Inside Enterprise IT : Design

Dell PowerEdge Servers Get a Gold Star - EPA Energy Star That Is

DELL-Matt M — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

We’re all familiar with those blue and white Energy Star stickers that show us the average energy uses on our home appliances like refrigerators and clothes driers. Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released Energy Star specification for servers. The efficiency requirements are a positive step in creating an industry standard to help reduce power consumption.

The focus on energy efficiency isn’t just about being tree-hugger-green, but more about saving green – as in dollars. Limitations on space, power and cooling capacity combined with rising energy costs can give data center managers incredible headaches. IT departments are counted on to maximize compute capacity without expanding their server footprint and to find ways to effectively cool these power-intensive systems—all while working within the boundaries restricted operating budgets.

Dell understands those challenges, so we partnered with the EPA to develop the new energy-efficiency specification for servers. Not only that, but we just released details of its first Dell PowerEdge servers that meet the new Energy Star specifications. In fact, Dell is the first major vendor to certify entire platforms to meet the exact performance per watt requirements with the Dell PowerEdge R610 and R710 server platforms qualifying for the new Energy Star specification.

Our focus on energy efficiency isn’t new and didn’t start with the development of Energy Star specifications. In 2007, Dell introduced Energy Smart to help customers maximize performance per watt for their particular workload and meet operating expense goals. Dell PowerEdge servers with Energy Smart technology include Dell Energy Smart power supplies, Dell Energy Smart system design, Dell Active Power Controller (DAPC), Dell Energy Smart management and high-efficiency processors and memory to achieve the highest performance per watt for standards-based servers.

We build PowerEdge servers with a comprehensive, system-wide approach to balancing performance with energy efficiency by focusing on design, measurement, control and reporting for energy-efficient infrastructures that reduce total cost of ownership.

Design: The holistic approach follows efficient design principles across electrical, mechanical, and thermal systems and combining them with intelligent component selection.
Measurement: Real-time, accurate measurements of performance, power consumption and thermals feed into the Energy Smart control algorithms so the system can make intelligent decisions to help optimize performance-per-watt.
Control: The architecture incorporates firmware running on a high performance baseboard management controller embedded in the system to provide an intelligent, centralized control mechanism to help determine performance-per-watt optimizations.
Reporting: The architecture incorporates the Dell Management Console powered by Altiris from Symantec provides in-band reporting, while the standard Web Services for Management protocol provides out-of-band reporting to make intelligent performance and efficiency decisions.

I had a chance to catch up with Daniel Bounds, Dell PowerEdge solutions manager and energy efficiency guru, to hear more about the new Energy Star specifications. Here is what he had to say.

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Blade Server Myth #3 – Virtualization

DELL-Kara K — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

On this blog, we've posted a lot on the benefits of virtualization. But, some skepticism still remains in part to the myth that blades are not as powerful as conventional servers, and therefore not a good platform for virtualization. In reality, Dell offers blade servers designed with virtualization in mind.

When blades were first introduced, they were mostly designed as low-power Web servers in a more dense form factor. They were built with low-speed, single CPU chips. Today, blades are available with all the same options as rack servers, with multiple CPUs, multicore, and lots of memory. They are now the functional clones of rack servers in terms of processors and memory configuration options.

If you are going through consolidation planning… and you have the option of choosing new server hardware, blades today offer the same CPUs, socket counts and memory as rack servers, including chips with virtualization assist.

Click here to read the entire E-Guide from which these posts were taken, and read more about virtualization on InsideIT.

Blade Server Myth #2 – Power and Cooling

DELL-Kara K — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:40:00 GMT

In my last post about blade servers, we focused on price, and the TCO savings blades can provide. The E-Guide on Blade Server Trends also tackles the myth that blades require too much power and cooling. Here’s a snippet from that guide:

[It’s true that] early blade systems generally used more power and cooling, even with lower speed processors and less memory. Today's blades have more efficient power supplies and improved overall thermal design. Many also have sophisticated software to help in managing heat and automating certain actions to address problems, including powering down components as needed when the temperature gets too high.

There is, however, a power and cooling issue with blades in terms of density. Even though one blade uses less than one rack server, since blade systems are designed for high density, the number of blades per footprint can be substantially higher than rack servers. (This is fact is one of their biggest advantages in space savings.) So it's important to pay attention to power and cooling issues from an overall data center planning perspective, and to ensure that you plan appropriately.

So, the benefits of blades won’t go against your business’ green goals. When planning your data center, how do you factor power and cooling factor into the discussion?

Blade Server Myth #1 – Cost

DELL-Kara K — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

One of the primary ways to simplify IT infrastructure – and save in the process – is through server consolidation. Blade technology is a good way to approach this, but many IT managers are reluctant to take the blade route. There are several myths about blades that create the impression that blades aren’t the best choice for consolidation. In a recent E-Guide on Blade Server Trends sponsored by Dell and Intel, virtualization expert Barb Goldworm attacked these myths.

Her comments are worth reading:

Because blade systems require an up-front purchase of a blade chassis, one misconception is that blades are a more expensive solution than rack servers. In fact, if you are only implementing one or two servers in a single location, this is true. However, if you are implementing four, five or more servers, the total cost per server can actually be lower, because of the shared components within the blade chassis. Just calculating the numbers on hardware alone (without counting other savings such as power, cabling, and management), the costs for a blade server can be lower than a comparable rack server.

One blade customer did a very basic comparison using Dell blades, calculating the cost per server based on the blade cost plus 1/10 of the chassis cost. He estimates the blades saved him 20% over comparable rack servers. While these numbers vary by vendor and configuration, the bottom line is that unless the chassis is mostly empty, blades cost less.

Stay tuned to the blog next week for myth #2.

Q&A with Kris Fitzgerald - Simplify IT

jj_davis — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:20:00 GMT

To build on the advice Dell’s CIO and IT leaders shared with Michael as part of his post last Friday, I sat down with a former IT Executive who now runs Dell’s IT Simplification consulting practice. Here’s what Kris Fitzgerald had to say.

As a former IT Executive, anything else you would add to the list of how CIOs are responding in today’s economic climate?

As a CIO, you must always continue to look at items that enhance business value. Lowering costs and improving agility improves the company. In today’s world, IT is no longer just a cost center, it should be a key business enabler, creating strategic advantage for the organization. This is especially critical in trying economic times.

Is there a best way to prioritize IT projects, or is it really based on the business and its needs?

Prioritization is always linked to key business drivers. If, based on the economy, the priority is cost savings, then look at these areas first, even if this means slowing projects that would grow the business. Within that, you should prioritize projects that have a proven ROI. We can help customers understand which projects have been successful in other organizations and are more likely to deliver the returns they want, de-prioritizing projects that have historically been more challenging for others. But not all businesses have cost saving as their No.1 priority (even though it is usually in the top three). Some businesses may utilize these times to make acquisitions. As such, there may be other key IT projects to consider (for example, a focus on integrating and consolidating systems).

Consulting sounds expensive and possibly, something that might get cut first in trying times. How does a company justify the upfront spend?

Consulting, without measurable objectives or targets, can be unproductive and expensive. Consulting needs to be an accelerant, with a clear value assigned – that matches the priorities of the company concerned.

When it comes to justifying upfront spend, we need to ask the CFO would he spend $200,000 to save $1,000,000? Over a 6 month period or over 2 years? The key is the length of time to realize the benefits. Typically, if the projects are self funding within a 12 month period, companies find a way to embark on these projects. If pay-back is two years or more, you might not want to start the project now. For example, server consolidation can quickly optimize budget for server costs as well as immediate savings in power and cooling.

Does consulting always require new product or services purchases?

No. Each consulting project must stand on its own, delivering distinct value to the customer. For example, one key program offered by Dell today is IT Simplification. This program looks at ALL areas of the customer enterprise, from the desktop to the data center, to identify opportunities for savings and improvements in speed of IT delivery. The outcome from the assessment does not include any hardware recommendations, but provides customers with a “blueprint” of actionable projects to improve the way they provision and manage their IT environment.

What is the average cost of IT Simplification consulting?

The approximate cost is $50K to $200K dependent on customer objectives and project scope. As an output to these assessments, we typicallyidentify 5x to 10x of this cost in annual savings for the customer.

What are customers saying about the insight your team provides?

In working with a large university, the CIO said that after partnering with Dell for the IT simplification assessment we knew more about their IT than they did, and have become one of their key strategic partners, enabling them to grow in the future. In doing this for another large commercial customer, we helped prioritize projects and started several key IT projects critical to their organization’s ability to provide a higher level of service to their enterprise.

So tell me more about the kind of people you have on the team?

All the IT Simplification assessments are delivered by seasoned IT executives with an average of 30 years of IT operating experience. These executives are not consultants by background, but operational experts with a strong drive and passion to help customers improve their IT operations.

What size businesses do you serve?

Typically, companies with 1,000 to 20,000 employees. There are always exceptions to the rule – for example, smaller companies where technology is their primary business. Also, younger companies, even large ones, may not need these services because they’ve been doing it right from the start. Most of our customers have been in business for 10 years or more. We recommend contacting Dell to see how the IT Simplification program might apply to you.

Is there a No.1 thing a company can do to simplify and save with IT now?

First, stop doing things that are unnecessary. Some complexity is valid and may create competitive differentiation, but unnecessary complexity is just a drain on resources. Simplify everything you can. From how you engage with business stakeholders to how you develop applications or acquire and operate your IT. People over time have created processes that might have made sense then, but not now. Consider how you spend your time and identify and eliminate unnecessary tasks and projects and simply what you are doing.

For more information on Dell’s IT Simplification consulting services click here. And stay tuned for a Vlog featuring Kris that will post here and on our Inside IT blog soon.

Enterprise taking a page from SMB?

marc_farley — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:02:00 GMT

Omar Sultan from Cisco wrote yesterday about the importance of broadening the skills set among data center workers. Here's an excerpt:

I believe that the IT infrastructure and the IT organization need to be mirrors of each other. I don’t think you can successfully transform your data center while clinging to existing notions of organizational structure (i.e. network gal, server guy). Some of our more forward thinking customers have seen good results by integrating into “critical teams” that span technologies. I think this is a best practice that would benefit many of our customers.

Full agreement here - you definitely want to foster a holistic perspective in IT.

What's interesting is that there are many, many admins who work for companies that are not in the Fortune x00 and they will tell you they are covering every aspect of ITalready. Amazingly talented people who get it from knife-edge OJT instead of cross-training. Some of the most effective effective and creative architectures I've ever seen are constructed by brilliant SMB people.

That's why it is so critical to simplify IT technology - people moving from skill to skill need to be able to understand all technologies with sufficient depth to make good decisions.

2008, the year we all became aware of power and cooling issues

marc_farley — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:59:00 GMT

It's highly likely that a major disruption to corporate computing operations is going to come from increasing energy requirements and the actions we need to take in order to minimize their impact on the services we provide. It's not just that energy costs are rapidly rising, but the use of that expensive energy is rising along with it.

Large scale data center operators are already heavily engaged in these discussions as evidenced by an interview Searchdatacenter did with Jeff Lowenberg of The Planet, a hosting company in Houston, TX. Jeff talks about a number of interesting things, including how they caulk leaks in the floor to keep from losing cold air and how they maintain their diesel generators. The last part on maintaining diesel fuel probably has excellent tips that anybody depending on large generators for backup electricity needs to know.

There's going to be new concepts, vocabulary and acronyms to learn, such as air mixing, hot aisle, cold aisle, chiller, CRAC (computer-room air-conditioning system), close-coupled cooling, PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and DCE (Data Center Efficiency).

The good news is that fairly simple things can be done to improve the situation, without having to take more extreme measures as relocating to Iceland. Dell's Dr. Albert Esser, who wrote today on Inside IT, was also featured in a recent article on the Computing site, talking about how temperatures in data centers can be kept warmer than people commonly think. This article in CIO magazine also has some fairly simple ideas for more efficient cooling.

One of the biggest hurdles we face is getting senior management engaged. This recent survey by the Uptime Institute (you've read about them if you read the other links in this post) contains fascinating information about the awareness of power and cooling as an issue. Many readers will likely identify with their findings that two thirds of those polled said their companies do not C-level sponsorship for green policy or governance mandates. FWIW, The Uptime Institute puts on seminars for high density cooling, as well as other energy topics. This podcast of an interview with Robert Sullivan is an introduction to those seminars. Not having been to one of their seminars, I don't want this post to be perceived as an endorsement of their seminars - but if readers have comments to make about them, I'm more happy to post them.

I have a feeling this is going to be a huge deal and there will be lots of confusion and many opportunities for people to help each other out. What are you seeing? Is this stuff on your radar yet? Is it front and center in your company or are you going it alone?

Dell’s PowerEdge M-Series and Power Efficiency

DELL-Chad F — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:43:00 GMT

Since Dell introduced the PowerEdge M-Series blade server, we've received many questions regarding how we designed the product. Most of these requests revolve around how Dell chose the M-Series chassis and blade design, plus how we achieved the impressive power efficiency metrics published in the third party report from Principled Technologies.

Dell designed the M1000e blade chassis as a 10U enclosure housing 16 blades and 6 highly flexible switches. Each half-height blade is capable of having up to 4 high speed ports per blade to maximize throughput out to the switches. The switches themselves are designed to be upgradeable to provide a long lasting enclosure capable of hosting the high speed interconnects of today and tomorrow. You can see more details about the Energy Smart components integrated into the M1000e in the following whitepaper.

We crafted the M-Series chassis from the ground up to be the most power efficient blade enclosure in the world. This meant methodically designing each individual enclosure component to run as efficiently as possible. Find out more in the following vlog with Tom Garvens, a senior engineering manager on the M-Series team.

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Duration: 5:17

Latitude XT: Capacitive Touch and More

glenn_keels — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:30:00 GMT

As many of you know, we've been developing the Latitude XT for some time. During that time, we've spent a lot of time talking to Tablet PC customers about what they like and don't like about existing products.

Customers told us that existing Tablet PCs are just too clumsy and clunky. We've worked to address this by creating one of the lightest and thinnest 12.1" convertible tablets on the market at about 1" thick and 3.6 pounds. I'm glad to see that some reviewers like Andrew Baxter at Tablet PC Review said it was the smallest power adapter he's seen on any notebook or Tablet PC.

It's clear that displays are important to many customers as well. Many customers use Tablet PCs in outdoor or brightly-lit environments, and many existing products didn't have adequate screen brightness. That's why we designed an optional daylight viewing panel that is the brightest in its category-at 400 nits, it's almost 2X the competition. Now, this option does add a little more thickness and a little more weight. So, for mainstream users more concerned about size and weight, we still recommend the backlit LED panel at 220 nits.

Next, as tablet users are mobile all day, they told us that battery life was becoming increasingly important. We answered this with a standard six-cell battery that offers about 4 ½ hours of continuous battery life and an optional battery slice that snaps snugly on the underside for up to 9 hours of "all day computing." Regarding the battery slice, I saw that Engadget raised concerns about the battery slice blocking the air intake. Here's the deal: with the battery slice attached, there is a small gap (1mm or so) between the slice and the bottom of the tablet. This space leaves sufficient room for air to flow from the fan through the sides of the system, allowing the unit to cool. In our tests, the system remains within spec for heat both with and without the slice.

But perhaps the biggest frustration customers told us about with existing offerings was around the use of "resistive" touch technology. This technology needs the user to apply force to the screen in order for the system to recognize interaction, which contributes to poor accuracy and durability issues with the screen itself. Many customers using resistive tablets that support both pen and touch actually wind up turning this feature off because the palm rejection technology is so cumbersome. On this front, I think we're making our biggest impact. The Latitude XT is the first sub-four pound convertible with both pen and "capacitive" touch technology. Capacitive technology senses the touch of a finger with no pressure leading to better accuracy, response times, screen durability, and ultimately, a better user experience. As an example, as far as accuracy and speed, our third-party tests confirmed this against the Lenovo X61T. Also, the digitizer is rated up to 10 times more durable than competitors resistive touch digitizer technology.

In this vlog, Rick Seger from N-Trig and Bob Sparks from our Engineering team walk you through the capacitive pen and touch capability of the Latitude XT and introduce you to the benefits of freestyle computing.

View Video
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Duration: 9:23

With this product, we've really made an effort to address our customers' issues with other Tablet PC offerings. I hope you agree!

Latitude XT Details

Lionel_Menchaca — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:00:35 GMT

Lots of folks have been waiting for us to release more details on the Latitude XT Tablet PC. My first brief post about it has received more than 400 comments and has gone on to become the #1 most viewed post in Direct2Dell's history. It's made some traction in the blogosphere too—almost 2,000 posts reference the product by name before we announced it.

Update: 12/11—Glenn just published his post. It has the capacitive touch vlog I mention in the last sentence of this post.

And speaking of the blogosphere, many of you who are interested problably already have seen the updates from Engadget here and here.

We will begin taking orders and shipping the product by the end of the year.

The convertible tablet weighs in at 3.57lbs., making it is one of the lightest tablet PCs available. Pricing starts at $2,499. Now for some other specs...

Processors:

Intel Core 2 Solo ULV processor U2100 (1.06GHz) or
Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor U7600 (1.20GHz)

12.1" WXGA (1280 x 800) display:

Optional LED-backlit display
LCD Outdoor viewing display for increased brighness in outdoor use

Graphics: Integrated ATI Radeon X1250 UMA adapter

Memory:

All configurations include 1GB of integrated 533MHz memory
optional 2GB or 3GB configurations available

Power/Battery Options:

4-cell 28W/Hr Li-Ion primary or secondary
6-cell 42W/Hr Li-Ion primary or secondary
45W/Hr Li-Ion High Capacity Battery Slice
45W (small form factor), 65W, Combo Auto/Air (90W test only)
3-foot power cord standard, 6-foot optional

Hard Drive Options:

40GB 1.8" 4200RPM hard drive
80GB 1.8" 4200RPM hard drive
120GB 1.8" 5400RPM hard drive
32 or 64GB Solid State Disk (SSD) drives

Input Devices:

Finger Touch - Capacitive Touch Screen
Pen - EM Digitizer
- Eraser functionality actuated via side switch
- Optional tether
- Interaction with display controlled by three different replaceable "tips" for user-selectable writing experiences
Full-size keyboard / full Latitude localization
Dual-pointing; rubber domes with leveling rods
Scroll Wheel with enter and back functionality (on display / slate)

Operating Systems:

Windows Vista Business (32-bit or 64-bit)
Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005

Connectivity Options:

Dell Wireless 1390 (802.11g)
Dell Wireless 1490 (802.11a/g)
Dell Wireless 1505 (802.11a/g/ Draft n)
Dell Wireless 360 Bluetooth Module
Dell Verizon Wireless 5720 Mobile Broadband3 (EV-DO Rev A)
Dell Wireless 5720 Sprint Mobile Broadband3 (EV-DO Rev A)
Dell Wireless 5720 Telus Mobile Broadband3 (EV-DO)

Tomorrow, we'll follow up this post with another that discusses functionality of the tablet with a nearly 10-minute vlog discussing the Latitude XT's capactive pen and touch capability. It's live now—see here.