Posts by Valdis Filks

Sustainable ethanol, eat less sugar, drink less alcohol

We need a balanced policy, biodiesel, ethanol & hybrid cars. So lets not kill our options and put ourselves in a corner. Ethanol as a fuel gets a lot of attention and scare stories, well so did electricity when we started using it.

We need to change our lifestyle, Brits can eat less sugar and the Swedes can drink less alcohol.

Strangely, British Sugar produce it sustainably in the UK from sugar beet, as people eat less sugar which is not good for them, we can use sugar beet for fuel, from their website (http://www.britishsugar.co.uk/RVE29c095ba629149d391ce49792e8ab37b,,.aspx)

"Crops

In the UK, bioethanol can be economically produced by the fermentation of sugar beet or wheat. In our Wissington plant, we produce bioethanol from sugar beet which is supplied under contract by existing growers.

Producing up to 55,000 tonnes (70 million litres) of bioethanol every year, the plant uses around 110,000 tonnes of sugar. This is equivalent to 650,000 tonnes of sugar beet. Beet supplied to British Sugar for bioethanol manufacture is grown on existing farm land.

Production

Bioethanol is produced by the fermentation of sugars followed by distillation to produce a pure alcohol.

Fossil fuels are used in the production process but every effort is made to optimise fuel efficiency. British Sugar has embraced a system called Combined Heat & Power (CHP), recognised as one of the most fuel-efficient processes available. About 80% of the energy in the fuel is employed in the sugar manufacturing process. As a result of the close integration with the sugar factory we have been able to demonstrate savings in excess of 60% in CO2 emissions when compared to petrol."

Q & A here: http://www.britishsugar.co.uk/RVEf8cbe9389f134771bf75104662c1de49,,.aspx

Also, those Swedes produce it:

"SEKAB is one of the few companies in the world to continually produce ethanol from forestry products in a pilot plant – so-called cellulose ethanol or second-generation ethanol (read more about this under Introduction to cellulosic ethanol). The extraction method is based on leaching out the sugar in the cellulose using dilute acid before it is fermented to ethanol."

They verify the source of imported ethanol, see myths & facts http://www.sekab.com/default.asp?id=2166&refid=2167

FAQ's here: http://www.sekab.com/default.asp?id=1914&refid=1992

Lets not kill a young industry with lots of promise, we are in the early days of ethanol, more needs to be done with research in enzymes for example so that we can make it out of more raw materials.

From the NYTimes, which summed it up quite well.

Even those who regard ethanol as the holy grail of energy policy concede that there is a right way and a wrong way to produce it. Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases. Full article here:

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24sun2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin).

I drive a Saab 9-5t biopower (e.g. Ethanol/E85), but I like diesel/biodiesel too. We need to support new technologies to solve the energy problems facing society.

Technologies already exist to reduce power usage

We should prevent energy usage rather than increase energy usage and then cool it. Prevention is always better than cure. We should design/architectect systems from scratch with lower power & least usage. These technologies exist today and are mature. We should not add hotter and hotter chips and more disks which require more and more cooling. This is an upward spiral in usage. Lets avoid the power usage problem in the first place. Use a low power solution in the beginning and then all following problems disappear.

We buy power hungry devices then cool them. Compounding the problem, by redesigning and upgrading additional cooling systems.

We should buy power efficient devices, that need increase in cooling - removing the problem at source, then no need to spend money on extra cooling.

Examples:

Replace all desktop PC's and laptops with thin clients. These exist from Sun and Citrix (both solutions run/support Windows apps). How many workers are really mobile. If you sit by a desk all day you do not need your own PC. Most PC's, laptops run at low CPU utilisation all day. Sunray running Unix apps and Windows apps is mature and proven existed for years. No extra staff required, security problems solved as no local data/disk/cd drives. Replacement of (2Kg) thin client takes 10mins, (20Kg) PC/laptop 1-2 days. Thin clients have no local software so no re-installs required. Many indirect savings.

Take all inactive data and put it or achive it on tape drives. Tapes require no cooling or power when inactive, disks do. This fact cannot be ignored. We can use de-duplication and then move the de-duped data blocks to tape. Use VTL's or any type of virtualisation to send data to disk. Behind the disks use tapes to store the data that is not used weekly or monthly. e.g. disk buffer pools for daily weekly used data moved to tape after a month of inactivity. All tapes are encrypted, no offsite or lost data issues, tape encryption is mature and generally available.

Virtualisation and hypervisors take extra CPU cycles and are not required to consolidate applications from many systems to one system. In the last 20yrs we have been running many apps on one shared server. Any decent OS using CPU/Mem sharing algorithms can run many apps. Most enterprise OS platforms have built in virtualisation and resource (RAM, CPU) sharing software. Large (e.g. 16 CPU, multi-core) servers can consolidate & virtualise many small servers. These large servers have reliability tecnologies far exceeding the mainframe mythological reliability. Large Unix servers and mainframes are the same thing. But more application choice and simpler staffing issues with Unix servers.

You can normally replace all web tier and small print servers, email servers with multi-core servers. E.g. approximately 5 small servers can be replaced by one Coolthreads server. With a 5 x reduction in power and cooling requirements. No need to add extra cooling/chillers in your datacenter.

Summary:

From 500W desktop PC's go to 10W thin clients

From 900W - many KW disk arrays go to 0W tape. Immense storage savings.

From many web tier 700W servers go to 400W single CPU multi-core throughput servers (e.g. Sun Coolthreads servers).

Just by using existing, proven technologies that require no extra training or new technologies we can solve todays power usage problems.

You can get this from most of the major IT suppliers. Some technologies are unique to Sun like Coolthreads servers and SunRay thin clients. I wish others could supply these too.

Lets not kill a new industry, biofuel vs food too simple.

The biofuel vs shortage of food is an over simplification. If we kill the industry now we risk losing a future source of fuel. Lots of research and increased efficiencies, alternative sources will be lost. To stop biofuel production is an extreme reaction, need a comprimise and some pragmatism. Some biologival sources are better sources of biofuel than others, do not criticise them all, see summary.

US - uses corn: Not good, which is a food.

UK - uses sugarbeat, good for fuel/ethanol, not a direct food.

Sweden - uses, wood chisp, good for ethanol/diesel production.

Brazil - uses sugarcane, good for ethanol not a direct food.

So we cannot paint every producer with the same brush, I like the UK and Swedish sources of biodfuel, then Brazil and lastly the US source.

Lots of land is set aside, it is the EU CAP that distorts all agriculture in Europe. We have never been able to solve the Common Agricultural Policy problems in Europe.

As Jeremy explains above "A commercial bio-diesel plant just opened near family and so its caught my attention. They use the waste from the neighboring pork processing plant to produce bio-diesel and glycerin as the major byproduct which is used as a food supplement for the pigs. The community seems to love it due to the huge reduction in solid waste coming out of the pork plant. Ive been unable to locate any studies regarding the carbon cost of producing such a fuel or emissions when burned, though and was wondering if anyone has seen any study results for this."

We should use waste products and non foodstuffs to make fuels, look at Sweden and the UK. There may be other good examples that I have missed.

All our hopes with open source ended, opp for others.

This is all I ever wanted from Linux, a desktop. I have used and been relatively happy with Mandrake, RH, Suse and Sun's Linux (JDS). My hopes have been dashed, will need to look at Ubuntu.

We have AIX, Solaris and HPUX which scale to more cpu's, threads,better file system integrity, diagnostics, security, scheduling etc than Linux servers. One of the above is even open-source and has backward binary compatibility. Shame that the desktop Linux is dropped.

Some of the above Unices, have lower licence fees than the Linux distros. Always well worth checking out, it is one of those falacies tht Linux on the server gives you a competitive cost edge. Costs more, can't migrate to another Linux without great pain. How many commercial organisation make/create their own Linux system, never met one, every distro tries to make a proprietary distro with lock-in. Where did all the open Linux promises dissappear, I hope the other Linux distros do not abandon the desktop.

So if I install RH I still cannot easily migrate to Suse or any Linux distro. Can someone give me the cost of Linux distro A to Linux distro B migration. Takes me about 2 days for a Linux desktop migration, I would not like to guess the time to migrate one Linux server to another.

This is what needs to be fixed, make it easy to migrate from one Linux to another, the discussion is always about open source. But we want choice, the Linux distributions tie you in and lock you in.

Is the Linux community forcing every Linux fan to go MAC OS, which is a unix just like linux, but Mac admit lock-in. Well, this is a good chance for Ubuntu to take the lead and help us Linux desktop fans. NB I do have to use Mac and WinXP at home due to family pressure. Am I naove and expected too much from Linux, sad, sad day. I hope the other distros do not follow.

Quality of egg basket carrying people - the real deal

I agree a lot with this article and that virtualisation is really old hat. Difference is that it is available on commodity hardware.

With all systems there is a small difference say 20% which gives the server hardware leverage and a competitive edge. But this 20% of expensive but extra reliability due to special h/w e.g. memory mirroring and things like dual internal crossbars, gives 80% of the value. A badly managed mainframe with unskilled operators has availability equivalent of a desktop PC. A high end unix server now has all the RAS features of a mainframe e.g. RAM memory mirroring and instruction retry. But you need good people to manage those high end unix boxes. Mainframes and Unix servers have been virtualisating/consolidating small systems for a long time. Doing what VMware does for a long time. Are not the VMware developers old unix/mainframe people. The equation is hw + people skills + virtualisation s/w.

Also, as all old timers know, virtualisation has a cost, the overhead of the virtualisation layer. We should not forget this.

So it is the quality of the support staff which make systems reliable. Outsources manage this as they try to never touch/change a system. The trick is to be able to change/upgrade systems and add new apps while maintaining availability. Datacenter grade Unix servers have allow hot swap and dynamic changes on systems which is ideal for a changing virtualisation environment also hardware to cope with failure of chips, memory, i/O etc. So very little risk here. I do not see this available yet on commodity, why we do not have it on X86, these extra features cost money. You get what you pay for.

So bleeding edge is virtualisation on X86, but put all your print servers on one X64 box and you have a single point of failure e.g. risk. Can't print anymore, save the trees, this is green IT. Virtualise with commodity low paid, unskilled staff on commodity hardware and you are treading a fine line. All eggs in one basket with people not used to carrying eggs.

How long will this fashion continue, I reckon on another 18 months, virtualisation is already about 18 months into it's cycle. Most IT fashions last for about 3yrs.

What is the next fashion, easy, black. Black is the new black.

What will the future be like, simple it will be different.

Will we have an iCooler next ?

The SunMD is a standard design with water cooling built in the factory, every SunMD is the same. No need for any local plumbers to change anything inside when a customer receives it. Just plug it into the power and external cooling pipes. When you buy a Sun Modular Datacenter (aka Blackbox), you do not not have to change anything. Put a water cooled server in a computer room and as explained many times, you need to do lots of extra work and ongoing complexity.

As far as I know all servers in a SunMD are air cooled, no servers are water cooled. But I am sure if someone paid Sun enough money we would be able to connect a water cooled P6 in the SunMD to the pipes. I would advise against this, guess why, it adds complexity.

SunMD is water cooling outside of the computer chassis/enclosure. The Power6 water cooled server is water cooling inside the chassis/enclosure.

My point is about the added complexity, which water causes if you have to put it into an existing datacenter.

Now if people want to make hot chips or more elegant designs then we technologists have a challenge. Produce a coolant that is safer to mix with electrical devices and those nice little towers that we put on CPUs can become a selling point, lets call it the iCooler. I remember that some of the IBM, Hitachi or Amdahl mainframes had those elegant circular tower heatsinks.

Well it was pretty but complex. Now maybe many overclockers like to cool their PC's at home with these type of things. The modders always like new gadgets and to spend time tweaking their systems. Commercial datacenters do not.

NB I built my latest PC with the criteria of least power usage, it is based on a AMD BE-2540 dual core cpu, $ per performance per power usage it was the most efficient. It may not be the fastest, but I was being Mr Sensible. No water anywhere near it.

In commercial datacenters I do not think we can overclock, mod and customize our servers with lights, water coolant towers etc. But maybe the first person to do so could make the datacenter into a work of art and a light show.

Me no iModder.

Mainframes fail and you have no competitive open bid process

I worked with mainframes, they fail just like any other large server. Their is no unique or differentiating hardware or software in them anymore, with the E10K, Sun overtook the mainframe in scaleability about 10 years ago. A 64 way mainframe is a medium sized Unix enterprise server. Many large Unix servers have over 100 cores. Amdahl and Hitachi built larger and often better mainframes than IBM. They saw that other companies would overtake the mainframe and got out of the business.

The mystery concerning mainframes comes from the fact that you cannot find anyone to explain them except IBM. Thus not many people can refute IBM claims.

MIPS = Meaningless Indicator Of Performance. This is not a useful measurement of performance or metric.

The term mainframe is missused enormously, any large UNIX server is a mainframe.

If you run a mainframe you are totally locked into IBM, you cannot have an open bid to upgrade it. There is only one bidder IBM, you cannot go anywhere else for the s/w, IBM supply z/OS. Most TCO/ROI calculations will be done by IBM Global Services, who have more people than you company so you will not have a chance or the resources to analyse their cost model or question every detail.

For any new application being installed on the mainframe calculate the cost of exit. You have nowhere to go. With Unix mainframes you have several companies that will supply you a platform and you can truely compare costs & ROI. And move to another supplier if you are not satisfied with your Unix Server.

Mainframes are good, but so are many large Unix servers/mainframes.

Caveat Emptor, buyer beware.

Valdis from Mars, no but close.

This could be a first scoop for The Register, yes I am an alien. But maybe I am not allowed to call myself that for politically correct reasons, my alien status has been revoked since the country I live in is part of the EU now. I did live in a large EU financial metropolis and work in the middle of a large concentration of IT, where most of the rest of that country looked upon those city dwellers as aliens. And I believe still do.

I also now live closer to the northern lights than most of the population of europe. Apparently where the "blond" aliens have integrated into the population. But I have no starship, just a SAAB that runs of alcohol (serious clue here). When I drink my cars fuel, I do believe I have my own starship.

Well we have had some good chip discussions. A quick wrap up for people from another planet could be that Itanium is a truck nowadays, not a sinking ship, Sun's Rock chip will be edible in the form of a pizza and people still believe that power per thread is not important.

I love the computer industry.

Summary, get yourself a pizza, buy a new cooling device to support the old hot CPU designs and be careful of aliens.

Sun already ahead with T5000

Sun T5000 servers already have ethernet and encryption on the CPU. Previous generation of UltraSPARC T1 already had multicore way ahead of competitors. Intel is following AMD & Sun on this. Also, power usage of Sun servers way below Intel, Intel is in catch up mode, thus they cannot kick the rest of the industy into line.

Sun kicked the industry into multicore and low power. Every heard of a SunRay thin client, thinner than any other thin client.

It is an accident, we are all experts now,

Accidents happen, this was an accident. We should stop bashing the organisations involved, the NHS is there to help us we should help them. I think we all owe the NHS a lot, I have had 2 broken arms fixed by them.

This is an opportunity to start thinking about data and cooling.

We can be smarter in the future and store the PACS data on low temperature storage e.g. tape. We need a smarter storage hierarchy were data is on disk for x days then goes to tape for months or years. No point paying for cooling spinning disk that no-one uses.

I know this is a shameless plug, but we have a spanner/tool that fits the job, people may just not know about it. SAM makes the media transparent and your applications things all data is on disk. You can take a copy and send it to tape on another site which does not need the cooling of disk. Disk is good for short term storage or active data, tape is good for inactive data. SAM glues it all together so you never know.

The solution is here: http://www.sun.com/storagetek/management_software/data_management/sam/index.xml

An example is here:

http://www.serverwatch.com/hreviews/article.php/3696256

Simple use less power, prevention not cure.

Why do we make this so complicated, spending money on more energy hungry cooling systems. Fix it as source use lower power servers, that are as or faster than existing servers. Also, delete data on disks or archive stuff you do not access daily on to tape. All discussed here: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/category/Environment

Does AIX file encryption stop de-duplication from working

If AIX encrypts the data in the filesystem, at source. Will a de-duplication device still be able to detect duplicate blocks of data and reduce the backup window. Or will de-duplication stop working, will de-duplication have to decrypt it before backing up, the encrypt again when storing the backup copy. What is the overhead and security exposure of this.

More details here: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/the_dupe_in_de_duplication

Execellent article, however, the proctologists section was painful, not sure if I want to delve further into this area.

Use cellulose to make ethanol, not foodstuffs.

I drive a ethanol car, SAAB biopower 2.0t, the new one 2.3t is even more efficient. In the medium to long term, we should stop using foodstuffs to make fuel but cellulose. I live in the vodka belt, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Baltics and Russia. Most people know how to make home brew ethanol substances from food by-products (e.g. potato skins).

Just discussed all this ethanol issues on my blog: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/the_truth_is_rarely_pure