Creating a sustainable data center

The importance of data centers for society has changed. Public life, economy, and society as a whole depend to a very large extend on the proper functioning of data centers, and they can be seen as a critical infrastructure that is also intertwined with other critical infrastructures. This creates societal and “moral” pressure and obligation to demonstrate leadership in creating a sustainable society.

It is an endeavor to create a sustainable data center; a data center that is environmentally viable, economically equitable, and socially bearable. That is because it is not a technical problem but an organizational and economic problem that has to be solved. The scope of this issue goes well beyond the walls of the data center.

There are lots of opportunities to improve the efficiency in the IT and data center supply chain. Doing more with less by removing inefficiency can help to reduce the rate of resource depletion and emission and e-waste. Energy efficiency improvements downstream can lead to enormous improvements for the whole supply chain because of multiplier effects upstream. Replacing carbon-based electricity with electricity based on renewable energy and hydro energy sources can bring CO2 emissions to zero. But that is not good enough.

We have to deal with the “Jevons paradox,” where increases in the efficiency of using a resource tend to increase the usage of that resource and the trends of “digitization of everything” and “anytime, anywhere, anyone connected.” These trends cause a staggering demand for digital services that will be delivered mostly by data centers.

The demand and growth will be unsustainable if we continue to use the old industrial production system based on nineteenth century ideas and concepts of make, take and waste.

If data center suppliers and IT organizations understand the necessity of sustainable production and want to fulfill the growing demand of digital services, then they have to change.

They have to change to a more sophisticated industrial production system by closing the loop: convert the linear production system to a circular system based on use, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. Focusing on performance and value in terms of customer-determined benefits will also create the need to make a transition from a goods-dominant logic to a service-dominant logic where suppliers deliver services not goods.

The philosophy of cradle to cradle and service-dominant logic fit very well together by selling results rather than equipment and performance and satisfaction rather than products. To make this possible, one has to broaden his scope beyond the data center. The supply chain should be tightly integrated. The supply chain has to be co-designed and co-developed with the suppliers and customers based on customer pull instead of supplier push.

Creating a sustainable data center calls for innovation. It, therefore, needs a multidisciplinary approach and different views and perspectives, within and between organizations, in order to close the loop and create a sustainable supply chain.

To create sustainable data centers, seven activities can be defined:

1. Moving toward zero waste: at first the focus should be on the internal efficiency and later on the customer must be involved to reduce underutilization and overprovisioning, and life cycle analysis must be implemented.
2. Increasingly diminish emissions along the supply chain: identify and evaluate externalities/social costs and act on this by creating sustainable procurement policies.
3. Increasing efficiency and using more and more renewable energy: introduction of energy management, renewable energy deals with power suppliers, use of local renewable energy, and introduction of the emergy concept.
4. Closing-loop recycling: take back procurement policy, introduction of reverse logistics, and “design for the environment.”
5. Resource efficient placement and transportation: reevaluation of data center centralization and economy of scale concept versus economy of repetition and distributed data center concept.
6. Creating commitment: involvement of stakeholders in the transformation to a new industrial production system.
7. Redesign commerce: conversion to service-dominant logic and supply chain integration downstream and upstream by co-design and co-production.

Is this endeavor impossible? I don’t think so. It is more a question of commitment. Rethink the “data center equation” of “people, planet, profit” and prepare yourself and your organization to climb Mount Sustainability.

For more information read “Data center 2.0: The sustainable data center”

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Center-2-0-The-Sustainable/dp/1499224680

Mobility and Cloud Computing and the need for a new security concept

The current modern way of doing business and service provisioning is based on openness and agility.
This brings the traditional security concept in which an organization is positioned as an “information fortress” strongly under pressure. The traditional perimeter is vanishing and sensitive information travel outside your organization in many ways on many different devices. Mobility and Cloud Services is the name of the game.

For the most part business information is stored as unstructured data. Unstructured data refers to information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner and is usually stored in files instead of databases.

This context creates a strong need for other security concepts. Instead of securing a predefined and fixed “location” the focus must be shifted to the actual security of information that is mobile; information security at the file level. Or in other words file protection and control beyond the perimeters of the enterprise because the rule set is stored with the file itself.

There are security products on the market that makes it possible to achieve security at the file level. Applying this security concept will affect the current and usual roles and activities related to security.

Still it is common that a security officer in cooperation with the system administrator ensures safe work areas to which firewalls, passwords and malware scanners protect access. The user organization is consulted and her voice, the voice of the customer, is found in the general security policy but the focus is on the security of the IT infrastructure. So bottom line security is an IT issue.

By implementing a security concept based on information security on the file level, one comes in very close contact with the daily operational activities of the users and the organization. Security choices have a much more immediate and greater impact on the work and activities than in a traditional security concept.

Who has when and where access to which information? The access management can be excellently managed by using the new file access management tools. But access management is not an isolated topic. Access is granted to individuals and groups, thus the topic of Identity Management comes in sight and should be very well organized. Access management is part of the triple A; authentication (identity management), authorization (access management) and accounting. These are well-known concepts in the security world but they were mainly applied to the level of IT infrastructure. Now that it is urgently needed to shift the focus of the security of the IT infrastructure to the security of information, one comes in very close contact with the daily work of the organization. This includes authorization, as well as authentication and accounting.

In the traditional division of labor a security officer defines a security policy, based on the input from the user organization and rules and legislation, and then align with the IT organization what mechanisms will be used to operationalize this policy. Product selection, technical equipping and the daily operation are performed by the IT organization. Thus the questions about why, how and with what are satisfied. In fact the user organization is only involved with the first question and it plays no role in the implementation. Also the security officer is hardly involved in the daily operations of the IT organization and the user organization. It is a slow top-down approach.
In fact in terms of a responsibility assignment matrix (RACI), one could say that the security officer is accountable, the system administrator is responsible and the user organization is consulted and informed.

The application of information security through access management at the file level puts this traditional work under pressure. The granularity of the access rights on file level is very fine-grained, in combination with the dynamics of working processes, the needed agility, and the shortening of time to deliver, is conflicting with the traditional hierarchical top down approach.

So to solve this issue a different way of working is required, where the user organization should be much more involved in information security or better stated they should in fact take the lead. After all it affects their daily work. The security officer, the auditor, and the IT organization must be well aware about the daily work of the user organization. They should gain knowledge about what is going on in the workplace to ensure that the access management is workable, that it produces the desired result, and meets the expectations of the user organization. Additionally, identity management and accounting at this micro level should also be taken into account.

To get information security by means of access management at the file level it is advisable to take a closer look at the different roles that are involved. These are the security officer, the auditor, the system administrator and the “super user” or functional administrator of the access rules for the user organization.

• The security officer is dedicated to define the information security policy and with which mechanisms (the solution approach regarding the security organization, workflow and technology) this should be realized. On behalf of the user organization.
• The auditor is the one that shows how accounting should take place (what are the control points, which information should be captured to comply with laws and regulations, what is the audit trail) and executes audits.
• The system administrator is the one that operationalizes the access management within the framework of the security officer and the auditor, and also takes care of the relationship (in terms of technology and execution) with the work areas of identity management and monitoring (accounting).
• The “super user” or functional administrator of the user organization is the one that actually manages the access rules within the framework of the security officer and the auditor.

To support the modern way of doing business and service provisioning we need to create an agile security organization, with a transparent separation of interests and responsibilities. Instead of a hierarchical security organization, a flat organization is needed where the “super user” is accountable, the system administrator is responsible, the security officer and auditor are consulted and the end-users get informed.

Cloud Computing, ownership matters

In the past fifteen years, many internal IT departments of enterprises evolved from artisan organizations that only assembled and provided customized, tailor-made products, to hybrid craft and mass production organizations that provides custom as well as standard products. But nowadays these IT departments are confronted with external organizations that deliver standard services and products that can be easily adapted to the needs of the customer based on the concept of “mass customization”.
Instead of buying, owning, and managing all kinds of IT components by yourself, nowadays the IT infrastructure is offered as a service by means of cloud computing.

There is a shift from “goods dominant logic” to a “service dominant logic”, were the focus is shifting away from tangibles and toward intangibles. This trend is supported by the use of virtualization technology for server, storage and network devices and also for applications.

The cloud computing offering of lower costs, shorter time to market, and on demand provisioning makes it very tempting for organizations to outsource their IT infrastructure and services.

But don’t we forget something? One of the most important things of information processing is that an organization has the right controls over the use of applications, data and infrastructure. Incomplete control can lead to all kinds of issues about business obligations and liabilities.

The control of these items is arranged by contracts, which is in fact an exchange of property rights. These property rights are a bit complicated because they have several dimensions:
• The right of possession
• The right of control
• The right of exclusion (access rights)
• The right of enjoyment (earn income from it)
• The right of disposition (buying or selling)

The consequence of these different dimensions is that different parties are able to hold partitions of rights to particular elements of a resource. On top of this there is the issue of legislation. When we talk about ownership we have to be careful because in legal systems ownership is based on tangible/physical objects. And yes of course, we have legislation about intellectual property, trademarks, etc. but when it comes to virtualized objects it becomes murky. Also cloud computing is about delivering services (intangibles) not about goods (tangibles).

The transition from “goods dominant logic” to a “service dominant logic” is a mind shift where the “bundle of rights” or property ownership still matters.

Signing cloud computing deals is not only about money and provisioning it is also about control. When a cloud computing sourcing deal is taking place the partitions of property rights should be grouped into appropriate bundles to stay in control.

DataCloud 2015 Awards

 

For the fifth year on row being part of the panel of Judges for the ‘DataCloud Awards’, the winners of the Data Cloud Awards 2015 will be announced in Monaco the 2nd of June 2015.

Read the brochure for more information about these event.

Over the past years, award winners have included companies such as Equinix, TelecityGroup, Interxion, Cohesive FT, iomart, Colt Technology Services, Cofely GDS Suez/akquinet GmbH, Claranet, 6Degrees, Prior1 GmbH, The Open Compute Foundation, Portugal Telecom, and NTT Communications among many others…

Now in its 8th year, the prestigious Awards provide exceptional marketing differentiation for both winners and runners up and recognized as the premier industry accolade across Europe and internationally.

With an extended panel of expert Judges, the 2015 categories, including new Cloud Awards, are designed to reflect changes in markets and technologies, but retain a focus on recognising best in class and excellence across the industry. 

In 2015 the Awards will again provide new benchmarks of aspiration for the companies shortlisted and world class recognition for winners.

Aging power plant fleet and data centers

Thomson Reuters made a nice visualisation on Europe’s aging nuclear reactors. Currently the EU operates 131 reactors with an average age of 30 years.

It reminded me on a report I wrote in 2012 for Broadgroup about the power market and data centers in Europe. The quality and availability of the data center stands or falls with the quality and availability of the power supply to the data center. So the power market is something to watch closely.

Depending on the power technology that is being used, power plants have different life cycles. Coal-fired plants have a life cycle of about 40 years, gas-fired: 30 years, nuclear: 40 years, hydro: 80 years, and renewables are estimated on 25 years. Based on this life cycle estimates we can say that Europe has an ageing power plant fleet. A report of RWE states that for hard coal power plants more than 70% are in their half of their life cycle, for lignite and gas/oil more than 60% and more than 50% of the plants are in their half of their life cycle. For hard coal plants, based on the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive, 
replacement of all these plants is needed by 2030.

There is the expectation that the nuclear reactor lifetime is 40 years or more. The implication of a forty-year life expectancy is that in the next ten years (from 2012 onwards) forty nuclear power plants will be closed or 30% of the current nuclear power plant fleet. This would be a decommissioning of 30207 Mw net capacity, or 24.5% of the nuclear power capacity.

Given the fact that the average age of the 130 units that already have been closed worldwide is about 22 years, the projected operational lifetime of 40 year or more appears rather optimistic.

The decommissioning of nuclear power plants, has an impact on the carbon policies and targets and can create a shortage in power and a rise of the electricity price if proper counter measures are not taken.

Number of nuclear power plants EOL with a forty-year life expectation scenario (Broadgroup 2012)

A special case is Belgium. Two nuclear reactors were closed for a second time in march 2014 because of cracks in the steel reactor casings. The nuclear reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2 in Belgium will be restarted earliest in the spring of 2015 and there is an increased chance that will be closed forever.

In august another nuclear reactor, Doel 4, has to be shut down after major damage to its turbine because of oil leakage. Electrabel said its Doel 4 nuclear reactor would stay offline at least until the end of this year, with the cause confirmed as sabotage.

As a result of this just over 3 GW of power is offline, more than half of the nuclear power supply. Whereas nuclear power contributes about 50% of the electricity produced domestically.

So there is the possibility of blackouts this winter so Belgium will have to boost interconnection capacity with neighbouring countries to prevent power shortages.

According to the Minister of Energy Johan Vande Lanotte the last electricity consumption record was recorded on 17 January 2013, “On such a cold winter day, we consume about 14,000 megawatts. With the current production we come 1000 too short.”

Much depends on the weather, potential problems are to be expected from the end of october or early november according to Elia, Belgium’s electricity transmission system operator.

See Power market, power pricing and data centers in Europe. Broadgroup 2012, for more information about the electricity market and data centers in Europe.

Data Center 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Center and the use of Enterprise Architecture

Recently I had an interesting conversation with John Booth of Carbon3IT (who is also Chairman of DCA Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Steering Group) about my latest book on sustainable data centers. The discussion focussed on what the book is addressing and the level of abstraction that is being used.

Based on this discussion I made a short presentation with a different visualization of the idea behind the book and the informal use of an enterprise architecture framework when writing the book.

Although not stated explicitly, the book is loosely based on an Enterprise Architecture Framework. This EA framework has four Architecture domains:

• Business architecture
• Information architecture
• Information systems (application) architecture
• Infrastructure architecture

For each of these architecture domains, this EA framework shows five levels of abstraction;

• Why – Contextual;  Motivation, scope, constraints, strategies, principles that apply to the different architecture domains
• What – Conceptual; The vision of services (business services, information services, application services, and infrastructure services)
• How – Logical; The mechanisms, components, and connections that provide the services
• With What & Who – Physical; The physical implementation, deployment and sourcing of all the components and people.
• When – Transformational; To define an integrated roadmap to make the wanted transformation possible.

The book focus is on the two top layers and scratch the surface of the logical layer or in other words the strategical and tactical level. It also spend some thoughts on transformation.

As stated this architectural framework is used in an informal way it don’t define formal architecture deliverables for the different domains and levels of abstractions.

But in the end the use of an enterprise architecture framework is the way to go to design and “build”,  in a coherent and consistent way,  a sustainable data center.

World Cup 2014: did you recorded a drop in the network energy use?

Large events can have a serious impact on IT infrastructure. A great example of this is the current football World Cup 2014.

RIPE NCC, one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), does a great job with collecting data of the network traffic during the event. In collaboration with the European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX) they follow the Internet Exchange Point (IXP) traffic during the championship.

Two examples from their research. The following graphs shows in red the traffic of the match day and the same day of the week in the weeks before as grey lines. The game times are indicated as grey rectangles in the background.

 The Netherlands – Spain

The traffic volume during the Netherlands-Spain game differs 256 Terabytes to the week before!

Traffic statistics at the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX).

 

Cameroon – Brazil

Traffic statistics at the PTT Metro IXP in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

These traffic drops makes you wonder how much energy was saved by these games.

More information about the network traffic can be found at RIPE NCC and more information will follow during the World Cup.

Data Center 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Center, Now Available!

Data Center 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Center is now available. 

The book is showing up on the websites of Amazon and will soon starts to pop up on websites of other  E-tailers’ .

Data Center 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Center is an in-depth look into the steps needed to transform modern-day data centers into sustainable entities.

See the press release:

Some nice endorsements were received:

“Data Center 2.0, is not so much about technology but about people, society and economic development. By helping readers understand that even if Data Centers, enabling the Digital economy, are contributing a lot to energy saving, they need to be sustainable themselves; Rien Dijkstra is on the right track. When explaining how to build sustainable Data Centers, through multi disciplinary approach, breaking the usual silos of the different expertise, Rien Dijkstra is proposing the change of behavior needed to build sustainable Data Centers. Definitely it is about people, not technology.” 

Paul-Francois Cattier, Global Senior Vice-President Data Center – Schneider Electric

“In Data Center 2.0 The Sustainable Data Center author Rien Dijkstra has gone several steps further in viewing the data center from the perspective of long term ownership and efficiency in combination with treating it as a system. It’s an excellent read with many sections that could be extracted and utilized in their own right. I highly recommend this read for IT leaders who are struggling with the questions of whether to add capacity (co-locate, buy, build, or lease) or how to create a stronger organizational ownership model for existing data center capacity. The questions get more complex every year and the risks more serious for the business. The fact that you’re making a business critical decision that must stand the test of technology and business change over 15 years is something you shouldn’t take lightly.” 

Mark Thiele, President and Founder Data Center Pulse

“Data centers used to be buildings to house computer servers along with network and storage systems, a physical manifestation of the Digital Economy. Internet of Things, the digitization of about everything in and around us, brings many profound changes. A data center is the place where it all comes together. Physical and digital life, fueled by energy and IT, economical and social demands and needs and not to forget sustainability considerations. Sustainable data centers have a great potential to help society to optimize the use of resources and to eliminate or reduce wastes of capital, human labor and energy. A data center in that sense is much more than just a building for servers. It has become a new business model. Data center 2.0 is a remarkable book that describes the steps and phases to facilitate and achieve this paradigm.” 

John Post, Managing Director – Foundation Green IT Amsterdam region

Preview Data Center 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Center

Data Center 2.0: The Sustainable Data Center is an in-depth look into the steps needed to transform modern-day data centers into sustainable entities.

To get an impression of the book you can read the prologue right here.

Prologue

In large parts of the world, computers, Internet services, mobile communication, and cloud computing have become a part of our daily lives, professional and private. Information and communication technology has invaded our life and is recognized as a crucial enabler of economic and social activities across all sectors of our society. The opportunity of anytime, anywhere being connected to communicate and interact and to exchange data is changing the world.

During the last two decades, a digital information infrastructure has been created whose functioning is critical to our society, governmental, and business processes and services, which depend on computers. Data centers, buildings to house computer servers along with network and storage systems, are a crucial part of this critical digital infrastructure. They are the physical manifestation of the digital economy and the virtual and digital information infrastructure, were data is processed, stored, and transmitted.

A data center is a very peculiar and special place. It is the place were different worlds meet each other. It is a place where organizational (and individual) information needs and demands are translated in bits and bytes that are subsequently translated in electrons that are moved around the world. It is the place where the business, IT, and energy worlds come together. Jointly they form a jigsaw puzzle of stakeholders with different and sometimes conflicting interests and objectives that are hard to manage and to control.

Electricity is the foundation of all digital information processing and digital services that are mostly provided from data centers. The quality and availability of the data center stands or falls with the quality and availability of the power supply to the data center.

For data centers, the observation is made that the annualized costs of power-related infrastructure has, in some cases, grown to equal the annualized capital costs of the IT equipment itself. Data centers have reached the point that the electricity costs of a server over its lifetime will equal or pass the price of the hardware. Also, it is estimated that data centers are responsible for about 2% of the total world electricity consumption.

It is therefore easy to understand why the topic of electricity usage of data centers is a subject of discussion.

Electricity is still mostly generated with fossil fuel-based primary energy resources such as coal, gas, and oil. But this carbon-constrained power sector is under pressure. Resilience to a changing climate makes the decarburization of these energy sources mandatory to ensure sustainability.

From different parts of society the sustainability of data centers is questioned. Energy efficiency and indirect CO2 emissions caused by the consumption of carbon-based electricity are criticized.

The data center industry is working hard on these issues. According to the common view, it comes down to implementing technical measures. The idea is that more efficient power usage of servers, storage and network components, improved utilization, and better power and cooling management in data centers will solve the problems.

This idea can be questioned. Data centers are part of complex supply chains and have many stakeholders with differing perspectives, incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements and complex interdependencies. In this situation there is no simple, clear definition of data center efficiency, and there is no simple right or optimal solution.

According to the Brundtland Commision of the United Nations, sustainability is “to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Given the fact that we are living in a world with limited resources and the demand for digital infrastructure is growing exponentially, there will be limits that will be encountered. The limiting factor to future economic development is the availability and the functioning of natural capital. Therefore, we need a new and better industrial model.

Creating sustainable data centers is not a technical problem but an economic problem to be solved.

A sustainable data center should be environmentally viable, economically equitable, and socially bearable.

This book takes a conceptual approach to the subject of data centers and sustainability. The proposition of the book is that we must fundamentally rethink the “data center equation” of “people, planet, profit” in order to become sustainable.

The scope of this search goes beyond the walls of the data center itself. Given the great potential of information technology to transform today’s society into one characterized by sustainability what is the position of data centers?

The data center is the place where it all comes together: energy, IT, and societal demands and needs.

Sustainable data centers have a great potential to help society to optimize the use of resources and to eliminate or reduce wastes of capital, human labor and energy.

The idea is that a sustainable data center is based on economics, organization, people and technology. This book offers at least multiple views and aspects on sustainable data centers to allow readers to gain a better understanding and provoke thoughts on how to create sustainable data centers.

Creating a sustainable data center calls for a multidisciplinary approach and for different views and perspectives in order to obtain a good understanding of what is at stake.

The solution is, at the end of the day, a question of commitment.

Data Center 2.0 – The Sustainable Data Center (Update)

Data Center 2.0: The Sustainable Data Center is an in-depth look into the steps needed to transform modern-day data centers into sustainable entities. The book will be published at the beginning of the summer.

To get an impression see the following slide deck.