Environmentally-friendly external hard drive solution - BytePac

Using delivery packaging as part of equipment casing is not entirely new. At the CeBIT 2011 trade show in Hannover Asus showed a box used for delivering a motherboard which could be turned into a PC case. It was designed to (temporarily) hold the board plus the other hardware for a working PC, with punch-out holes for ventilation and connectors.

German company Convar has extended the idea with BytePac, which it describes as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to external hard drives. The company supplies a cardboard box and connectors so that a hard drive, either 2.5” or 3.5”, can be housed and used in the box. The BytePac box is made of corrugated cardboard to protect the drive, but they can also be used as an archiving system, so that each hard drive can be extracted and used when needed.

 

BytePac is easy to use, with a modular design, flexible cabling and no fixed electronic components. All it requires is to put a hard drive into the box and connect it up with the cables supplied. It just needs the one connector kit, which can be used with whichever hard drive is in use. When the drive is not being used the connectors can be removed and the drive stored on a bookshelf.

The advantage is that the product generates no additional packaging material or electronic waste, both of which you would get with alternative external hard disk solutions. A conventional external hard drive casing is usually made of plastic, with all the manufacturing and disposal impact that has. BytePacs are made from renewable primary products in Europe, keeping the environmental impact to a minimum. And when the product’s life cycle is over it can be disposed of by composting, or preferably by being recycled again as waste paper.

BytePac is available across Europe via the company’s website and from Amazon. There are various permutations of what is supplied and it can include the hard drive itself. Without the drive the basic BytePac kit, with three boxes and the drive connector kit, costs just under £30 from Amazon.

 

The company describes BytePac as simple, practical, environmentally-friendly and affordable. It’s certainly that. But it is very basic. You may need to get your own hard disk, plus any software for automatic back-up or similar sophistication.

For me the fly in the ointment is whether there is a broad market for the product. If you need multiple drives for storage then I suspect you might look for a better solution – although anything that relies on one large hard disk constantly spinning is less of a green alternative. And does the home user need multiple drives? My guess is that this is primarily a small business product, particularly suitable for its home market in Germany.

Having said that, given the problems I’ve had with off-the-shelf back-up storage solutions, the idea of simply plugging a drive into an environmentally-sound casing is very attractive. The trouble is I only need one box.

Intel leads the US green power purchasers - again

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its latest ranking of the top green power purchasers in the US. The list is once again led by Intel, with over 2.5 billion kWh of green electricity purchased, the same as a year ago, accounting for 88% of the company’s total electricity use.

Other ICT companies seem to be slipping down the rankings, though. In the top 50, Cisco was down from 11th to 15th place with 268m kWh purchased – slightly down on last year, Sprint was up to 26th place, (176m kWh – 5% of power used), Dell down to 43rd (114m kWh – 28%) and Google 47th (103m kWh, 5%). Google is a new entrant to the top 50, whilst Motorola has dropped out.

The green power rankings are based on on-site generation, purchasing green power from utilities, and buying renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). I’m not a fan of RECs. Although they encourage the development of renewable energy, they tend to distort the market – companies pay for the extra cost of renewable generation, rather than for the power itself. But then again, with green power in short supply there wouldn’t be enough to go round anyway.

But the use of RECs explains why Dell used to purchase 129% of its power from green sources, according to these EPA rankings. In fact the EPA has produced a long list of companies that have 100% (or more) green power.

Perhaps more interesting, and a better reflection of the efforts to be green, is the EPA’s ranking of the top 20 companies in terms of the power they generate on-site. The highest-placed IT company is Adobe Systems, which generates 11.6m kWh of electricity on site from biogas. That’s 17% of its total power needs. Google purchases almost as much – 10.7m kWh, from biogas and solar, although it accounts for less than 1% of the power the company uses.

Power Assure and Raritan offer integrated data centre power monitoring

US companies Power Assure and Raritan have come together to offer an integrated data centre power monitoring and analytics solution. The solution combines Power Assure’s cloud-based EM/4 Energy Management software and Raritan's intelligent power monitoring products. It’s apparently the only cloud-based Data Centre Energy Management solution allowing management across multiple data centres.

It works by Power Assure’s EM/4 software collecting power usage and temperature data from Raritan’s branch circuit monitoring product and intelligent rack power distribution units. Power Assure’s energy management solution turns it into useful information that data centre managers can analyse for better decision making.  According to the companies, it means that data centre managers can use power resources more efficiently, improve uptime and reliability, reduce capital expenditures and save on operating expenses, and provide accurate PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) metrics and drive green data centre initiatives.

The overall aim is to help users manage their data centres more efficiently and reduce costs, compared with ‘alternative approaches that are more expensive and less reliable’.

 

It’s another coming together in the fragmented data centre energy management market. This is a green ICT sector awash with various technologies and solutions, from long-established vendors and new start-ups, so consolidation through partnerships and acquisitions is inevitable.

It looks like consolidation may be gathering pace, though. Just last month I reported that Schneider Electric had acquired Viridity. In fact it was ‘a strategic technology acquisition of the Viridity EnergyCenter 2.0 platform’ – primarily the software assets and staff. Despite my comments at the time, rumour has it that although Viridity has an innovative product - the software identifies equipment in use, records utilisation and uses reference tables to assess energy use – company sales had not matched expectations.

It may be that business pressures in the current economic climate are adding to consolidation pressures and starting to speed up the process. We shall see.

Going modular: opportunities to improve energy efficiency in the data centre

A guest post from David Palmer-Stevens, Systems Integration Manager, EMEA at Panduit.

All the way from design to operations, 2012 will be a challenging year for the data centre industry. The main challenge stems from the ever-increasing availability of cloud computing services. With its seductive pricing model, CFOs will be asking why their internal IT resources cost more to run than renting cloud services. Interestingly, the steps that can be taken to compete with cloud services push traditional data centres into much greater energy efficiency.

Going modular is the key to efficiency. However, the first step in this game of survival is to consolidate everything possible, using virtualisation as an effective way to combine servers. Consolidation must be deployed in modules, building up and out, and using the form of containment that best fits the environment.

Once the surplus IT equipment has been shed, the next step is to review the construction model in the data centre, focusing on power and cooling systems. Using Hot Aisle or Cold Aisle can achieve up to a 23% reduction in cooling by keeping the cooling closely coupled to the IT load. This allows the cooling system to reduce its own output alongside low periods in IT use. Using variable torque motors can also save 50% of the electricity for a 20% drop in load.

Internal IT staff must furthermore design in the kind of flexibility and scalability inherent in cloud deployments within their own data centres, in order to compete with external cloud suppliers. But since spare capacity is wasteful - in the same way that over-provisioning is wasteful in traditional data centres - the answer is modular construction. Modular data centres - pre-fabricated date centre units that are easily portable and scalable - can offer flexible expansion options including variable cooling and power generation options. A modular construction keeps the use of resources to a minimum while allowing the same dynamic load response delivered by cloud services.

There are aspects of cloud services that can bring benefits to internal IT support, since they offer staff a useful way to instantly provision new services. Throw out the old provisioning process which, in some market sectors, can take up to 90 days from service request to service delivery, and replace it with services from the cloud. The instant availability means IT staff can meet business requirements while gaining time to construct additional modules. Using containment, these modules can run in parallel with the external service, before switching over to being run by the business.

To deliver cloud services and be affordable in the future low provisioning costs are essential. Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is a key tool now gaining acceptance in the market for bringing management and automation to the physical deployment and environment of IT equipment. The old adage ‘you cannot manage what you cannot see’ very much applies to the data centre’s physical connectivity, power distribution and cooling efficiency, including airflow and humidity. Traditional data centres have relied on periodic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis to gauge cooling efficiencies. The deployment of DCIM means dynamic CFD analysis can take place in real time, providing more information on how the data centre performs over time.

This ability to gauge trends and patterns across both IT demand and power consumption will provide a firmer overview of how the company is performing in terms of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and overall business benefit. The aim is to reach a PUE of close to 1.0, with higher figures indicating less energy efficiency. Traditional data centre rooms or buildings can have a PUE of 2.0 or more. HP claims their modular EcoPOD data centres, which use mostly external air for cooling, can attain a PUE of 1.2 depending on external air temperature.

Consolidation of traditional server rooms and use of modular data centre construction can significantly streamline IT infrastructure while increasing efficiency and therefore energy consumption. The move to modular data centres is not only cost effective but, fortunately, can be implemented quickly, with the modular design optimal for fast deployment and construction. And time is of the essence if traditional data centres are to keep up with the fast-paced competition offered by cloud computing services.

Smart meter implementation in the UK no longer universal?

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, the UK government is drawing up plans to allow people to reject smart meters. Previously the five-year implementation plan, due to start in 2014, did not allow for any such individual requests.

It’s not exactly clear what’s been said. Some news outlets are reporting that energy minister Charles Hendry, said “We believe people will benefit from having smart meters. But we will not make them obligatory”, but I don’t know where this comment came from. Hendry did write a letter to the Daily Mail on January 20th (it seems that that newspaper is now an official communications channel for UK government) which referred to the Public Accounts Committee’s reservations about the roll out and also said that ‘consumer protection is at the core of the programme and we’ve been consulting consumer groups over the past year’.

Anyway, in response to the coverage Mark England, CEO at smart grid and metering technology company Sentec, made the following comment:

“The news that smart meters will no longer be compulsory shows that more work is needed to educate consumers about the benefits they can deliver. Although the concept of half-hourly data may seem to threaten privacy, in reality this granularity is needed to enable smart decisions, for example time-shifting certain activities to reduce bills or to manage capacity on transmission and distribution networks. It certainly won’t be possible to effectively compare different tariffs and suppliers without this detailed data.  As prices rise, so too will the importance of smart meters and the behaviour change they can inspire. Consumers who opt out may lose the opportunity to benefit from favourable tariffs and other incentives from energy suppliers, which will become more important to households as energy bills increase.”

 

Whilst I agree with his comments, the problem is that much of these benefits won’t really be available until we have smart grids. And whilst in the UK we have a fixed programme for meter introduction, smart grids are still a long way off. So at the moment there are limited benefits to a costly plan to introduce meters that some see as detrimental to health and privacy.

But spare a thought for the companies that have been working hard to put together plans for the ICT infrastructure to support the UK-wide implementation. They are just approaching the tender phase but now must be wondering just how many meters they will actually be supporting.

Energy management system for new Viking Line ferry

Switzerland-based power and automation technologies company ABB is to provide an energy management system for what is described as one of the world’s most environmentally-friendly cruise ferries. The ship, which is being built at the STX Yard in Turku, Finland, is due to be delivered to Viking Line in 2013. It will have the capacity to carry 2,800 passengers and will run between Turku and Stockholm in Sweden.

The new ferry will be powered by liquefied natural gas, a first for a passenger vessel of this size. The fuel will ‘have extremely low emissions and virtually zero marine emissions’.

What ABB brings is its energy management system for marine applications software – EMMA – to help manage energy-related processes, practices and decisions on the ferry. The EMMA software compares and analyses the historical and current operational data of the vessel, then calculates and advises on areas for improvement. It also includes an energy management tool that models energy consumption and calculates optimal operating conditions.

EMMA is based on ABB’s process automation software for energy management, which already has more than 60 process industry customers.

 

It’s a good example of how technology can contribute to reducing the energy use and emissions across a business. In the case of the ferry, the fuel is the main factor in reducing emissions, but the ABB technology will be able to maximise those savings.

This is where the ICT focus should really be, rather than endlessly trying to reduce emissions from data centres. That’s only really useful for internet/IT services companies who have little business outside these facilities.

Remember, ICT is responsible for 2-3% of global CO2 emissions (depending on which figures you believe). So if we reduce ICT’s emissions by 50%, it will only make a difference of 1-2% to the global figure. But the Smart 2020 report (and other similar research) has found that the effective use of ICT could help reduce global emissions by as much as 15%. That’s where the focus should be, but it’s not an area that is talked about much by the ICT companies themselves. So I don’t get to report on it much.

Google and IBM receive green data centre recognition

Both IBM and Google received recognition in January for the energy efficiency and energy management of their data centres:

IBM: At the beginning of the month the European Commission (EC) recognised 27 IBM data centres across Europe as conforming to the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency. That covers over 70% of IBM's (strategic) outsourcing data centres in 15 European countries - apparently the largest portfolio of data centres from a single company to receive the recognition (although how many companies have that many data centres across Europe? – ed).

The assessment is made against a set of best practices, including the use of energy efficient hardware, installing free cooling and cold aisle containment. Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is one indicator and in May last year the Uptime Institute gave IBM data centres a rating of 1.65 for average power efficiency, compared to the industry average of 1.8.

Google: The search engine giant’s achievement has been in the US, where all the company’s owned and operated data centres have received ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification. The company claims to be the first major Internet services company to gain this certification for all of its US data centres. (Do other ‘major’ internet services companies limit such actions to the US? – ed)

The ISO 14000 family addresses various aspects of environmental management and the first standard, ISO 14001, deals with the requirements for an environmental management system. OHSAS 18001 is the British Standards Institution (BSI) specification for Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Management Systems. It specifies the requirements for a management system to enable an organisation to control its OH&S risks and improve its performance.

Google says that it has looked to be certified ‘because we want to be the gold standard in environmental and workforce safety, and because we care about the communities where we live and work.’

 

Commendable actions from both companies. They come with rather vague claims to market leadership, but we shouldn’t blame them for that. If they can get good PR from it (as they clearly have) then it is an additional reward for the effort.

The problem is that these sorts of initiatives do seem to be led by the major IT services/internet companies, and there aren’t that many of them. They set a good example, and given their size their green efforts to make a real and significant difference, but I don’t see a great deal of trickle-down to smaller IT services outfits.

I’ve always said that one of the most significant things that such companies can do is to be evangelists for green/sustainable ICT, pushing the industry as a whole to do better. I know they do get involved in cross-industry initiatives, but they could do a lot more.