EnergyWise - Redefining Green
New Cisco technology called ‘EnergyWise’ is being announced today and we are very fortunate to be featuring it in our next episode ‘Network Energy Efficiency: The New Frontier’ on February 19.
I used to think that ‘going green’ was perhaps not in line with basic business functions and the desire to make money. So given the state the economy is in, my first thought would have been that we are going to see rapid deceleration of green initiatives. Au contraire - we are seeing much more evidience to the contrary: economic trouble is actually ‘driving’ green initiatives.
We have covered the subject of green before our TechWiseTV episode 36: ‘Energy Efficiency in the Data Center’ . Cisco makes announcements today however that we are excited to be a part of.
Show Overview -
Burned Out on Green
Jimmy Ray and I debate how things are changing. We had our fill of ‘green talk’ and were not anxious to do this particular show. Once we dug into the technology however, our minds quickly changed. In fact, I would say this could easily be a top 5 show of all time. We brought in our green data center friend from epsiode 36, Rob Aldrich so we could quickly address the hyper focus data center gets when it comes to energy efficiency. Why? Because DC’s are easily the biggest challenge to identify when it comes to saving on energy. DC is NOT the focus of this story however - it is so much more: The bigger challenge that perplexes so many involves questions around how to measure and control everything else.
Pound Wise But Penny Foolish?
John Parello is one of the original designers of the IOS code that foms the heart of all that is EnergyWise. He is our featured guest for this show and joins us here in segment 2. We spend most of our time on command line functions and getting our head wrapped around the new way of thinking here. The primary message is that the network can now become the missing link for gathering data on ANYTHING that can attach to the network. Now that you can measure it, you can also control it and do so in a much more intelligent manner. Network devices themselves have very complex and interdependent roles, what you do with them from a power perspective can have unexpected and perhaps negative results.
The Big Picture with EnergyWise
The command line was great in helping us understand that the technology is real. The power now available to visualize the relationships, the status and the cross domain control now possible becomes abundantly obvious when we get to play with the GUI. Although we taped this show prior to today so somethings will change, I was very impressed with the thought that went into the user interface.
Design for Efficiency
As wrap up with our final segment, John Parello and Rob Aldrich joins us to talk about design considerations and Rob argues very effectively (not just because he is tall) about how ‘Energy’ can and should become a discipline that upwardly mobile IT professionals should be adding to their skill sets. We also get to look at a number of tools for making even more sense out the data gathering including stuff you can use to ‘sell’ your green projects upward in the organization through better sharing of similar data outside our own company walls.
Dave Major from Learning at Cisco joins us to discuss a number of new things including the Cisco MindShare Game. Jimmy Ray is a gamer and he was impressed with the depth of the game. Games are a great way to learn and/or practice complex subjects that might be a little dry otherwise. The game covers more than 1/2 the content on the CCENT and CCNA exams. Eliane Alhadeff highlights this in her ‘Future Making Serious Games’ blog focusing on learning games.
I wrap this show with a little review of the Cisco Energy Services groups available to help accelerate a number of initiatives in what we have talked about today:
Cisco Services can help you:
1. Inspect physical infrastructure
2. Benchmark energy efficiency
3. Project efficiency effects of changes
4. Model air flow and temperature distribution
5. Assess electrical efficiency
Thank you and enjoy the show…
Robb
Posted by Robb Boyd at 09:34AM PST
Robb
Andrew Jones Feb 27, 2009
1) Is this only for Cisco POE switches at the moment?
2) Where is energywise ‘open’ protocol documented?
3) How do you expect existing client devices like laptops to report energy usage - they don’t currently have hardware to accurately measure power at the moment.
4) Do you record the total kWh consumed or just the current instantaneous consumption?
5) On POE are you reporting DC watts for each port or power consumed at the AC socket? If your POE switch has a poor power supply switching off a port might save very little AC power.