Fengfang back: Energy efficiency needs two-pronged approach to achieve green it

According to IDC's estimate, from the operating cost control point of view, in the IT industry, the cost of energy consumption has reached its hardware procurement costs of 25%. The data is rising at a compound annual rate of 52%. When enterprises and large and medium-sized organizations face the changing business pressure and the data of exponential growth, it is necessary to consider and pay attention to the characteristics of environmental protection and energy saving in the data center.

At the same time, the Enterprise Data center in the field of various products have been affixed to the "green energy-saving" label, a variety of "green energy" as the main selling point of new technologies are emerging, then these new technologies and new products can create a real "green energy-saving" How does the data center Enterprise CIO and data Center Manager look at the data center's "green energy" problem?

IT168 has recently launched a series of interviews with CIOs and data center managers in key industries, a guest of the national Population and Family Planning Commission, a researcher at the National Center for Population Development Research, and an information specialist at the Ministry of Industry, Fengfang, to explore the "green energy-saving" trend in the data center, And in the data center "green Energy" aspects of the trial and practice.

Reporter: Every netizen, everybody is good, the topic that discusses today is green, our topic today is the green energy-saving of the data center, our guest is visiting us today the video broadcast is from the national Population and Family Planning Committee Information Center, the National Population Development Research Center researcher, as well as the Ministry of Information technology expert Fengfang

Before you begin, I want to analyze a set of data and some reports, in the IT industry, the cost of energy consumption has reached 25% of the cost of hardware procurement, while the data is growing at an average annual growth rate of 52%, when the enterprise and large data centers constantly, the pressure is increasing, As well as the linear data rise, I hope that the data on environmental protection and energy conservation to make some considerations and attention, I would like to ask you first, you give the definition of Green data Center for us to talk about.

Fengfang back: I think the green data Center is the concept proposed in recent years, and is very consistent with the trend of our information technology development, as a green data center, as the name implies is to be efficient, energy saving, so that our green data center, really can put our energy in the IT run, Rather than a lot of consumption in other unrelated, in this case, is for us to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, improve our current environment, should be very meaningful, as you said just now, is indeed a serious problem.

Now our data center is going to run an enterprise's critical environment efficiently, but it faces a challenge that our energy consumption is growing and forming a very serious problem, so then, in the world, in China to improve how to solve this, as a data center, no one thought, How can this energy be consumed, but this is a fact, because this implementation has formed our IT industry as an obstacle to progress.

So according to the US Department of Energy's 2007-year statistics, since 2000, the U.S. data centers have increased the use of electricity more than one times, the total electricity to reach about 10 billion U.S. dollars, then by 2006, the United States, the server and data centers used by the estimated 591 degrees, is kwh, What kind of concept is this? Just a number we do not have this impression, we cite an example, it and the United States transportation industry manufacturing, that is, the manufacture of automobiles, aircraft, trucks and tires, the consumption of electricity is roughly equivalent, this is heavy industry, so now the data center consumption to achieve this data, it is very considerable, If not controlled, it would increase by 75% per cent by 2010.

So as a global data center, in terms of energy consumption, it is a very serious challenge, so we must adopt advanced energy-saving technology and build green data center to meet these challenges before we can push the technology of data center forward, so it is very important for you to raise this concern. And it's a very timely topic.

Reporter: That von General, about the Green data center, I am today because I want to interview you, I posted a green data center on Weibo, I asked some netizens, said what is called Green data center, netizens do not know, how to measure data center?

Fengfang back: The question is a very good one, we all say green data center, but what is the Green data center, we have a large number of data centers, if there is no uniform standard to do this thing, that is to say that the public is reasonable, the woman said that the woman is reasonable, so that it must have a unified standard can be, First, we're going to mention the Green data center, is what kind of indicators to reach the green data center, so this is a very critical issue, we have a quantitative analysis, rather than generalities, green data Center as a slogan, which is necessary to improve, so in order to analyze the Green data Center energy efficiency level, To find the crux of the problem, it is necessary to establish a quantitative indicator to measure the energy efficiency of the data center in order to implement the measurement and detection of energy efficiency, to compare different energy efficiency levels, to choose the benefits of energy-saving technology, or the best practice.

Green Datacenter Best practices, as many big companies do, say that they can gradually sum up a set of standards through such practices, so the current level of energy used to measure data centers is mainly called energy efficiency, or PUE.

When we were measuring the green data center, there are a lot of indicators, but I think this metric is now well recognized and universally accepted and relatively scientific because it takes into account the power of the data center and the energy consumed by IT equipment, so the green Grid Industry Alliance, PUE, The Green Grid Alliance is supported by several authoritative organizations, so the alliance of the Green Net defines the specific formula for the Pue, which is equal to the total load of the data center divided by the IT equipment load, that is, how much energy is used in your total data center, what is your IT energy source, total energy is greater than it energy, If you have a large number, which means that you are most consumed by other energy, this will cause a waste of energy, not in line with our principles of environmental protection, so if the closer to 1, indicating the higher efficiency of data center operation. If the Pue the larger, more and more electric power, PDU, is the distribution equipment, as well as the decentralized server, as well as UPS, and air-conditioning power equipment are consumed, is actually a waste.

So we pue today to do statistics according to this standard, we find foreign advanced places, Pue reached about 1.5, and China's pue average is more than 2.5, so you can see, this means that it equipment every consumption of electricity, said we are the domestic average level, that is, power PDU's distribution equipment, server dispersed, UPS, air-conditioning electricity consumption is the former three times times, indicating the rapid increase in energy efficiency reasons, not only that, low energy efficiency also greatly increased The burden of the cost of the enterprise, creates serious environmental problems, so some scientists estimate that global computer equipment consumes 415 million tonnes of coal a year, as well as corresponding resource consumption and sewage, heat, and greenhouse gas emissions, so to reduce pue, this and our global word, The topic of climate change is closely linked.

Reporter: Speaking of pue this value, domestic reach 2.5, some foreign advanced countries to reach 1.5, you think our domestic data center in what areas do not particularly perfect?

Fengfang back: This means we have to take this action from all sides to reduce, although this measure has many, mainly two points: one is energy conservation, one is to increase efficiency, and the two are mutually reinforcing, the solution of energy efficiency must be both ways to be able to do, is to solve a certain aspect, just say I focus on this, In fact, we are talking about this barrel effect, so two-pronged approach must be taken in a comprehensive way in order to achieve maximum results.

First, according to the needs of the application, to determine the IT equipment of the data, such as the number of servers, storage capacity, because there is ample room for future development, then in the IT process, from the vendor to obtain some relevant information, such as I purchased these IT equipment, its overall effectiveness, By choosing energy efficient IT server devices, consider using virtualization technology to reduce power consumption, in order to estimate the current value of the PUE, the emphasis is still to consider efficiency, just said energy-saving, how to increase efficiency and is to take effective technology and best practices to reduce the efficiency of power supply, improve the efficiency of the data center's energy use.

In short, there are two molecules and a denominator in the formula for calculating pue, so to reduce the pue, as far as possible to reduce the numerator to improve the denominator, so that reflects our two-pronged concept, so to improve the efficiency of heat dissipation, first of all depends on the needs of enterprises and institutions, the key is how to choose the best equipment, For example, you have a huge amount of computing, then you have to consider the blade server, is concentrated on the University of the calculation, and also consider some very advanced technology, such as virtualization, then virtualization is a lot, some good examples of foreign countries, that is, there are hundreds of data centers, Through virtualization on the reduction of dozens of, so that greatly improve the efficiency, while also saving energy, the two effects should be very obvious.

Another example is that we can take advanced management technology, in the power of this management, is what you use the Power distribution equipment, this is your energy consumption is very important, sometimes you do not see, invisible in which you have consumed, so this must be very seriously. What we are going to do is to focus on design issues first, before the design is complete, should be as energy-saving as possible, then the design is completed, must be in the power consumption design, is in our design, some things are powerless, so we must put a good design this, so for the equipment room design, The main configuration of the appropriate power supply equipment, this is very simple to say, in fact, to go through a lot of consideration, to undergo repeated it considerations.

Besides, you know, many of our country pue do not go, because many rooms are designed according to the building standards, so many of the construction units to carry out the implementation of the data center, so this concept should be said to be now is not in line with our current green data center design requirements. Although the data center is a building, but it is very different from other buildings, and that is to say you want to choose what kind of Design unit and Implementation Unit, it's energy saving effect is very different, because it considers the angle of the problem is very different, so, this point I hope to build data center compatriots must pay attention to this point, To attract the leadership and IT managers to the full attention, in the design of a dedicated computer room design, such as GGs, it has a special test implementation, there are very rich experience, so, the beginning of the good off, is such a situation. So the next one is that we have some comprehensive solutions, of course, the content is more, we will not be here in detail, because the time relationship.

Reporter: You just basically introduced a bit, it how to build a data center this room, now a lot of circumstances, is it now have some basic equipment, how to do the Green data center, this aspect, you give us some simple suggestions.

Fengfang back: Your question is also very important, is that we now have a lot of data centers have been built, then our Green data center only two years ago, the original traditional data is not designed according to this standard, is not able to save energy efficiency, we say, is not the case. So, I put forward some measures here, that is, energy-saving methods, we summed up, the more important way to introduce you, the first is to shut down the idle equipment, such as the maximum energy consumption between 30% to 40%, so, as it department, It should be able to save a lot of energy by shutting down servers that do not need to perform tasks.

Maybe you shut down the server, some people will complain, these departments will consider how to put those less-used departments, virtualization, after virtualization, virtualization is also a very important tool, now is a hot topic, through virtualization, we can increase the hardware utilization of 5 to 20 times times, It's a very obvious effect, and it can reduce the number of energy consumption servers, because after you virtualization, some server utilization is very low, put some servers to shut down, in this case, to improve the use of the server, this is the effect of two, is very obvious, this is the 2nd.

The third is to combine the calculations, as much as possible to consolidate the server, storage and network, in addition to the amount of data we still have a very large number of data is no longer a few, then the massive data on the storage of the power consumption is also very large, so that we have to consider how to use storage to virtualization, and, in addition, We use the very advanced technology of storage, such as storage data deletion, such advanced technology, let it as far as possible storage space, improve storage space utilization efficiency, and we through these, can reduce energy 10% to 20%, so so, just I said the consolidated storage, to different load utilization tiered storage, This storage of tapes that are off-line or disk-online.

4th, you must enable the energy management function of the CPU. This is also very important, CPU, we are switching to optimize the consumption of energy, now our statistics, most of the CPU utilization is very low, so, you do not say an application, a server, and then use the entire CPU, such words will cause a lot of waste, so we should consider.

The 5th is to use efficient IT equipment to power the device, put some old equipment, give it out, so that the efficient UPS energy supply can account for more than 80%, the original inefficient UPS efficiency is very low, so, virtually wasted a lot of power, so, Pay attention to the transformation of power technology, this is the 5th.

We talk about the 6th, 6th is more important, because the time relationship, some do not start talking, the 6th is the use of efficient uninterruptible power supply device, is the use of UPS. The 7th is for the server, the voltage is slightly higher, this is not particularly important for us, but for some use 110 volts is particularly important, generally our electricity should not be less than 200, but we can increase the voltage to about 230, which is also a very important aspect.

8th, take the best practice to improve the efficiency of refrigeration, for example, there are some air-conditioning, it is very power consumption, but its refrigeration efficiency is not good, or you are in the data center, the location of your server is not reasonable, so, for example, there are some things do not cost a lot of money, for example, you add some partitions in the middle of the server You can heat it up.

The 9th is to evaluate your data center utilization and efficiency, to eliminate some of the unused software applications, do not put everything in the flow, focus on the adoption of additional CPU efficiency software, is able to fully utilize the CPU software.

Tenth, limited action to reduce your data center energy needs, all involved in the need to solve the energy saving action to be carried out immediately, do not always delay, or lag behind for a long time, so these, we can fully put our current data center, you do well in this area, your energy saving should be a great step forward.

Reporter: You just mentioned in the introduction of virtualization technology, I think in concrete practice, there are other technologies?

Fengfang back: That's what you're doing in virtualization not just in the data center, other aspects of the application, so we should say that the most important thing is to talk about the problem of cloud computing, so, not only is the Green data center in virtualization is a very important role, then as the entire data center, then, As far as we are concerned, we are different from our previous views.

We used to try to create our own data centers in every business, so this is a waste, and it's completely unnecessary, so the hottest thing we can talk about is cloud computing, cloud computing is very hot, so actually I feel, after cloud computing, Many small and medium-sized enterprises do not need to build their own data centers, because you set up your own data center, you may start with limited funds, your liquidity is very tight, you put into the data center research so high, that may be the future of your business development, will have a great impact.

In addition, if you want to build a culture center, in general, your culture center than the data center to hit two to three times times, so in this case, your burden is too big, so then, you through the cloud, your database is in the cloud, your needs are in the cloud, we can call it virtual data center, So this is a big development and everyone is very popular, put the data center into the cloud, so now a lot of Csfos this site, it will give you the database built in the cloud, you can put this data in the inside, of course, it through practice, security awareness is no problem, can be very good application, are practiced, so it should be a good development trend.

So for a big business, it provides such services, such as Amazon, GG, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, it is now the development of cloud computing, it is to solve some enterprises blindly set up data centers, resulting in huge energy consumption, while causing their own huge costs, so, then, Small and medium-sized enterprises do not need to build their own data centers, so I now predict that we 2010 years of data center development, because time is also more nervous, so we look at the future data center, that is, data center no longer need to buy expensive servers, we say X86 is everywhere, This situation will not last for too long, the original all kinds of everything, now we just say basically use X86, practice proves X86 is enough, no longer buy UNIX what big server, so this is a trend.

The second trend is that we think that the end of Unix may be coming, and now many of our other applications are in use, UNIX sales are already falling, and X86 this kind of software operating system has been rising, then the following is the storage and data network integration. Is like a precursor network card, Fibre Channel, HBA these standard, like the actual bandwidth is now gradually in popularity, so, the data center management would like to use the actual bandwidth advantage, while the storage and data communication problems. The next point is that the amount of storage is partially explosive growth, as you just said, the amount of data several times increased, so the storage of this data to mention the problem of cloud computing, because cloud computing involves a huge amount of storage, so many enterprises can not do this, through the cloud to achieve this, there is a little , is the emerging DCAMs tool, is the data center infrastructure management tools, through the DCAMs tool, but also to avoid hot spots, an excessive configuration equipment, a kind of other conditions, can quantify the management of the data center, rather than blind, then I this server heat has been blocked off, Or how much of this has been consumed, you don't know yet, but with this management tool you can see how your data center is running.

So here's the focus of the managed data center, which is to turn to cloud computing, the hosting of many of our ADC, this hosting is very popular, but this kind of hosting becomes cloud computing gradually, there is not so much server hosting, it is through cloud computing to solve these problems. The next development trend is the SAS of IT applications and management systems, which is the foundation of cloud computing. The next trend is that the container's data center is hit, our data center is more flexible, this configuration, such as I am in this place I want a lot, but I temporarily as a data center, spend tens of millions of investment I am not worth it, but I ordered a container data center on it, then I spent a year or two years later, Then it can be pulled back, then it is able to move the data center, so this is our 2011 Data center of a forecast, so I think for everyone to refer to, but also have friends have a better idea.

Reporter: Thank von Feng always in Help to participate in our video interview.