The fifth edition of biennial global investors’ summit slated for January 2011, which is being tagged as ‘Davos in Action’, will focus more on branding the state of Gujarat as a business hub where deals are done, rather than just an investment destination. In a gradual deviation from previous events, the upcoming summit has been renamed as ‘Vibrant Gujarat 2011: The Global Business Hub’ instead of ‘Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit’.

Remote Infrastructure Management

If studied closely, RIM makes more sense not in terms of a measure to cut costs during recessions but more as a business sense. How? Let’s see.

Today enterprises leverage the power of IT to streamline their key business processes and gain a competitive advantage. Even with the investments already made, the key issues relating to application performance, scalability, security, management and effective utilization are mostly unresolved. Apart from helping to reduce the overall IT Infrastructure Management costs, a well structured and managed RIM relationship can bring significant benefits.

Flexibility of Service
Customers hiring service providers have an advantage here as they can align the business needs with the services provided by the Service Provider. Services can be flexed to meet peak times and loads, mission-critical and non-mission critical or a combination of both. This type of flexible pricing model and service delivery helps in apportioning the infrastructure management costs.

Domain Expertise
In this highly volatile IT industry it is hard to keep up with the latest technology trends and it is almost impossible to have on pay roll a staff that can match the ever demanding and changing face of IT technology across all segments. A RIM service provider can add value here as they have diverse IT staffs which are at a client’s disposal, working 24×7. Moreover, these specialists are constantly updated with the latest technology trends via internal training programs, technical training programs from vendors, etc.

This basically helps companies to gain a competitive advantage as it helps to reduce the time to market. Companies can take the bold steps of adopting and switching to new technologies to gain a competitive advantage. Serious service providers in the RIM industry would normally have alliances in place with leading technology suppliers and as a result clients can also enjoy a single window of service from them with an assurance that the team working on their projects would be capable of handling the technology and related needs.

Visibility and Control
Companies retain full control of its strategic components such as physical IT assets, technology refresh, policy and architecture which provides visibility into the availability, performance and utilization of each component. Many of the established RIM suppliers have embraced the ITIL framework which lends itself to RIM very effectively. Putting the collected data in to this type of best practices framework provides lot of insight and visibility. This visibility further enables companies to take control of the situation, make informed decisions on future investments in IT and improve current service levels.

Reduced Costs
Remote Infrastructure Management not only assists in reducing the manpower cost of managing the infrastructure, but also brings down the costs related to future infrastructure investments. It has been reported and endorsed by agencies like McKinsey and NASSCOM that outsourcing the infrastructure management services can save dramatically reduce the labour related costs by 30% to 40%. On the other hand, companies can also reduce costs associated with future infrastructure investments using expertise of the service provider by way of infrastructure optimization, standardization using industry best practises and consolidation using virtualization technologies.

Proactive Services
Most of the time RIM services engagements are driven and governed by SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). Service providers, in order to maintain the SLA, invest in to software and technology that enable them to gain an insight on failing components in the IT infrastructure, usage patterns, thresholds, etc. These tools enable a service provider to provide 24×7 proactive monitoring and management via a Remote NOC (Network Operations Centre). This helps to resolve issues in a faster and structured manner.

So, in today’s fast paced and ever changing IT world, RIMs makes more business sense and CIOs have to step back and ask themselves what they’re trying to accomplish with infrastructure outsourcing. Cost savings, optimization, transformation or efficiency? CIO’s decisions on outsourcing infrastructure management are going to be driven by more than just cost savings and as a result it is also going to create a challenge for the service providers to tweak their service models to show more benefits and not only cost savings.

This Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are separated into two groups, “Site Admin Templates” and “Server Admin Templates”.

Site Admin Templates are custom templates that have an *.stp extension and are easy for site administrators to install in a template gallery without requiring server administration access.

Server Admin Templates have a *.wsp extension and are created as site definitions, providing tighter integration and enhanced functionality within the Windows SharePoint Services platform. They require a server administrator to install.

Where they differ is how each type is structured and deployed on a SharePoint site. Site definitions consist of multiple files on a front-end Web server that are located within folders under the template directory. Custom templates are created through the user interface or through the object model and are stored in the database, providing a means for reusing customized lists and sites.

Note: Templates with the STP extensions can be uploaded directly in SharePoint’s ‘Site Templates’ page in Site Settings. Templates with WSP extensions must be added to the server side via stsadm command.

Here is how you should go about installing them on your SharePoint Site. For the rest of this post, we shall assume that you have already downloaded the necessary template files and you are the Administrator for the SharePoint Site and/or the server on which the site is running.

Installing STP Templates

This is very easy compared to the installation of WSP Templates. To install a *.stp template, perform the following steps:

• Login to your SharePoint Site after downloading the template package
• Select Site Settings from Site Actions
• Click Site Templates from Galleries

• Click Upload and browse for the template file which was downloaded

• Click OK once done

Installing WSP Templates

This is a bit complicated when compared to adding *.stp templates. Moreover, adding *.wsp templates also requires you to be the administrator of the SharePoint Site as well as the Administrator for the server.

• Login to the SharePoint server using Remote Desktop (RDP) or the console. Depends on how you are working – in front of the server or remotely
• Download the template package to the server
• To make things easier and to avoid typing the full path of the directory, I prefer to move the templates to C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/Bin folder including the ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp
• From the Start menu, select Run and open the Command Prompt by typing CMD or Command in the dialog box
• Go to the C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/Bin
  Run the following command:

stsadm –o addsolution –filename ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp

• This will add the Application Template Core to the solutions management where it will need to be deployed. Since we had already moved the files to the BIN folder earlier, we can skip giving the full path to the ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp. If you ignored that, you can provide the full path by enclosing it in quotes.
• To deploy the Application Template Core, run the following command:

stsadm-o deploysolution –name ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp –allowgacdeployment –immediate

• After successfully deploying the Application Template Core, it is time to add the solution files. Type the following command:

stsadm -o addsolution -filename <template_name>.wsp

Note: replace the template_name.wsp with the actual template name.

• Next type the following command to deploy the solution:

stsadm -o deploysolution -name <template_name>.wsp –allowgacdeployment

Note: additional commands may need to be given, for example, - local if on a standalone machine and – immediate if installation being carried out in a SharePoint Farm

• To check deployment status by, click the Operations tab in the SharePoint Central Administration Site and then click Solution Management under Global Configuration
• After the solution is marked Globally deployed you may need to reset IIS. To do that quickly, open command prompt and type iisreset /noforce

SharePoint is being pushed by Microsoft and also with the announcement that SharePoint would be replacing the Public Folders that were available in Exchange, it certainly requires some understanding. I’ve heard people talk at length about SharePoint, met IT Managers who wish to implement SharePoint in their organization, planned SharePoint with some small and medium business segment owners and had a common observation after the meetings. Most of them do not know what are the basic differences between the two flavours. And trust me, if you do not know the basic difference, the end results would not be the same that you expected. I’ll start with explaining the two flavours so that we can get a basic understanding of the differences.

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

Windows SharePoint Services are a part of Microsoft Windows Server feature pack and come absolutely FREE. It can be downloaded from the Microsoft website and has a no-fuss installation.

Windows SharePoint Services or WSS is primarily focused on workgroup level collaboration. No, this does not mean that it cannot be made operational in an Active Directory environment. It can be easily integrated with your current AD environment and can be quickly setup to support basic collaborative items like team sites, document workspaces, blogs, wiki and meeting workspaces. These are some of the frameworks that come out-of-the-box with WSS and more such Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web Site. Moreover, once you have gathered enough understanding on how WSS works and how it stores and retrieves data, you can scale it up further to connect with MS Access, MS Excel, MS Word, MS PowerPoint and even your Exchange Server. Document version control, RSS feeds, Task Notifications, Basic Workflows and Email Alerts – all come along with WSS.

The main focus area when thinking about SharePoint implementation in your organization would surely be the cost factor. Yes, SharePoint Portal Server does have high costs and that’s why you should always start playing around with WSS to being with. This will help you to decide what you need next in terms of what WSS cannot offer. Also, once you put WSS to use in the company, it would also become easier for you to convince the management in moving up to SharePoint Portal Server.

In short, WSS should be the starting place for you if you are looking at using SharePoint for your organization.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

The first portal product introduced by Microsoft was termed Digital Dashboard which introduced the concept of WebParts. However, this technology never picked up and did not even manage to get out of the Beta release stage. On the other hand, the MS Office group team at Microsoft came out with another product towards collaboration by the name of SharePoint Team Services (STS). This is what lead to the birth of SharePoint Portal Server somewhere in the year 2001. Today, SharePoint Portal Server (MOSS) has been upgraded to work on the .NET Framework with least amount of development oriented architecture.

The major benefit of using MOSS is the way it provides the feature of using Business Intelligence (BI). MOSS offers simple ways to provide key performance data using the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) WebParts and build BI reports to be published on dashboards. BI and KPI can assemble and display business information using Excel Spreadsheets, MS SQL or any other 3^rd party line of business application.

MOSS also offers “My Sites” which are individual mini-sites meant for employees. Each employee can create his or her personal site thorough a self-service request. The site can be classified to show Private as well as Public content, skill sets, contact information and more. It can even be integrated with Active Directory to pull information from AD like the manager, colleague, contact information, etc. And can be scheduled through the Central Administration to update the SharePoint data as and when changes are made in Active Directory.

The buck does not stop here. MOSS has more or better functionalities/options like Single-Sign On, Portal Sites, Enhanced Search (not only text and documents but also people). The Enterprise version of MOSS provides Excel Services, Business Intelligence Dashboards, Internet Publishing and Content Management, Web based InfoPath Forms and more.

Summary

As you can see, there are lot of similarities between the two products. Mainly where the functionality differs is that MOSS allows more aggressive and targeted indexing for search, offers BI and KPI and Web Based Services for Excel and InfoPath. I’m sure to start with, these would not have much importance in the company which mainly requires a collaboration platform for their employees so that they cut down on the transfer of collaborative files and documents via email, can keep a track of the documents and maintain versions. Go ahead and start polishing your understanding on Windows SharePoint Services. The more you use it, the better it will become and then you can think of scaling it further by switching to Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

For those who would like a detailed comparison, Microsoft has published this in an Excel sheet and can be downloaded from here.

I was just waiting for something to happen from Microsoft end and after a long wait, yes it did happen. In a blog posting recently, Paul Cooke, Director of Windows Enterprise Client Security at Microsoft stated that the Sophos claim was deceptive and bogus. Further he adds that, “This test shows that most people don’t knowingly have and run known malware on their system. Malware typically makes it onto a system through other avenues like the browser or email program. So while I absolutely agree that anti-virus software is essential to protecting your PC, there are other defenses as well.” “I do agree that you still need to run anti-virus software on Windows 7,” Cooke noted, “but it is equally important to keep all of your software up-to-date through automatic updates, such as through Windows Update service.”

Now to the main point – I absolutely agree with what Paul Cooke has to say in terms of securing your PC. Being in the IT industry since 20 years now and moreover having given consultancy in Infrastructure Security to number of organizations, I’ve only seen that 40% to 50% of the problems faced by an organization are due to un-patched system, pirated software and out-of-date anti-virus signatures. In fact, when we install Windows Vista or Windows 7 on a PC, the operating system keeps on alerting via its Windows Security system if Automatic Updates are not configured or if the PC is missing an anti-virus solution. If that is the case, the question is – when and where did Microsoft claim that the new version of their Operating System Windows 7 does not require an anti-virus? If you know the answer to this, I would like to hear back from you.

Gartner says that it is almost inevitable for any Enterprise to move to windows 7 and also added that the release of Windows 7 will generate renewed interest in hardware upgrades in consumers and small business segments – though the corporate demand is not expected to gain momentum until the end of 2010.

Gartner, Inc. has highlighted five key issues enterprises should examine as Windows 7 hits the market:

1. Plan to be Off Windows XP by Year-End 2012 — Microsoft will support Windows XP with security fixes into April of 2014, but past experience has shown that independent software vendors (ISVs) will stop testing much earlier. “New releases of critical business software will require Windows 7 long before Microsoft support for Windows XP ends,” said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. “Organizations that get all of their users off Windows XP by the end of 2012 will avoid significant potential problems.”

2. Start Working on Migration Projects Now — The typical organization requires 12 to 18 months waiting, testing, and planning before it can start deploying a new client OS. There is a lot of work to be done in preparation, and delays in getting started will only result in added costs later.

3. Don’t Wait for Windows 7 SP1 to Begin Testing and Deployment — Many organizations say they plan to wait until SP1 ships to begin testing and deploying a new client OS. Gartner analysts suggest starting work now (especially if companies have skipped Windows Vista), but are planning to switch to SP1 before their actual rollout.

4. Don’t Skip Windows 7 — Gartner categorizes Windows 7 as a “polishing” release on top of the architectural change that the Windows Vista “plumbing” release delivered. Gartner analysts said polishing releases should never be skipped. “While organizations that skipped Windows 2000 and waited for XP had some problems spanning the gap, organizations that adopted Windows 2000 and tried to skip Windows XP, waiting for Vista, had a much harder time,” said Michael Silver, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

5. Budget Carefully — Migration Costs to Vary Significantly Gartner’s model shows that migration costs could be $1,035 to $1,930 per user to move from Windows XP to Windows 7, and $339 to $510 per user to move from Windows Vista to Windows 7 depending on an organization’s approach.

Inputs taken from Gartner.

The system requirements to optimally run Xobni are a Windows XP (SP2 or greater) or Vista machine, Outlook 2003 or 2007, Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or above, a minimum of 1 GB RAM (most of the desktops have more than that today), a 2GHz of higher processor speed and a monitor with a resolution of 1024×768 (recommend a higher resolution if possible as the Xobni tool bar eats up some screen area of Outlook after installation).

It is also recommended that if the Outlook profile is connected with a Microsoft Exchange Server, then the profile be configured in a “Cached Exchange Mode”. This makes sense since this would create an OST file in the desktop and thus would help Xobni or even a normal Outlook user to gain access to emails in case of the non-availability of the Exchange Server.

Once installed, Xobni takes some time to scan and index the emails in your Outlook and starts ranking your contacts by the number of emails that are shared. It takes about a minute or two for the initial indexing. Much of the indexing is then later done by the plug-in in the background.

The statistics area displays useful information about the selected contact such as the number of emails sent and received, a bar graph showing what time of day most emails are exchanged and the rank which is determined by the number of emails exchanged between you and that contact.

The best part is the Actions area which helps to perform common interactions with the selected contact. For example, assume that there is no phone number stored in the contact information of a particular person. The request phone number action automatically creates a new email for that contact asking for the phone number. When a response is received from that person, Xobni automatically extracts the phone number and adds it to the profile.

Again in the Actions area are two great features – LinkedIn and Facebook tabs. Upon selecting a email from a contact, click on the LinkedIn or Facebook tabs and Xobni will pull out relevant information of that contact from LinkedIn or Facebook. Click on “view profile” and it directly opens up the selected contacts Facebook or LinkedIn profile. Again, the best part is that you can see the wall posts directly from Facebook in to this area.

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The way Xobni displays the conversations using a threaded style similar to Google’s Gmail is amazing. All emails upon indexing are grouped in to conversations based on the subject, people in To and CC header fields, etc.

Each entry in the conversations panel will show the subject line of the email thread, a count of the emails the thread contains, as well as an approximate time that the last email in the conversation was sent. If the conversation contains an attached file, a small paper clip icon appears to the right of the subject line.

The title bar also totals the number of unique conversations. Clicking on the conversations bar expands the viewable area of conversations and gives you the option to filter the results. Clicking on any conversation entry consisting of more than one email will bring up a new sidebar frame showing the conversation thread.

The entry information will be shown at the top of the sidebar and the emails in the conversation are displayed just below that. If the email thread is longer than the sidebar can contain, there’s a detail slider, which can change the visible size of each email entry.

This way you can quickly find the right email that you’re looking for. If the conversation thread includes multiple people, they’re listed below in a panel called “People in Conversation”. Likewise, if there were any email attachments in that thread, these will be shown at the bottom of the sidebar in the “Files Exchanged” panel.

Each email entry in this view can be clicked on to further reveal the entire message. From here, you’re given the option to do standard email actions such as “Reply” and “Forward”. The “Open” button will open the original email from Outlook folders and the “View Conversation” button will take you back to the previous view of the entire conversation. Aside from the standard email header info, we can also see exactly where in the folder structure the email resides.

Xobni Analytics is another cool feature. This can be accessed from the menu bar of Outlook. Whether it’s the total volume of emails today, last week, entire year or the total volume of emails from your friend, analytics is the place to check all this out.

The data that’s displayed for the persons In and Out mail count, Rank, and Emails received graph are all powered behind the scenes by Analytics. One of the most widely used features within the Analytics window is the ability to determine own network rankings.

In short, Xobni is a Microsoft Outlook add-in that:

- Shows up previously hidden information about email interactions with people
- Allows to explore emails by contacts and conversations
- Performs lightning-fast searches
- Gives immediate access to files exchanged with contacts
- Allows to link Outlook and online social networks and data services such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Hoover’s
- Indexes personal Yahoo! mail for integrated searching
- Provides an in-depth analysis of the overall flow of email traffic via Analytics

Go ahead and try out Xobni today. You won’t regret the decision. Xobni can be downloaded from http://www.xobni.com. If you manage to download and install it, do share your views here so that other visitors reading this post can read more about the user experiences from you.

Schema Master: It controls all the updates and modifications that relate to schema of the Active Directory. It is the duty of the Schema Master to ensure that the latest schema has been replicated across all Domain Controllers in the directory. The role is forest-wide and there can be only one Schema Master in a forest.

Domain Naming Master: It controls the addition and deletion of domains in the forest. The role is once again forest-wide and there can be only one Domain Naming Master in a forest.

RID Master: Stands for Relative ID and is responsible for processing RID requests from all Domain Controllers in a particular domain. For example, if we create a user in Active Directory, a unique Security Identifier (SID) is created which identifies it in the domain. Along with this SID a Relative ID (RID) that is unique to the SID is also generated from a pool that is allocated. The main role of RID Master is to ensure that each DC has got enough RID pool and if not then process the request for the pool from the unallocated RID pool. The role is Domain specific and there can be only one Domain Controller handling this role.

Infrastructure Master: When an object in one domain is referenced by another object in another domain, it represents the reference by the GUID, the SID (for references to security principals), and the DN of the object being referenced. The infrastructure FSMO role holder is the DC responsible for updating an object’s SID and distinguished name in a cross-domain object reference. The role is Domain specific and there can be only one Domain Controller handling this role.

PDC Emulator: It seems to be a backward compatible role that has been handed over as a legacy from Windows NT 4.0 and is mainly used for syncing time in the Enterprise. The W32Time service that we see in the Services MMC has a very important role to play: synchronize time across the enterprise to that Kerberos Authentication works smoothly. After all, password changes, authentication, account lockout, etc. all depends on this. The role is Domain specific and there can be only one Domain Controller handling this role.

So why does an administrator need to know which Domain Controller is holding which role? Well, normally there is always a single machine that carries all the five FSMO roles, but there can be scenarios where an administrator would have moved one or more FSMO roles. To know why, read this KB article from Microsoft. With a better understanding of which server holds which role, the administrator can plan better for disaster recovery or scheduled maintenance. There are many ways to find out which DC holds which role, but here is one that uses NTDSUtil – a command line tool.

A word of caution before we proceed: If you do not know what you are doing and have no idea about how Active Directory works or even worse – what Active Directory is – please refrain from doing this practically. Doing this incorrectly or messing with this command can cause your Active Directory to crash and lose functionality.

Step #1: On any Domain Controller, click Start. In the Run command type CMD and hit Enter. You will be taken to the good old command prompt window (DOS were the days). Type ntdsutil and hit Enter.

Step #2: You shall see the screen with ntdsutil: prompt. Since we want to find out the roles, type roles and hit Enter. Notice that the prompt now changes to show fsmo maintenance:. Now is a good time to get more HELP on the list of available commands.

Step #3: On the fsmo maintenance: prompt, type ? and hit Enter. Right-click in the Window, mark and copy them. Paste the clipboard in to Notepad for easy reference.

Step #4: Type connection and press Enter. This will show a prompt with server connections:. Type connect to server <servername> (replace <servername with actual name> and press Enter.

Step #5: Once we are connected to the Domain Controller, type q to return back to the fsmo maintenance prompt. Now type, select operation target and then press Enter. Notice that the prompt changes to select operation target:.

Step #6: At the select operation target prompt, type list roles for connected server and press Enter. This would list all the FSMO roles for that Domain Controller. To get out of the ntdsutil, type q until you are back to the good old DOS prompt.

For those who are looking at ready solution rather than going through this process, check out DUMPFSMOS.CMD in the Resource Kit (Windows 2000/2003). This tool is a one-click utility that does the same trick.

Open Source is a methodology based on which the design, development and the distribution of the developed software is carried out along with its source code. On the other hand, Open Standards means a royalty-free distribution of technology which has been formalized and approved by committees that are open to participation by all interested parties. For example, W3C is a body working on standards for Web Technologies. Click here for more information.

The word “Standards” means a set of guidelines to which a lot of people have agreed upon. Putting this definition in the context of software, “standards” allow a company to pick and choose from competing vendors and interoperate their systems without being pinned down to one of them.

Many think that open source software offers the same advantage, but that is not true. Open source means that you have access to source code for inspection and modifications but it may fail interoperability. This does not mean that open source is not good. There is lots of software available which are better or provide a similar kind of functionality that paid software will do. And the best part of open source is that it is free and comes with the entire source code. But what happens when you need assistance? Is the assistance free or is there a price tag? We all know that there is lot of stake involved in providing support. If you are thinking that support means training people on how to use the product or software, you are mistaken. There is more to support then that. It involves product trainings, more research to fix bugs and vulnerabilities, distributing patches and updates, etc. There may be companies that provide support on open source platforms and have no tie-up or relation with the parent company that designed and distributed the software for free. They may be able to fix small issues since there is access to the source code, but imagine a situation where there is something wrong at the core level and requires dependency on the original developer. Further to this, there is plenty of evidence that suggests that open source does not necessarily equate to cost savings. There are still licensing fees, service fees, implementation fees and support fees associated with it.

I would feel comfortable if I knew that the open source software that I downloaded for free gave me the source code and so I can fix or modify the application as per my needs. But I would be more comfortable thinking that the paid software I use from the vendor is going to be in the industry for long and many brains are working on the software to ensure that it runs smoothly and has improvised functionality with every new release.

All this does not mean that open source is a big NO-NO. Open source does provide the benefit of using someone’s work in your own and then redistributing your work in similar fashion so that someone else can get benefit from your work. This way the community can make progress using a collaborative manner of production. Most of the time this needs to be shared and released under GPL (General Public License) which means that you cannot charge others for a license and you must make your own source code available to the public. This makes it IP (Intellectual Property) unfriendly. Many a times this code will not even make its way to the main stream and will simply end up as an individual company’s product. This leaves a question in mind – will everything in the long run be compatible or provide interoperability? Will my investment in one segment ensure returns in the other or vice-versa? Who’s going to provide updates and security patches to fix vulnerabilities? Who’s going to invest billions to innovate? From my perspective, it’s not a fight between open source and commercial software. It’s all about open standards versus proprietary standards.

I feel we should have more specific and beneficial standards that are not vendor specific or not vendor dictated because ultimately it is the interoperability that counts at the end of the day. If open source software fits your environment and gets the work done in terms of costs, features, support or maintenance – all’s well. But if you are putting security, compliance, performance, upgrades and scalability before everything else then proprietary software designed with open standards in mind is your choice. We can even extend this further and run a combination of both – it’s our choice.

What do you think? Let me know.

Until the knock of environment friendly concepts and public concerns, traditional datacenters had fixed their eye on maximum uptime. Times have changed and datacenters are concentrating on conserving energy. Here are some tips that can contribute towards building eco-friendly datacenters.

Recently, I was involved in redesigning our company’s datacenter to consolidate hardware and systems running at two different physical locations. This was planned not as a “marketing” or “great idea!” move, but in fact it was a pragmatic business decision that helped the company to save money each year. I would like to share here my key learning’s that helped us make decisions to work towards a Greener Datacenter.

Evaluate Current Infrastructure: This is the first step where analysis needs to be done on the energy bills, current consumptions, and how much is being utilized by the servers, air conditioning systems, cooling fans and other devices like routers and switches in the datacenter. This helps in creating a baseline for calculating the Return-On-Investment after the changes are actually put in to implementation. Here is a link to couple of Power Calculators:

India – http://www.indiaenergyportal.org/
UK – http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp
USA – http://www.42u.com/efficiency/energy-efficiency-calculator.htm

Rack Placements: This is an important aspect while designing the datacenter floor plan. Plan the layout of the equipments and structural components in a hot aisle and cold aisle rack layout method as recommended by Green Grid. The basic principle is to maximize the separation between the exhaust air flow and intake air flow. The figure below would give a better idea of the basic design principle.

The benefit of this arrangement is that it affects the required air delivery temperature that must be used to equalize the temperature throughout the room.

Need Analysis: Evaluate what is required out of the datacenter, not just what is needed now but maybe two or three years down the line. This helps in estimating the room for growth and helps avoid costly mistakes which fail to allow enough headroom for IT growth.

Eliminate: Look at every single area where you can eliminate, reduce or consolidate current hardware and equipments. For example, if you have two 24 port switches using only 18 connections consolidate them and shut down one of them. This does not have much impact in small organizations, but when we talk about companies which have lot of equipments in their datacenter, I’m sure figures would be impressive. Moreover, while calculating the ROI also consider the capital equipment and ongoing operational cost savings.

Consolidation of Servers: Identify areas where servers can be consolidated on to one single piece of hardware rather than running multiple physical boxes. By running multiple platforms and applications on a single server with many virtual servers can help reduce the amount of physical boxes. This in turn would help save the power consumption of not only the hardware box but also affect the cooling systems energy consumption.

Usage Patterns: There is a misconception that servers in a datacenter should be available and performing 24×7 regardless of the usage levels. In fact, identify and list out how all different parts of the network are being utilized and what are the peak hours for bandwidth, processing power and storage to handle peak network traffic. Set the power savings features on the hardware or OS level such that it helps in saving power. Allow the servers to sleep when they are not being utilized and explore the Wake-On-LAN technology.

Rated Appliances: Use Energy Star rated appliances, specially the air-conditioning or cooling systems. Devices carrying the Energy Star logo tend to save about 20% to 30% of energy on an average and the specifications differ with each item. Keep an eye on this point as it is estimated that EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) will announce and enforce the ratings for datacenter appliances and servers by 2010. At times, devices with Energy Star rating come costly but it is worth investing that marginal amount during the initial purchase. The overall running costs of power consumption would be much higher if the devices are not power efficient and you will run spending more on the energy costs in the long run.

Monitoring: It’s important to keep a track on the uptime and usage patterns of the datacenter. It basically allows the IT managers to accurately measure the effectiveness of the changes. Moreover, it also assists the top level management to decide on green energy solutions to reduce or eliminate their carbon footprints.

Remember, Green is just not a color – it’s more than that.

Do feel free to add in your comments, ideas and experiences. They would be much appreciated by all those who are planning to make computing energy efficient.