Clouds Bring Green

Cloud computing increases efficiency & drives bottom line

© 2009 GoGrid / ServePath

Authors:Randy Bias (VP Technology Strategy)

Steve Gibbard (Architect)

March 2009

Clouds Bring Green

Backgrounds

Randy Bias, VP Technology Strategy, GoGrid– Specializing in IT infrastructure since 1990– 3 ISPs, 3 Internet Datacenters, 2 MSSPs, 2 Cloud providers– Pioneered world’s 1st multi-platform, multi-cloud management

system (CloudScale Networks, Inc)

GoGrid– Division of ServePath, LLC, an established hosting provider– Pioneer in infrastructure-based Cloud Computing– First ‘cloudcenter’ type Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud in U.S.– Public BETA of Grid March ’08; Cloud Storage launched in Dec– 1,000+ customers in first 3 months of operation

© 2009 GoGrid / ServePath March 2009 - 2 -

Today’s Agenda

Environmental Costs

Power & Efficiency

Comparing Traditional vs. Cloud

Future Directions

Q & A


The Case for Green


Global warming forecasts– Global CO2 emissions

are 27B tons per year– 3.5% increase per year

(up from .9% in 1990)

Global impacts:– Sea levels rise 20 ft– Coastal areas flood– 100 million people

displaced

IT & Datacenter Environmental Impacts

Datacenters create 41M metric tons of CO2– 1.5% of energy in 2006– 5.1 million US households– 100 billion miles driven– 60M tons in 5 years?

E-Waste is also relevant– 70% of heavy metals in

landfills are electronics– 80% of “recycled” waste in

US is exported

Servers grew 50% in last 5 yrs


Efficiency Matters

© 2009 GoGrid / ServePath February 2009 - 6 -

Green, Green, Green

Efficiency drives bottom line

Efficiency is Green

Where can we drive efficiency?– Power– Cooling (Power)


Focus on Power Efficiency

Quick Win

Many Efficiency Improvements Possible

Game changers:– Virtualization– Consolidation– Cloud computing

Datacenter companies have “economies of scale”

Economies of scale include $$ and power greening


Cooling is Power

Less power == less heatCooling power is +40% per serverCost of cooling is significant over the lifetime of a single server


Sonic.net’s datacenter cooling efficiency effects on power costs

Drilling Down on Datacenter Power

Servers are Power Pigs– Average server is 225W– Lifetime cost of power is four times

CapEx– Server energy consumption

growing 9% annually– Server growth of 50% between

2005 and 2010

Servers are horribly inefficient– Average utilization estimated at 6%– 30% of powered servers not in use


Traditional vs. Cloud

SP runs 265W per server

GG runs 340W per node (17W per cloud server)


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ServePath GoGrid

Hardware Power Consumption

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Virtual Server Power Consumption

Power Distribution

RAM central to biz model

Virtualization maximizes power efficiency

GG node power cost distributed across virtual servers


Cloud Efficiency

Overall GoGrid utilization is very high– RAM > 75%– CPU < 20%– DISK > 50%

Elastic usage means unused servers are off by default– A physical server in motion

generally stays in motion

# of virtual > # of physical in 1/10th space

CPU DISK RAM

GoGrid Utilization Rates

Future Directions

Evaluating additional efficiency measures– Power efficient cloud chassis & Energy Star servers– Alternative power sources– Air-side economizer (60-70% cooling savings)– Air-flow management

Looking into additional recycling options– ServePath programs to increase lifecycle of older equipment

Excess cloud capacity to non-profits:– www.wastenothing.org


Q & A


EMAIL [email protected]

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BLOG http://neotactics.com/blog

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TWITTER http://twitter.com/randybias

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