senan largey Mar 30, 2009

Very good - but why not go one step further and take it out of the data centre and deploy in the open plan office?
Obviously not a replacement for the data centre but certainly worth exploring as complimentary to it….and saves on building a server room and certainly gives all the benefits of the technology without the large energy footprint.

Robert Aldrich Apr 1, 2009

Thanks for the comments. 

eplies as follows:

rjhintz - thanks for the observation and link.  The tool provides for a user definable field for kWh rate.  Kick the tires @ http://www.cisco.com/go/efficiency

Senan - Great Thoughts! 

We’re trying to balance tool development with common challenge/requirement of our users.  As you can imagine this is a fine line we need to balance (resource investment with customer need).  From my experience users are not looking for electrical efficiency management across distributed IT infrastructure (today).  Since most of this distributed infrastructure is less critical than data center infrastructure and is more difficult to actively manage, most of the users I’ve worked with are more interested in control of distributed assets (again, today).

For data centers, this is of course a different story.  Monitoring and targeted efficiency are more realistic for adoption at this point in time.  Control will follow thereafter as users begin to logically group their infrastructure with energy control in mind.

Even with developing this tool we are conducting an experiment.  We’ve had a high level of demand for information at this level.  Some of it driven by competitive marketing, some by the natural process of organizations learning about and defining what “Green” means to them.

I really appreciate your creative thinking and hope you will continue to provide input.  We rely heavily on the voice of our customers, partners and Green solution’eers in general.

Keep em coming!

Thanks.

Post Script -

We do have the beginnings of the tool you describe at http://www.cisco.com/go/energywise

Robert Aldrich Apr 1, 2009

Thanks for the comments. 

Replies as follows:

rjhintz - thanks for the observation and link.  The tool provides for a user definable field for kWh rate.  Kick the tires at http://www.cisco.com/go/efficiency

Senan - Great Thoughts! 

We’re trying to balance tool development with common challenge/requirement of our users.  As you can imagine this is a fine line we need to balance (resource investment with customer need).  From my experience users are not looking for electrical efficiency management across distributed IT infrastructure (today).  Since most of this distributed infrastructure is less critical than data center infrastructure and is more difficult to actively manage, most of the users I’ve worked with are more interested in control of distributed assets (again, today).

For data centers, this is of course a different story.  Monitoring and targeted efficiency are more realistic for adoption at this point in time.  Control will follow thereafter as users begin to logically group their infrastructure with energy control in mind.

Even with developing this tool we are conducting an experiment.  We’ve had a high level of demand for information at this level.  Some of it driven by competitive marketing, some by the natural process of organizations learning about and defining what “Green” means to them.

I really appreciate your creative thinking and hope you will continue to provide input.  We rely heavily on the voice of our customers, partners and Green solution’eers in general.

Keep em coming!

Thanks.

Post Script -

We do have the beginnings of the tool you describe at http://www.cisco.com/go/energywise

Andy Jaramillo Apr 5, 2009

A usefull add-on would be the ability to populate the “virtual Chassis” and show (for example) the usage/efficiency of an 18-slot Nexus w/various different modules.

Omar Sultan Apr 5, 2009

Andy:

You can do exactly that with the Cisco Power Calculator, which you can find at http://tools.cisco.com/cpc/launch.jsp (CCO login required)

Omat

Printer Ink Sep 29, 2009

Very informative post.

When adding a battery backup into the system, does this change any of the efficiency of the power calculator?

Like Robert said, going green is a major marketing technique that is being adopted more and more.