The Green Grid - the new imperative for grids and VOs

[At the end of the day the big driver for grids and creation of virtual
organizations may not necessarily be eScience or eResearch, but the need for
universities and businesses to reduce power consumption and earn carbon
credits in order to reduce their carbon footprint. IBM has already announced
a virtual computing program where universities and businesses can replace
their existing physical clusters with a much more efficient virtual machine,
while at the same time earning thousands of dollars in carbon credits.  I
suspect in a very short time you will see many more companies like Google,
Amazon, Microsoft and others offer similar carbon credit initiatives using
their various "cloud" computing networks to replace a variety of campus
servers such as mail, web, etc etc. 

National research funding agencies can play a significant leadership role by
including carbon footprint as one of the criteria in awarding funding to
groups requesting computation and storage facilities. Already it is
estimated that cost of equivalent computational power from services like
Amazon EC2/S2 is less than the power consumption alone of a HPC cluster at a
university.

But in addition to the energy savings and reduced carbon footprint, any
development that encourages the use of virtualized computation and networks
will enable a greater flowering of advanced new applications and services
built around SOA, Web 2.0 and mashups

-- BSA]



http://www.thegreengrid.org/about/overview

The Green Grid is a consortium of information technology companies and
professionals seeking to improve energy efficiency in data centers around
the globe. The Green Grid takes a broad-reaching approach to data center
efficiency focusing on data center "power pillars" that span the gamut of
technology, infrastructure and processes present in today's data center
environments. The consortium's working focus includes research, standards
writing, published studies and continuing education.

Comprised of an interactive body of members who share and improve current
best practices around data center efficiency, The Green Grid scope includes
collaboration with end users and government organizations worldwide to
ensure that each organizational goal is aligned with both developers and
users of data center technology. All interested parties are encouraged to
join and become active participants in the quest to improve overall data
center power efficiencies.

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid19_gci1281024,00.html?track=
NL-275&ad=612169&asrc=EM_NLT_2533481&uid=1062647


Most machines use 5% to 10% of available computing power. By utilizing
server capacity more efficiently through virtualization, companies can do
the same job with 50% to 60% of their existing server population. This
translates into major savings in hardware, electricity and cooling.

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


http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&arti
cleId=9045278&intsrc=news_ts_head

IBM to let customers sell server energy savings on carbon markets
Another financial incentive for reducing power in data centers

November 01, 2007 (Computerworld) -- IBM will announce Friday a program that
will make it possible for its customers to document server energy savings --
and even trade them for cash, if they want, on emerging carbon markets.

How it works: If you take distributed systems -- for instance, x86 servers
-- and consolidate them on a mainframe, the move will result in an energy
savings. Those savings can be calculated based on reference data, a task
that will fall to Neuwing Energy Ventures, an independent firm verifying and
trading in energy efficiency certificates.

More specifically, IBM said its ongoing consolidation of 3,900 distributed
systems onto 33 mainframes will eventually save the company 119,000 megawatt
hours annually. One energy efficiency certificate is issued for each
megawatt hour saved per year.

In IBM's example, the certificates would have an estimated value of between
$300,000 and $1 million based on market conditions, said Rich Lechner, IBM's
vice president of IT optimization. The certificates can be issued for each
year of the life of the project.


IBM isn't alone in providing a financial incentive for energy efficiency.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co., for instance, is working with major utilities
to expand a program that pays a company between $150 and $300 per server
removed from service. The utility has been encouraging its customers to
adopt virtualization to increase server utilization.

Under IBM's program, a company could keep its energy certificates and use
them simply as proof of corporate responsibility. But other companies might
sell these certificates on one of the emerging carbon markets.