant decrease from

the 226.4 TWh that would be consumed if firms made no changes to their

systems. The reduction will drive total data center energy expenditures down

from $23.3 billion in 2010 to $16.0 billion in 2020, as well as causing a 28%

reduction in carbon emissions from 2010 levels.

However, the potential savings may be spread out unevenly. Ironically, large

enterprises tend to benefit least because they may utilize advanced data

center infrastructure designs – improved cooling systems and better power

line conditioning – that already tend to reduce power loss and energy

consumption.

An Accenture survey found companies with more than 10,000 users would

reduce energy use and carbon emission by 30% to 60% by turning to a

green cloud. Firms with 1,000 employees would see reductions of 60% to

90%, and small businesses with up to 100 users would see reductions of

more than 90%.

Such metrics may tip a server evaluation to the cloud.

―Companies are taking environmental issues quite serious ly and increasingly

they are becoming a key part of the discussion about how to grow their data

centers,‖ said Woods.


Savvy and forward-thinking CIOs have recognized that ecological concerns

aren't just for tree-huggers. Large enterprises, and to a lesser extent

midrange companies, are starting to deploy products, and better yet, long-

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range green IT strategies, to reduce the carbon footprints of data centers. A

number of factors are propelling this trend -- one of the biggest is the energy

crisis. On Aug. 2, the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star

Program released to Congress a report assessing opportunities for energy

efficiency improvements for government and commercial computer servers

and data centers in the United States.

According to the report, data centers accounted for roughly 1.5% of the

country's electricity consumption in 2006. The energy consumption of servers

and data centers has doubled in the past five years and is expected to

almost double again in the next five years, to more than 100 billion kWh,

costing about $7.4 billion annually.

Existing green IT technologies and strategies could reduce typical server

energy use by an estimated 25%, with even greater energy savings possible

with advanced technologies.

"We need to keep the data center running as efficiently as possible because

soon enough, power may get expensive enough to affect operations," said

Marty Strasser, manager of IT infrastructure and support at Baxa Corp., a

$100 million medical equipment manufacturer in Englewood, Colo.

All this has sent CIOs into a search for that killer technology with which they

can lower their company's carbon footprint and at the same time realize a

hefty ROI.

Essential green IT technologies that save money

In that regard, virtualization is a no-brainer, according to Rakesh Kumar, an

analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

Virtualization enables IT managers to divide a single server, or multiple

servers, into separate environments, each of which can run a different

operating system and serve different applications. Virtual machine

(VM) "images" can be ported from one physical server to another. Central

administrative software can then balance processing loads and allocate

storage capacity on an as-needed basis, across multiple virtual machines

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and physical servers. One or more VMs can take up the slack during a

planned or unplanned outage.

"Most machines use 5% to 10% of available computing power," Kumar said.

By utilizing server capacity more efficiently through virtualization, companies

can do the same job with 50% to 60% of their existing server population,

Kumar said. This translates into major savings in hardware, electricity and

cooling.

Baxa has virtualized 50 out of 120 hardware servers, using EMC Corp.'s

VMware and LeftHand Networks Inc.'s virtualized SAN/iQ storage system.

While Strasser could provide no hard ROI numbers, "I've been able to avoid

having to expand the size of the data center, or bring in more power or

cooling. I've avoided new construction costs, power lines, generators and

backup equipment."

A gradual consolidation as servers become obsolete can reduce the physical

footprint of servers and storage devices by 25% to 30% over a two-year

period, Kumar said.

Space considerations are becoming increasingly critical, particularly in large

cities where data center facilities are at a premium. In some c ities, like New

York and London, finding space for new data centers is virtually impossible.

Currently, only about 12% of Intel x86-based corporate servers are

virtualized, according to Gartner. However, AFCOM's Data Center Institute

predicted that by 2010, nearly 70% of all data centers will utilize some form

of grid computing or other type of virtual processing.

Cutting energy and cooling bills

Another piece of good news: CIOs don't need to rip out existing servers or

purchase expensive or complex products in order to make a dent in their

data center energy and cooling bills. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit,

according to Richard Hodges, a principal at consulting company GreenIT in

Sonoma, Calif.

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"Look under the data center floor to make sure the airflow isn't clogged by

trash and cables." And in perennially cool places, like California, "You can

just use outside air instead of AC for most of the day," Hodges added. "The

starting point isn't sexy stuff, it's basic blocking and tackling. The equivalent

of turning the lights out when you're not in the room." How much savings that

brings in, "depends on how wasteful you've been."

Still, the most effective approach is a holistic one, Hodges said. "You need to

start by finding out what you have, and how much power it consumes. You

can't manage what you can't measure."

Green IT products on the rise

The good news is that products like the ones described above are appearing

on the market in growing numbers.

Modius Inc.'s OpenData software, for example, enables data center

managers to monitor, track and centrally manage the efficiency, power

consumption and performance of power systems, generators, uninterruptible

power supplies and air conditioning units, according to Craig Compiano,

CEO at the Oakland, Calif.-based company. They can identify and address

problems, such as "an AC unit overcompensating for demand from a server

farm which may have been set up inefficiently."

A number of leading computer and storage vendors have formed The Green

Grid, a consortium dedicated to coming up with technologies, products and

strategies to boost energy efficiency in the data center.

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