How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre Steve Bowes-Phipps Data Centre Manager University of Hertfordshire

Business Drivers The CARBS Project Challenges Learning Outcomes Summing Up What? & When? How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

The project supports the following UH initiatives: – The Carbon Management Plan – KPIs for Sustainability Green ICT Strategy HEFCE encouragement to reduce Carbon footprint Need to minimise IT operational costs Making best use of existing scarce resources Assessments of cloud computing versus running services in-house are required for all new service acquisitions/replacements Lack of a framework to refer to Understanding what is driving power usage within the universitys data centres Can service users help to reduce our Carbon Footprint? Providing capacity planning data for future data centre requirements Business Drivers How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

12 month project funded by JISC Working with Concurrent Thinking Employs inexpensive hardware Makes use of internal server system metrics (where available) Accurate measurement of power usage within systems and across hardware domains Create a real-time environmental dashboard for individual services and the data centre(s) as a whole The Carbon Accounting & Reporting of Baselines for Services Project (CARBS) How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

Aims & Objectives: – Hardware and software model for providing real-time financial & carbon costing of two or more internally delivered IT services – Comparisons of output from JISC baselining resources and actual results as calculated by the project – A report on the experiences of power & carbon cost accounting for services and its comparability to the costs of external service provision through the cloud – Public blog tracking the path through the project and learning along the way – Presentation(s) to the JISC community – To work with the JISC community and wider sector to share the experiences and approaches to assist other organisations to benchmark, further develop carbon cost accounting approaches for IT services The CARBS Project How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

No such thing as a simple service anymore Not all systems follow the rules Different communications protocols (MODBUS, SNMP) DCIM products are immature and constantly evolving False economies: you get what you pay for! Operational processes can be an obstacle to implementing service monitoring Challenges How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

The total operational cost is a function of the ratio of disk storage in use by the service against that allocated elsewhere + the ratio of unallocated storage to that allocated to the service In English: – We know how much storage is in the SAN, but we are only interested in what is being used for the service we are trying to meter. We have storage that is in use by the service and can be costed and we have spare capacity on the SAN that is powered up but not in use by any service 1.Meter the PDUs in the cabs that house the SAN 2.Get the disk allocation for the Service 3.Get the total allocated capacity of SAN 4.Meter the actual Service used storage of its full allocation 5.Get the unallocated storage of the SAN 6.Calculation will be: (1*4/3)+(1/(2/3*5)) Apportioning the Cost of the SAN How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

Pre-Project – More difficult than it looks! – Prototype – Scope project out carefully – Is everything SNMP-enabled/compatible? – MIBS Do you have them? Check dependencies Research OIDS – Take a full audit of your data centre – Make any changes beforehand Learning How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

During the Project – Keep Stakeholders informed – Manage changes – Work closely with your DCIM vendor Learning How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

Post-Project – Manage changes to the data centre – Check validity of reported values regularly – Keep Stakeholders informed – Build SNMP compatility and functionality into future procurement requirements – Dont have a DCIM? – SusteITs Carbon Footprinting Tool can be made even better: Use PUE to provide facility overhead Add in Carbon cost to get a true picture Don't trust the server estimators, test one of each type of server and use this base data to provide your wattage figures Learning How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

Achievements – Complete carbon and power cost accounting for the Voyager book-lending system – Better awareness of the value of virtualising or replacing servers – Better informed as to cost comparison between cloud and in-house – Successful implementation of the infrastructure required to provide carbon and cost accounting for most services within the universitys data centres – Increased awareness of sustainability efforts at the university – Increased focus on carbon costing during project initiation process – A specific assessment of SusteITs carbon footprinting benchmarking tool against real-world data – Learning documented throughout the project in our blog ( Outcomes How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

Voyager Dashboard

Achievements Complete carbon and power cost accounting for the Voyager book-lending system Better awareness of the value of virtualising or replacing servers Better informed as to cost comparison between cloud and in-house Successful implementation of the infrastructure required to provide carbon and cost accounting for most services within the universitys data centres Increased awareness of sustainability efforts at the university Increased focus on carbon costing during project initiation process A specific assessment of SusteITs carbon footprinting benchmarking tool against real-world data Learning documented throughout the project in our blog ( Outcomes How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

Drawbacks – Large number of assumptions in model – Reliance on rack PDU data creates problems if they are not fully functional – A specific assessment of SusteITs carbon footprinting benchmarking tool against real-world data – Increased awareness of sustainability efforts at the university – Increased focus on carbon costing during project initiation process – Learning documented throughout the project in our blog ( Outcomes How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

The Voyager service cost is composed of the following elements: 1.Power from the PDUs in the rack where Voyager is located 2.A proportion of the power taken from the PDUs where the SAN storage is located 3.A proportion of the facility power, based on the PUE and the share of power required for 1 & 2 above 4.Carbon cost for the power consumed Specifically excluded: – The network Interesting Note: – Server at very low loading but consuming almost twice Oracles estimated power draw Summing Up How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre

How Much? A study into accounting for Carbon and power in the Data Centre Blogs: SusteITs ICT Energy & Carbon Footprinting Tool Thank You Any Questions?