Virtualisation + right sizing for power, cooling = Efficiency

BANGALORE, INDIA: Microsoft, Dell, Juniper Networks, Wipro Infotech, Bharti Airtel, Emerson Network Power India, Amazon Web Services, APC by Schneider Electricals, all together at ‘Green DataCenter, Virtualization & Cloud Computing, 2011’ event imparted a few lessons on green computing.

During the one-day event, organised by MP TFCI Events, discussions ranged from security over cloud, bringing down power consumption inside data centres, green initiatives in data centers, to emerging technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization.

Also Read: Green data centres or are they brown

Manish Gokhale, business development manager (India Srilanka & B'desh), APC by Schneider Electric, said: “There are several virtualisation myths, such as, 'Virtualisation always increases efficiency', Virtualisation requires high density data centre', 'High density and high efficiency cannot co-exist', I do not need to worry about power and cooling when virtualising".

He added that during virtualisation infrastructure cost reduces as number of server racks comes down. However, at the same time power utilization either remains the same or increases as server processing goes up.

What is required is right sizing for power and cooling along with virtualisation to get better output or DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency) by implementing scalable and modular architecture in data centre.

Saji Thoppil, general manager, Computer & Storage Practice — Wipro Infotech, said: “We are in an interesting phase in the evolutions of information technology. This conceptual shift called cloud computing is redefining the way we maintain information, the way we process it and the way it is consumed. Forums such as Green Datacenter is creating a good platform to help customers get a 360° understanding through very interactive session.”

He also added that a 1,500 square feet of data centre with 6KW of power density a year, usually produce Rs 2.5 to Rs 3 crores as electricity bill. And in order to deliver services at Rs 3,000 per machine per hour per month, one needs to build next generation data centres which are energy efficient.

Commenting on challenges faced by SMB segment in India , Venki Muthanna, CEO AppPoint Software Solutions, said, “Organizations either large or small are on one hand challenged by the business need to scale at the same time constrained by uncertainty or costs associated with technology adoption to support their business plan. Technologies such as cloud based delivery model and service oriented technology platforms not only offer an accelerated approach to addressing business need, but also offers agility with which changes can be accommodated drastically mitigating the risks associated.”

Coming to the networking aspects inside data centres, Rakesh Singh, senior systems engineer, Juniper Networks, said that network is not given its due importance and is considered as nothing but mere 'pipe'.

He added that this pipe has not changed in the last 15 years and also dwelled on the changing role of network, from a very traditional role of connecting users to connecting devices inside data centres.

On the security front, everybody on the dais agreed that no one can give a fool proof data security on cloud, except for best practices on how to secure data, however there they also added that there are many SLA which define various levels of cloud architecture, which in turn should give some peace of mind to users.