Sustainable IT: EC Code of Conduct for Data Centres

This article examines the European Commission’s Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency.

What is it? It is a voluntary initiative that aims to inform and stimulate data centre operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without hampering the mission critical function of data centres.

Where is it? You can access the code using this link http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/html/standby_initiative_data_centers.htm

Why do we need it? Many data centres are poorly designed with large tolerances allowing for capacity changes, and possible future expansion. Thus they end up using significant power, the majority of which is consumed by redundant power supplies and cooling systems. Hence selectively switching off IT systems does not result in significant energy savings.

Power used by data centres contributes substantially to the overall electricity consumed in the European Union commercial sector. Also, power costs are rising as a percentage of overall IT costs. Hence there is an urgent need to encourage data centres to take remedial action.

But don't we already have such measures within the industry? Yes, we do. But there is a risk of confusion, mixed messages and uncoordinated activities. A central, EC-wide Code of Conduct helps the cause.

Who should take note of this Code of Conduct? Data centre owners and operators, data centre equipment and component manufacturers, service providers, and other large procurers of such equipment.

The Code of Conduct classifies organisations as Participants (Data Centre Owners and Operators) and Endorsers (supply chain and service providers including vendors, consultancies, utilities, Government, Industry Associations/Standards bodies, educational institutions).

How does it aim to achieve its objective? By proposing general principles and practical actions to be followed by all parties involved in data centres, operating in the EU.

The Code of Conduct considers the entire data centre as a complete system. It provides guidelines and best practices for existing and new data centres covering IT Load and Facilities Load at Equipment Level and System Level.

What are the components of the Code of Conduct? It has a Secretariat and three Working Groups to establish and monitor commitments, and oversee the Code. 

Working Group	Chairman	Objectives
Best practices	Liam Newcombe BCS Data Centre Specialist Group	Explore and exploit energy saving opportunities in the data centre
Energy efficiency metrics and measurements	Jan Viegand Danish Energy Agency and the Danish Electricity Saving Trust	To develop a method to measure the electricity consumption and energy efficiency of data centres and server rooms
Data collection and analysis	Anson Wu UK Department for Environment (DEFRA)	To measure the energy consumption, calculate the energy efficiency of data centres and establish performance benchmarking

The Secretariat is composed of representatives of the European Commission DG JRC and the chair persons of the three working groups

What could we do next?

• Initially: To qualify as a participant, submit an initial report describing the simple physical and operational characteristics of your data centre along with the most recent one month facility and IT energy consumption details.
• Regularly provide energy usage details to the designated working group of the Code of Conduct.
• Within 3 years plan to meet Expected Minimum Levels of energy saving. These levels are identified out of best practices documented by the Code of Conduct.

Who is already part of the Code of Conduct? Some of the participants include: Fujitsu, HP, Intel, the Met Office, Microsoft, Business&Decision, evoswitch, Lamda Hellix Datacentres, Memset, Petroleum Geo-Services, reed.co.uk, TCN, Telecity Group, Telekom Austria, VCD and Vodafone

DSKTN View: The EC Code of Conduct provides a framework which helps data centres to target energy reductions in a more structured manner, leading to financial, environmental and infrastructure benefits. Also, flexibility and continuous improvement methods built into the code make it easier to adapt to a variety of national efficiency programmes, climates and energy infrastructures.

We suggest participants consider the following to help comply with the code

• Modern process architectures such as multi-cores
• Virtualisation to increase hardware utilisation
• Carbon costs associated with software enhancements, replacements, retirement
• Value of IT to minimise/avoiding travel and deliver services
• Embrace cloud based services where possible – even the futuristic Data Center as a a Service

We will endeavour to bring experts associated with the Code of Conduct to you as soon as possible. We encourage you to join our Sustainable IT Special Interest Group on our website.

Exciting webinars on fresh topics

Currently we are running a new webinar series on fresh topics related to Scalable Computing, Cloud Computing and Sustainable IT. Each webinar features an industry expert and his/her area of work.

Our idea is to deliver around 13 webinars over 15 weeks. As of now, we have delivered 2 webinars and 6 others are already scheduled.

• Sharing Research Assets Over The Cloud: 13^th Oct 2010 1400-1430 GMT.

Listen to Prof. Jim Austin - Lead, Advanced Computer Architectures Group, University of York about various challenges associated with sharing research assets over the cloud.

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/416334089

• A Cloud Platform for R&D: 3^rd Nov 2010 1400-1430 GMT.

Prof. Paul Watson - Director of North East Regional e-Science Centre, Newcastle University will introduce a cloud based platform for managing research and development activities.

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/987209521

 

• HPC Scalability: Multicore to Exascale: 10^th Nov 2010 1400-1430 GMT.

John Barr - Research Director & Financial Markets and Head of EU Research of The 451 Group will examine nature of HPC and challenges in managing its scalability highlighting Multi-scale processors, their impact on HPC provisioning and other associated challenges.

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/867240937

 

• Processing and communications challenges in building the world’s largest radio telescope: 17^th Nov 2010 1400-1430 GMT.

Know more about Square Kilometre Array (SKA) programme, a €1.5 billion international project to develop the world’s largest telescope and the UK's contribution to it. Specifically learn about Data Processing and Communication challenges associated with this telescope. And learn about potential opportunities for the UK businesses.

Speaker: Andrew Faulkner, Project Engineer - European SKA Design Studies with University of Cambridge

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/530530081

 

• Elastic Cloud Services using Amazon EC2: 24^th Nov 2010 1400-1430 GMT.

Matt Wood, EMEA Evangelist with Amazon UK will talk about cloud services, advantages that elastic infrastructure, and on-demand provisioning can have for capacity planning, agility and bringing new ideas to market quickly.

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/690498888

You are welcome to participate in these webinars.

Cloud Computing and Corporate Karma

There are so many definitions of the word Karma. And, there are several types of karma – the good, the bad and ... wait a minute ... I haven’t heard about the ‘ugly’ karma.

The phrase Corporate Karma is also not new. There are numerous interpretations of it. There is even a movie by that name I think. To me, majority of the definitions of Corporate Karma seems to have a slightly negative overtone.

For the sake of this article, let’s assume Corporate Karma to be just a metric that tracks current activities and strategies of the enterprise and somehow impacts the future of a business. And let’s confine our focus to Corporate Karma accumulating at IT department.

There are two important questions now:

First how does one accumulate the bad Karma?

Any book on eastern philosophy will answer this question. Overconsumption, accumulation, waste, controlling others, glorifying oneself and not serving others.

Applying this to business, let’s see how a business accumulates karma. It does so, by

-          accumulating assets

-          over-consuming, wasting resources, energy and money

-          establishing control on methods, tools, people and processes

-          creating illusion of mystic aura around nerdy services

-          abusing the word ‘service’

Now, “how does one redeem the bad Karma?” would be our second question.

There are several methods to do so. Not surprisingly, the method that works for you is always unknown, and, seems like a moving target. So, every approach is equally good until you find something that actually works. Hence, it is not surprising to see many people offering different approaches. Even I want slip in one from my side – “Cloud Computing”

How so?

Through virtualisation, you can do more with less and hence won’t need many assets. Through SaaS you can rent software and avoid expensive recurring licenses. Through new pricing models, you will buy only what you actually need. As a result, you could reduce accumulation, spend and wastage.

That’s not all – cloud computing helps further. With the cloud technologies, you could transfer some of the control of your mystic IT to external service providers by aligning your methods and processes with theirs. Thus, you would become unified with the global whole – you are no more an island – your dot is connected with that of others ...

With cloud technologies, you would open up to your enterprise. IT is no more a mystic department hidden behind complex equipment. You become an interesting element of every department. You are no more a nerd or a geek – but just a buyer of services. And you can manage more than an awkward smile.

You will not be busy looking complex or fighting complex code or beastly machines. And slowly the word ‘service’ becomes your mantra.

Oy ... please come down to earth – you seem to be floating! Floating is prohibited. Health and Safety you know.

So, there you go. Cloud computing helps you not to waste resources, not to accumulate assets, to give up control and serve others.

If these won’t help redeeming bad karma, what else would?

Think ... think ... think ...

(Needless to say that this article should be taken lightly and not lightly at the same time!)

AppStores: Future of Enterprise Computing

Smart mobile phones such as Blackberry and Iphone introduced a user friendly approach to browse, select and download a variety of useful – free or otherwise. Now a similar model seems to be on the way for large enterprises, thanks to some recent development in cloud computing especially in the SaaS segment.

What is an Appstore?

In simple terms, an appstore is like a supermarket for applications. You enter one, browse around at intuitively stacked up apps, search for apps or perhaps seek help of online staff to help you pick an application that suits your need.

Just like in a supermarket, you can expect to see promotions of “features” applications, bargains, buyer guides and may be in future, price comparisons. That’s perhaps is a farfetched idea for now – in IT comparison of any two product seems to be similar to comparing apples with oranges.

Just like in the realworld, there is likely to be “buy readymade” or DIY appstores. As their names imply, you may buy what is on offer in the former model and build your own in the latter case. ASDA, M&S are analogous to the former and B&Q, IKEA to the latter.

What types of appstores can we expect?

Several types, actually. But I would say that there would be one appstore within each ‘buying environment’. So, within a large enterprise, there would be a global/regional appstores. Special consortiums of companies such as EADS and mega brands such as Virgin could have their own internal appstores. The Government will have its own appstores – some of them, such as defence, ring fenced for extra security. And, there will be many in the public domain. Major SaaS provider is likely to have one for each industry vertical.

How does an Appstore application work?

There could be a mixture of methods in the way these appstore applications work. Many are likely to run in a cloud based environment – such as a private cloud within the enterprise – or on trusted clouds hosted by SaaS providers.

As the inter-cloud-interfacing APIs and application interoperability matures, there will be applications hosted in one environment or cloud safely and reliably working with applications on other environments or clouds.

It is also possible to imagine meta-appstores which provide just an outer wrapper to other appstores.

Who fills and Appstore and How?

This is an ordinary looking extraordinary question. In the case of large enterprises, procurement department would control the appstore from commercial perspective. There is likely to be a “selection committee” which validates application characters in test environments against arguably tough entry criteria which would involve more non functional characteristics such as reliability, scalability, availability etc.

Vendor maintained appstores will be filled by vendors and their partners.

The process of stacking an appstore in this case is likely to be haphazard – with only a few applications being strategic from vendor perspective.

Enterprise appstores are filled largely based on business requirements.

How to choose applications from appstores?

It is neither an art nor a science. But careful consideration of techno-commercial properties of an application is needed. Certain applications may need ‘subscription’ to a service that runs elsewhere; an application, especially those chosen from a public source may be unreliable and potentially dangerous. Common sense and consultation are the two key things that should guide a user.

DIY Appstores

Some SaaS providers have developed appstores from which you can pick and choose software and service components and build your own situational business application – just like the way you work with Lego pieces. Some service providers like Cordys claim that a simple situational application could be assembled and published in under ten minutes! There would be no need for traditional software design or programming, but thorough testing is always a necessity.

Such applications could help meeting dynamic business requirements and promote agility, innovation at unprecedented low costs.

On the flipside, it could lead to proliferation of uncontrolled business applications over time within the enterprise. Staff turnover, poor configuration management and knowledge management practices will only add to the problem. To remedy this situation, the enterprise must strengthen application reuse and knowledge management practices.

In summary, appstores being in a new dimension into enterprise computing. They help providing an intuitive, controlled, on demand provisioning of IT. Customisable, componentised, DIY appstores bring agile, code free, DIY computing to the enterprise at a risk of application proliferation. They don’t simplify the enterprise IT architecture just yet. But they provide an interesting twist to IT delivery.

Impact Of Scalable Computing On Software Engineering Processes

Of late, scalability has become a key quality characteristic which is demanding increased attention from the developer community. There are many factors for this – including evolution of cloud computing and also due to advances in hardware such as multi-core processes.

Software Engineering processes, if followed true to its spirit, easily accommodate scalability requirement of the software being developed. But the width of the gap between process definition and its practice is left to anyone’s imagination.

So, we need to mind the gap, eh?

In this post I have listed few key elements that deserve an increased attention from software designers and developers for few of the software engineering processes. My intention is to link industry best practices and key concerns to software engineering processes.

If your organisation is using review checklists, perhaps you could consider including appropriate points to check these elements.

Requirements Gathering and Management

• Difficulty in
• visualising requirements from a wide base of subscribers for a SaaS application.
• capturing service management related requirements such as metering, billing etc. due to either inexperience or lack of a strong business process backing it.
• Increased focus is needed in capturing and managing
• Interoperability requirements as in future SaaS applications will increasingly inter-operate with each other. As a result, APIs that need to be used and exposed to other products must be known at this stage.
• Security, Privacy, Trust requirements
• User interface requirements as cloud application are likely to be accessed from a variety of mobile devices.
• Need to separate requirements into two groups – common features available for all SaaS tenants and potential customisations

Software Design

• Good assumptions to keep in mind include:
• Design must be akin to that of SOA elements – that is – loosely coupled service components
• The applications must work in a clustered environment
• Database server on the cloud is virtualised and is more susceptible to failure than the physical counterpart.
• You have to design the application for performance which is likely to be bound by SLAs with commercial and/or legal consequences.
• Underlying infrastructure in which your application will run will be of lower quality and lower bandwidth.
• In almost all cases, you have to design your application to be remotely managed in real time.
• Stateless architecture is preferred. In this architecture you are not getting rid of the state data, but you will be either keeping it on a peer buddy server or on the network but never on the server serving your application.
• You have to consciously design
• Security and privacy provisions. You need to be aware of not only standard SSL but also OpenID (Open source solution for unique username and password), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) etc.
• Scalability – including providing inputs for capacity planning, dynamic scalability, load balancing –these factors could be manually controlled or automatic.
• To design for scalability, you must use new modelling methods such as Cube based models.
• Be aware of new protocols, standards and when to use them. For example:
• XMPP – Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol – which is a way communication protocol between the client and the web server designed to eliminate polling/pinging the host.
• JSON – JavaScript Object Notation – which is a low resource consuming alternative to XML when sending/receiving data using JavaScript
• REST (Representational State Transfer) versus SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
• You should be aware of open source tools available which you can make use of.

Coding

• Be ready to learn or re-learn
• new programming languages such as APEX or Python.
• They could be new to you not necessarily to the IT industry.
• distributed transaction management
• new models for state management
• multi-threading
• Your aim should be to develop lean code that uses as fewer resources (mainly memory and CPU) as possible.
• It is safe to assume that bad performance of the code will ultimately lead to a commercial impact on your company’s services.
• Forget stored procedures! They aren’t easily portable across databases.
• You are likely to use a development infrastructure provided by a “Platform as a Service” provider or an “Infrastructure as a Service” provider. Hence your development practices and review methods are likely to be influenced by these provider’s facilities and practices.
• In order to achieve scalability, you must split your application threads in real time based on functionality and demand.

Testing

• You need to test your applications in an environment similar to a commercial cloud in which you will not have visibility or control. This is likely to be a challenge. You are likely to outsource this to a “Testing as a Service” provider.
• Troubleshooting on the cloud is not easy.
• You should be in a position to test and certify application performance.

Release

• You need re-design your deployment processes in light of virtualised servers.
• You may have to optimise your releases minimising impact on a large number of user community.

Change Management

• If you are developing a SaaS application, expect a part of your software subscribers to come back to you with change requests to your software. Compared to traditional software development, implementing change requests in a cloud environment is not easy. You might want to keep your basic software offering stable yet you will be compelled to honour variety of change requests submitted by your tenants.

Of course it is only a partial list of impact on processes. I will update this post when I collect few more relevant points.

I appreciate your feedback on this post.

SaaS: Software or Service?

No, it is not about definitions. I know it might sound like a dull question to ask especially when everyone knows that SaaS is a healthy combination of both software and service. But my question is given the current conditions, where should the business focus more on – the software aspect or the service aspect?

Paraphrasing – again, the question is would you seek the most powerful, feature-rich software or a reliable, available, fast, economic service? What a question! Answer is obvious. You want both. Aha! That’s where the problem is.

Whenever you fuse two things/concepts/ideas, you will find cases where one of the components dominating over the other. The case having a fine balance of all fused components takes time to evolve or might even be a compromise of all components.

Let’s look at Software part of SaaS: Potential problems include:

• There are hundreds of SaaS applications. But many offer basic, common features which are likely to meet the needs of large subscriber base. Some ecosystems such as SalesForce allow customisation. But not all do so.
• Many SaaS applications are available in two modes – as onsite licensed software and as a SaaS version. In many cases latter is not as effective/powerful as the former. For example: Google Apps.
• This leads to a further problem: the SaaS provider continuously enhances his product leading to change management/end user experience concerns.
• Not all types of software are suitable for SaaS. For example: graphic intensive applications, business intelligence software etc. are not ideal candidates for SaaS as they demand resources.
• Not all SaaS applications are well designed for scalability. This leads to service issues such as latency, availability, performance etc.
• Not all SaaS applications are built for inter-operability. As a result, you could be facing data portability issues, duplicating effort, subscribing to multiple applications etc.

Now let’s look at Service part of SaaS: Potential problems include:

• The term “service” is subject to interpretation. Many SaaS vendors meet the minimum expected services including: availability (or uptime), metering, billing, basic security (again in a variety of ways) and scalability in some form for example: number of users.
• This means, you will be depending on other service providers to get other parts of the service such as storage, archiving, customised security and so on. As the number of parties involved increases, responsibilities need to be clarified, support could be limited and normally issues surface at the border where two service providers meet.
• A good “Software” provider is not necessarily a good “Service” provider. This is because of focus on core competencies. Software houses focus on, well, software engineering and development activities. Over the years, it is likely that their corporate culture including sales, marketing and customer service is tuned towards “license buying customers” – who are likely to be few in number – compared to “rent paying subscribers” – who are likely to be large in number.
• Not all software providers will be willing to take on the service provisioning role as it might blur their business focus. They are likely to outsource it to third parties leading to service complexities.

So what should you do? Be aware of issues at both ends of SaaS, get into details, set expectations and negotiate maximising your advantage.

That’s common business sense, isn’t it?

Cloud Homework: Checklist For Successful Migration into the Cloud

Having heard so much about cloud computing, I am sure that many businesses would like to taste the cloud for real, even as a pilot project. Where do they start? Is there a “checklist” to follow? There could be many, but I haven’t seen a comprehensive one. Perhaps they are hidden behind many other articles or unpublished or not given much publicity they deserve or I need to read more. Anyways, I thought of writing one.

I don’t want to build a “management checklist” for getting onto the cloud. You know, the typical one which says “Set goals – identify parameters – build a decision tree consider risks, pros and cons – taken an informed decision”. But, I want to build a checklist for a business which has already taken a management decision to go for cloud computing or try cloud computing in a small way.

Don’t forget to perform risk analysis after each step to determine whether you are falling into a danger zone. Also at every step, you must identify a business process to cover failure at that step.

1. Set Expectations Right: Success or failure of your journey depends on your initial expectations. Few examples of expectation setting are shown below:
1. There could be performance trade-offs and latency issues.
2. IT Managers will have to give up some control on their IT applications and data.
3. Manager’s ability to forecast IT usage cost is proportional to their ability to forecast IT usage in terms of bandwidth, storage use and CPU cycles.
2. Cleanup Internal IT: “Cleaning up your internal IT is the first step” says Gartner. The term “cleanup” could mean different things to different companies. Some possibilities are explored below:
1. It could mean knowing your IT architecture, making a list of applications in “real” use, development work going on (authorised and unauthorised), nature of applications (mission-critical, critical, support applications)
2. Trying horizontal integration or “pooling” of similar applications and IT services across departments, cost centres, geographical regions.
3. Identifying dependencies between applications and minimising them as much as possible.
4. Grouping applications that need similar hardware, platform or software environment.
3. Cleanup Data: In this step you need assess the state of your data and condition it for movement into the cloud.
1. Prepare to send the data into the cloud in several iterations/increments/waves.
2. Package the data in such a way that it is independent of underlying applications or data environments. This not only helps data management but also switching data service providers when needed.
3. Ensure consistency in definition of data elements
4. Identify different types of data: data under regulation, vulnerable data, private data and so on.
5. Ensure strong metadata descriptions. This helps data archiving, retrieval and estimating impact of data loss.
4. Attempt Virtualisation: Virtualise as much as possible. Move applications that require similar processing environments to the same server.  Example: Exchange and Mail services. Also ensure that business critical applications are served by a pool of servers, just in case of server failure.

Remember following important points about virtualisation

1. Not all servers, services are ideal for virtualisation
2. You cannot and should not Virtualise everything
3. Virtualisation creates single point of failure!
4. Security challenges remain the same after virtualisation
5. Licenses typically apply to physical servers not virtual ones. So paperwork needs to be checked

5. Distribute Right: Decide what to put where. It is unlikely that a single cloud set-up or a cloud service provider will meet all of your requirements. Hence you will have to live with multiple clouds of different types. Follow a general rule of thumb to decide what application goes where. Here are few suggestions
1. Business Critical Application - Don’t take them anywhere, they stay put
2. Internal Development Environment, if any - Private Cloud
3. Shared Services - Shared Data Grid Services
4. Internet based search – Public Cloud
5. Mail, Collaboration – Consider massively scalable services
6. Consider Readymade Solutions First: Look at existing solutions in the cloud. Is there anything that you can pick up right away that meets your needs? For example
1. Storage for new projects from an IaaS provider?
2. Development environment for new products from a PaaS provider?
3. Do any of the SaaS applications meet an outstanding need of the organisation?
7. Choose your cloud service provider: You need to work with multiple partners to realise your cloud dream. You could use several methods to choose your vendors and partners. Few are examined below.
1. Look at companies that provide technology and associated services.
2. Choose companies based on their experience and maturity. It’s a no brainer. But do remember that there could be new entrants who are more agile and innovative than old biggies.

Remember the following while choosing vendors:

a.    You need to consider yourself to be a team captain in this multi-vendor-partner game of clouds. You need to drive agreements, commitments and own the results.

b.    Some vendors may quote compliance with cloud standards. But cloud standards are still emerging.

c.    Don’t dismiss vendors who were earlier seen as System Integrators, just because system integration for/on the cloud is still nascent. They could help you cleanup your internal IT.

8. Cleanup Processes: Cloud solution needs to be built around your business process not vice versa. Hence reviewing your business processes is quite important.
1. Set up a command protocol or governance model clearly identifying who instructs the cloud service provider and who’ll control service parameters.
2. Review or define new processes that govern commercial aspects of the IT. For example: How does your accounting system need to change in order to recognise value of IT assets?
3. Agree with your cloud service provider, an unambiguous method to track key service characteristics such as availability, performance, security, latency, usage and billing.
9. Clearly Communicate: Concerned stakeholders must be informed and educated. Review this checklist with them and modify it based on their feedback. Be prepared to face resistance, fear and confusion as many stakeholders do not yet understand the cloud.
10. Prepare To-Be image of your IT: If you consolidating all of your cloud homework, you should be in a position to draw post-cloud-migration view of your business/enterprise. If you cannot do so, perhaps it is a good idea to repeat these steps as you may not be ready for the cloud migration yet. If you are able to visualise the post-cloud conditions, then you are ready to test the waters.

It is likely that you will reap some benefits from this checklist even if you decide not to migrate to the cloud. Potential benefits include cleaned up internal IT, data and processes.

And don’t forget to share your experience within the industry.