Network equipment to study energy-saving server

After the introduction of energy management, server, saving the user access to a flood of praise. At the same time, network equipment is also working to achieve the level of energy saving server. HP ProCurve networking products sector, said product manager Dale Cosgro, network equipment manufacturers emphasize the equipment in the last year, saving features, energy saving features Apple A1189 Battery of the previous equipment has never been focused on too.

The overall power consumption, the network server or storage infrastructure and can not at the same level. Although compared with the switch, the server to consume more energy, but the network accounts for 15% of the energy budget. Server has a sophisticated power management control, and the server is different network equipment must be prepared to receive information.

Truss network switch power consumption is huge. Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches, 42U architecture switches for each power up to 2kW to 3kW. Cisco Advanced Services Group, said architect Rob Aldrich, Cisco Systems, the largest enterprise-level switch - Nexus 7000 series switches in the power of each architecture up to 13kW. A structure of power switches generate 13kW of heat over a number of rack-mounted servers, so it is concerned about the server cooling.

Market research firm Gartner Inc. analyst Rakesh Kumar said, compared to most data center server racks to power in 8kW between 10 kW. Hewlett-Packard vice president and general manager of key equipment service, said Peter Gross, the current average power per rack 4 kW.

Some manufacturers have begun to introduce energy-saving features, such as high efficiency power supplies, variable speed cooling fan. But now in the switch area, the power management measures taken by the very limited. Most idle switch still the largest operating power consumption of 40% to 60%. Aldrich said that if less than 40%, then the performance of the switch should be discounted. He said: "unless the user can accept the delay, otherwise you have to consume so much energy."

However Cosgro that the greater increase is imminent.

More efficient technology

Support energy-efficient technology will be gradually improved in several areas related to the following. Cosgro said: "As a new generation of flagship products to open up the market, they will have the following characteristics." For example:

@ Will be more modular application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs make the switch to turn off light from the LED panel to the memory table, which do not use the component.

@ Silicon technology advances will reduce the current leakage, and gradually promote energy conservation through a new generation of chips. Cosgro said: "Ultimately, we will let network equipment from the current daily consumption of 100 watts down to 10 watts."

@ R & D has more efficient energy-saving software, the software will be energy efficient use less CPU Dell Inspiron 500m battery resources, and less power.

@ So designed to run at higher temperatures the equipment to reduce cooling costs.

For example, Cosgro that the current HP ProCurve equipment can be safely run under 130 degrees, the temperature indicator is far more than the target of most data centers. He said: "As the data center IT managers hope to be able to run at higher temperatures, so this need to promote this design."

Higher operating temperature may be in the wiring within a single vendor there. However, the temperature near 130 degrees before being maintained, especially in the data center rack, the network equipment vendors need to do in a mixed environment of comprehensive tests. Burton Group analyst Drue Reeves said: "When the set of servers can exchange more heat next, no one knows the network equipment and other types of equipment will show how."

Current tests for each vendor is limited to their own production equipment.

Other Focus: to enhance the power control area and more precise control. For any data center, the real power and temperature monitoring is the key, but also enhance the management of the essence. Accenture consulting firm engaged in the practice of Rockwell Bonecutter green IT, said: "If something is not normal, you want to know them before the disaster."

Management software will be configured for accurate identification of network devices such as IP phones configured link-layer discovery protocol. Software can automatically during the day or certain times of the day when the computer shuts down after the relevant cut off for the VoIP devices over Ethernet supply current.

Other examples include: in the day, as a redundancy to the edge switch associated with the two routers, but in the evening, the network can be configured as a router into a low power consumption sleep mode. Only when necessary, the second router will be awakened.

Cosgro said: "These types of applications represents a saving opportunities."

Higher standards and norms

Emerging standards to provide support for energy efficiency in the network is idle, to help measure the energy efficiency of competing products.

Energy-efficient Ethernet

Emerging IEEE P802.3az energy-efficient Ethernet (EEE) equipment, the draft standards may be in the case HP pavilion dv9000 Battery of low utilization rate of the maximum degree of reduction in energy consumption of network devices. Ethernet device currently ongoing transmission between two devices, even when the network is still the case when no information. The equipment will support the EEE send periodic pulse, other times to keep quiet. In free time, this technology can reduce energy consumption 90%.

Cosgro said that in large networks, this will save a lot of energy.

The new standard also allows several operating mode switch. For example, in a 10Gbit switch, if circumstances permit, individual ports can be 10Gbit per second per second transfer rate dropped to 1Gbit, to conserve power.

Aldrich said that by 2011, will support the EEE standard equipment out to the market.

Virtual LAN

Another emerging technology is the PCI-SIG released the multi-source I / O virtualization (MR-IOV), its the server in a rack on the network interface card provides access to the shared pool. High-speed PCI Express bus, which would essentially extend the PCIe bus outside the server. Burton Group analyst Reeves said: "instead of a server on every network card, you will visit a rack card. You can use the server tool vendors assigned to a server one of these cards were part of the bandwidth of the network card. "

Energy will increase network utilization, which is a virtual network card by the bandwidth of each segmentation achieved. He said the technology allows only a few network cards and switch ports. Reeves forecast compliant product will first appear in 2012.

Energy efficiency

Finally, the standardization of measurement of energy efficiency has begun to appear in a number of network devices. For example, Juniper Networks products provide some of its energy consumption rate (ECR) of the data form. ECR is a draft standard, proposed by the ECR Initiative. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Ixia and Juniper improve the specification, the measurement network and communications equipment for each energy unit performance.

Cisco and Juniper also now begun to support the telecommunications industry standard Union (ATIS) IBM ThinkPad T60 battery telecommunications energy efficiency rating (TEER) specification. The specification by the ATIS in the last year.

But every rule is not universally accepted. While Juniper support ECR, but not all of their product data forms are included in the efficiency rating. Cosgro said that because HP can not understand the measure of the user, the HP data in the form of their products do not contain these two energy efficiency standards. He said: "Users concerned about the power of a large number of solutions."

Cosgro said that at present there still exist outside of these norms opposition, opponents conclude that the lack of detailed and transparent rating system. This means that manufacturers can choose to meet their needs rating.

Until later this year, it may be truly transparent norms introduced. Time, EPA for the large network equipment standards for Energy Star rating will be published. Prior to last December, EPA drafted the Energy Star specification for small network equipment, the forthcoming large-scale network equipment specification will cover the majority of enterprise network equipment.

According to EPA spokesman said they plan to publish in June 2010 a draft standard on data centers, announced in late 2010, the data center network devices on the draft standards. Cosgro said the new regulations will include, such as power supply, internal energy-efficient chips and other components as well as Ethernet and overall energy consumption of equipment, it will become an important future energy efficiency standards.

For network administrators, to provide energy efficiency is the easiest way to buy new equipment, but in reality it is a gradual process, because an administrator must update the old equipment to measure the costs and benefits of potential energy between ratio.