Energy saving in data center: ten best practices of green IT
In the past few years, "green IT" has almost become a synonym for energy-saving hardware, which is more efficient and energy-saving than similar equipment or components of previous generations. For example, these energy-saving hardware devices are designed with energy-saving mode or advanced power management technology, so that they can consume a small amount of energy when the device is down or not working. Another example is the more intelligent data center cooling technology. Although the data center has high rack density, this intelligent cooling technology can also reduce the energy consumption of the data center. Of course, hardware devices including servers, storage devices, printers, laptops and desktops have also been improved to reduce energy consumption.
Although these hardware devices and components have gradually been improved in low energy consumption, with the rapid development of global information and communication technology (ICT), the power consumption of the entire ICT industry will also grow rapidly, and this speed is faster than the general power consumption. According to a report released by NEIS (Network of Excellence in Internet Science), the proportion of ICT industry in the global total power consumption has increased from 4% in 2007 to 4.7% in 2012. Computers alone consume nearly 5% of the world's energy.
Frankly, the ICT energy consumption curve worldwide is still in a state of ups and downs.
Software has gradually played a very important role in green IT. The software in the ICT system is mainly used to control the hardware and give instructions to the hardware to start the program. Therefore, the root of ICT energy saving lies in these software. If software can make hardware deliver better performance with less energy consumption, then we can reverse the trend of computer energy consumption increasing year by year.
The Cluster Green Software project in the Netherlands is an example of using software to improve hardware energy conservation. Located in Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, the project is a new science and technology project cooperated by various regional organizations. The organizations involved in this project are mainly committed to the following two aspects: 1) using charts to show the energy consumption of large systems that use software, and trying to find ways to reduce the use of software energy; 2) Develop corresponding management tools for large software systems so that users can effectively manage energy use. At the same time, the member organizations of the project are developing a toolkit so that users can better manage energy use in data and computing centers.
The premise of cluster green software project is to ensure that the efficiency principle embedded in the software is placed at the beginning of the whole energy chain. It is not enough for software to only provide instructions to hardware. The best way is to write software to reduce the power consumption of hardware more effectively. If the software is developed in a neutral way, it can run in different hardware configurations, and the software utilization efficiency in these hardware is the same.
A case study of this cluster green software project shows that intelligent and efficient software applications can save a lot of energy. According to the actual situation, the percentage of energy savings is about 30% to 90%
A participant in the project, SIG (Software Improvement Group), combined with some of its own research results, provided some practical suggestions to enterprises, which are also committed to using their software to improve energy efficiency. SIG provides advice and suggestions based on its accurate measurement and scientific research. SIG helps enterprises find the source of energy consumption, and provides suggestions for improvement to help enterprises optimize the application of energy.
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences Software Energy Footprint Lab, SEFlab) is a research partner of SIG. In SEFlab, software experts from SIG, electrical engineers from Amsterdam applied science and partners from all walks of life jointly study the impact of software on computer energy consumption. Highly accurate energy consumption measurement methods are used frequently in various hardware components in the server to compare the efficiency of energy applications in different software applications, different software architecture designs, and different source codes.
Of course, the ultimate goal of these research and project implementation is to enable software developers to design energy-saving software code. At present, the University of Amsterdam has set up a master's degree in computer science, focusing on software engineering and green IT. It is hoped that more universities around the world will set up such projects and majors in the future to promote the development of the next generation of software engineering and reduce the energy consumption of global ICT.
Here are ten best practices of green software provided by SIG:
1. Virtualization - Virtualize all components in the system to share hardware infrastructure;
2. Measurement - properly deploy measurement infrastructure to determine energy KPIs in operation;
3. Update hardware - replace the old hardware facilities and use new, high-performance and low-power hardware;
4. Consider availability - try to optimize availability requirements to avoid underutilization;
5. Optimize performance - optimize system performance to reduce capacity requirements under high workload;
6. Energy use settings - adopt the energy saving settings provided by the hardware and virtual layer;
7. Test - dare to try different designs and configurations;
8. Limit excessive expansion - expand the system according to actual demand (rather than preset future demand);
9. Disable environment - activate the test and fault tolerance environment immediately (not continuously);
10. Matching workloads - clearly understand your workload and dynamically scale the system to match the workload.
