IBM spruiks mainframe as Green saviour

JUST when the final stake seemed to have been driven through the heart of the ageless IBM mainframe architecture, another reason emerges to keep the Big Iron plugged in: Mainframe are Green.

In what IBM is calling the most significant transformations of its worldwide data centres in a generation, the company says it will consolidate 3,900 computer servers onto about 30 Z Series mainframes running Linux.

The result, IBM says, will be an 80 per cent reduction in the amount of energy required to drive the processing power compared to its current set up. The company says it expects to generate significant savings through the consolidation to mainframes – in lower power costs, and cheaper software and support costs.

As an exercise in ‘eating its own dog food’, IBM wants to demonstrate to potential customers that mainframes are at least part of the answer for companies seeking to reduce power consumption to meet emissions commitments.

The initiative is part of Project Big Green, a broad commitment that IBM announced in May to sharply reduce data centre energy consumption for the company and its clients.

Data centres are voracious users of electricity. IBM has more than eight million square feet of data centre space worldwide – the equivalent of 139 football fields.

IBM says that mainframe systems will be the key to the IT industry successfully reducing its power consumption requirements.

“The mainframe is the single most powerful instrument to drive better economics and energy conservation at the data centre today," said IBM System z mainframe general manager James Stallings.

“By moving globally onto the mainframe platform, IBM is creating a technology platform that saves energy while positioning our IT assets for flexibility and growth,” Mr Stallings said.

IBM plans to recycle the 3,900 servers through IBM Global Asset Recovery Services.

The IBM mainframe's ability to run the Linux operating system is key to the consolidation project, providing an open foundation for a wide variety of applications.

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Green group attacks power consumption

A CONSORTIUM of some of the most powerful names in the tech industry has combined resources to improve the energy efficiency of power-hungry data centers.

The so-called Green Grid is a US-based non-profit that will specifically investigate ways to reduce data centre power consumption, and to improve the life-cycle management of IT products – specifically recycling and the handling of hazardous waste.

The founding board of Green Grid includes hardware and software companies heavily engaged in data centre work – including IBM, HP, Intel, Microsoft, AMD, APC, Rackable Systems, Sun Microsystems and VMware.

The consortium believes energy efficiency in data centres is the single most significant issue facing IT companies and their customers today.

Green Grid members say there has not only been exponential growth in power and cooling costs in the past several years, but that customer demand for concentrated computing was outpacing the availability of clean, reliable power in much of the world.

The Green Grid doesn’t endorse vendor-specific products, instead seeking to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data centre energy efficiencies.

Network Appliance is the latest large corporate to join Green Grid.

“Our customers are seeing explosive data growth and they are broadening the focus of their long-term data center power reduction efforts to include storage and data management practices,” said NetApp Core Systems vice-president Chris Bennett.

“While we can't eliminate the unending thirst for data, NetApp is helping customers buy and use less storage to drive down their data center’s carbon footprint one byte at a time. Our membership in The Green Grid demonstrates our continued commitment to advancing greater energy efficiency in data centers.”

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