HMCS Vancouver Pre-Deployment Brief - May 2024 (Web Version).pptx
Metering Energy Consumption in Data Centres - Michael Rudgyard
1. Energy Usage Optimisation in the
Data Centre
Michael Rudgyard (CTO)
Concurrent Thinking Ltd
Commercial in Confidence
2. • A spin-out company of a well-established UK SI
• Technology was developed for High Performance Computing
– Management of HPC resources needs to be ‘system-wide’
– Scalability (of both the architecture and the GUI) is paramount
• New company formed in March 2010
– Took on the product IP and existing HPC customer base
– Notable investment from the UK Carbon Trust
• Currently in ‘semi-stealth’ mode; product launch: Nov 2011
– Have developed new features for the Data Centre market
– … that leverage the infrastructure of an existing product
Commercial in Confidence
3. • The average data centre has a PUE of 1.9 (Kooney, 2010)
• The majority of DCs operate at temperatures at >3-4oC below (old)
ASHRAE recommendations (Paterson et al, 2009)
• A 1oC increase in DC temperature equates to 2-4% reduction in energy
costs (UK financial institution)
• In a typical DC, 10% of running servers are not in use at all (Green Grid
Survey, 2010)
• Average IT utilisation is between 5 & 10% for an un-virtualised DC, rising
to 10 & 20% for a fully virtualised DC
Commercial in Confidence
4. • Traditionally, the focus has been to optimise PUE
– For a 2MWatt DC with a PUE of 2, this would imply a maximum energy
saving of 50% (1MWatt)
• But what if (average) IT utilisation was only 10% ?
– We could theoretically save 900Kwatt of power for IT
– We could theoretically optimise the cooling overhead to zero
• In this fully optimised DC, we would use only 100KWatts
• An energy saving of 95 %
Commercial in Confidence
5. • Assume a modern (dual socket,12 core) server is 6x faster than a
3 year- old dual socket, dual core server
• Assume it draws the same energy
• We would require 16% of the number of servers to deliver the
same IT load: ie. 16kWatts
• We have saved >99% of our energy bill
– (and have potentially re-claimed 84% of the DC floor space !)
• ‘Sweating’ the assets may not be so smart after all !
Commercial in Confidence
6. • A: It is part of the answer
• Typically human behaviour is:
– A customer replaces a 3 year old (then state-of-the-art) server with a
new state-of-the-art server
– He puts 12 VMs on his new (6x faster) 12-core server rather than the
single OS instance on his old 4-core server
– His IT efficiency goes from 10% to 20%
• This demonstrates the need to accurately spec new equipment
based on real application and user requirements
• This is also driving a new market for more, less power-hungry,
less powerful servers in the DC
Commercial in Confidence
7. • With few exceptions, the most successful methodology for
improving energy conservation across all sectors is:
– Step 1: Identify who/what is responsible for significant energy waste
– Step 2: Drive behaviour to ‘encourage’ change
• What is the implication for the Data Centre ?
• We need to monitor and report IT Usage Effectiveness metrics by
customer, department or end-user
– Who or what applications/service are the worst offenders ?
– Management can use data to drive better practice (charge-back ?)
– Help guide virtualisation strategy
Commercial in Confidence
8. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources
Start with a PUE of 2
IT Equipment
Cooling and
power overhead
Commercial in Confidence
9. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources:
– Optimised environmental management to improve PUE (& ITUE)
Perhaps reduce PUE from 2.0 to 1.8 ?
IT Equipment
Cooling and
Power
Overhead
Saving
Commercial in Confidence
10. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources:
– Optimised environmental management to improve PUE (& ITUE)
– Identification of unused, under-used, inefficient or over-spec’ed IT
equipment
Perhaps 5 % of servers ?
IT Equipment
Cooling and
Power
Overhead
Saving
Commercial in Confidence
11. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources:
– Optimised environmental management to improve PUE (& ITUE)
– Identification of unused, under-used, inefficient or over-spec’ed IT
equipment
– Using active power management during low utilisation periods
– Identification of poor equipment usage (ITUE) by end-users
Say 10% improvement ?
IT Equipment
Cooling and
Power
Overhead
Saving
Commercial in Confidence
12. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources:
– Optimised environmental management to improve PUE (& ITUE)
– Identification of unused, under-used, inefficient or over-spec’ed IT
equipment
– Using active power management during low utilisation periods
– Identification of poor equipment usage (ITUE) by end-users
– Size and virtualise
Say 20% improvement ?
IT Equipment
Cooling and
Power
Overhead
Saving
Commercial in Confidence
13. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources:
– Optimised environmental management to improve PUE (& ITUE)
– Identification of unused, under-used, inefficient or over-spec’ed IT
equipment
– Using active power management during low utilisation periods
– Identification of poor equipment usage (ITUE) by end-users
– Size and virtualise
– Replace old servers
IT Equipment
Say 10% saving ?
Cooling and
Power
Overhead
Saving
Commercial in Confidence
14. • The potential for savings comes from multiple sources:
– Optimised environmental management to improve PUE (& ITUE)
– Identification of unused, under-used, inefficient or over-spec’ed IT
equipment
– Using active power management during low utilisation periods
– Identification of poor equipment usage (ITUE) by end-users
– Size and virtualise
– Replace old servers
– Dynamic orchestration of virtual machines based on environmental,
power and IT usage constraints
??????
Commercial in Confidence
16. Environmental
Monitoring
OS & VM
Power
Monitoring and
Management
Management
Integration
Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
Commercial in Confidence
17. o Low cost 5V temperature,
humidity… sensors
Environmental
Monitoring o 3rd party SNMP sensors
OS & VM
Power
Monitoring and
Management
Management
Integration
Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
Commercial in Confidence
18. Environmental
Monitoring
OS & VM
Power
Monitoring and
Management
Management
o 3rd Party PDU control
o Server PSUs (PMBus)
o Device association
o Power charge-back
o Scheduled actions
Integration
Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
Commercial in Confidence
19. Environmental
Monitoring
OS & VM
Power
Monitoring and
Management
Management
Integration
Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
o 3rd party SNMP devices
o Modbus (and others..)
via SNMP bridge
Commercial in Confidence
20. Environmental
Monitoring
OS & VM
Power
Monitoring and
Management
Management
o IPMI / DCMI support
o Power capping via
Intel Node Manager Integration
o Scheduled actions Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
Commercial in Confidence
21. o OS monitoring
o Script repository Environmental
o OS Deployment Monitoring
o VM migration (TBA)
OS & VM Power
Management Management
Integration
Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
Commercial in Confidence
22. Optiimise real-time DC Optimise combined
Facilities Efficiency Environmental Facilities & IT Efficiency
(PUE) Monitoring (ITUE)
Power & efficiency OS & VM Identify unused,
Power
metrics by rack / Monitoring and
Management under-used,
users / customer/ Management Comprehensive inefficient or cost
Data Centre
application etc, in-effective IT
Management
and equipment
Orchestration
Active power Active
management Environmental
during low Management & VM
utilisation periods Integration Migration
Server Health with Data
Monitoring Centre
Systems
Commercial in Confidence
