Energy Star was a program started initially around residential power use.  As a result, most items that have the Energy Star seal are appliances or electronics in the consumer space.  A check of the EPA website shows fewer than 15 enterprise, server class machines that qualify for the rating.  So while many vendors state that they have Energy Star-compliant equipment, they do not in fact have too many machines that actually went through and successfully completed the process.

Let’s compare some from my data center as examples.  We run an HP shop (this is not an endorsement of their product or a sales pitch, just disclosure that we have them as an architectural standard).  So I have a wide variety of their equipment.  For our Microsoft Exchange upgrade, we installed Energy Star certified HP Proliant DL380 G6 rack-optimized servers.  These are currently the only series of HP machines that have the seal.  For most of my purchasing, however, I prefer HP BL460c G6 or HP BL680c G6 machines that slot into a blade chassis.  What is nice about blades is that they share components like power supplies and fans.  So this reduces the power pull, and reduces the amount of waste in the product.  So from a product life cycle perspective, they are a better choice. 

In spite of our choice to generally rely on the more energy-efficient and therefore more eco-friendly choice of the blade servers, we actually cannot claim the LEED energy star credit because these servers are merely “EnergyStar Compliant” instead of certified.  This is needless-t0-say an unfortunate outcome as we are inching closer to a possible Gold certification and any point that we miss now keeps us from that nearly impossible goal.

The first consideration is the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). We looked at three options for providing the immediate, on-demand UPS capability: traditional battery UPS, flywheel UPS, and Fuel Cell UPS.

The flywheel UPS seemed to provide the greenest option; however, it was not available to integrate with our chosen ‘pod’ manufacturer. This leaves us with the fuel cell or the battery options. While the Fuel Cell is a solid option for the future, I felt that the cost/benefit was not yet there for us. Which leaves us with a traditional battery for our UPS. Not the greenest option overall, but when you factor in the full APC Infrastruxure solution, we still come out ahead of the game.

The second major decision was on backup power to support the UPS for extended potential power failures. Most SMB data centers do not really face this issue. However, in the last two years of my tenure, we have had no fewer than three extended power outages that have taken down my data center for over 8 hours. Now that we’re running the SPRINTER train and the fare collection systems using the network, extended downtime is simply not an option.

We are therefore going to install an onsite generator. I initially was not happy with this idea because clearly a diesel generator is simply not green. We were initially pursuing a natural gas generator under the assumption that this would be a more environmentally-friendly option. However, in working with our generator installation firm (Bay City Electric), it became clear that natural gas would not be an option for us due to potential issues from earthquakes interrupting the supply lines.

So we’re going with the traditional diesel generator unless some other option presents itself. Our strategy will be to mitigate as many environmental concerns as possible through process:

• Whenever possible, we will test the generator under load -meaning that we will run the data center 100% on the power the generator creates. This means that we will not be wasting the fuel.
• We will install filtration on the emissions to ensure that we’re not discharging significant particulates
• We will test as infrequently as possible to validate that the system in functional

I spent hours working with our IT firm Logicalis to try to find alternatives to these two decisions. I have to say that I am disappointed that there were not other options readily available in the market place for us. In reviewing some of the most successful green data center project case studies from the last two years, the preponderance of them make reference to their use of generators for backup power. Even my green-web hosting firm AISO.net talks about their use of generators in times of need.

While we are making great strides on designing our green data center, I have to admit that I was disheartened with these two decisions I made in the design; however, I did not feel I had the business case, other case studies, nor the viable alternatives that would lead us down a different path.

This is a large undertaking for a small entity like NCTD.  While I can justify the project purely on the long-term anticipated Return-on-Investment, the deal was sweetened by meeting all of the requirements for the Federal Stimulus program.

The overall project has several elements that will hopefully qualify it for LEED certification, including:

• The anticipated reduction in power demand and increase in power utilization efficiency in the facility
• The re-use of the building, and materials within the facility for the project (for example, we are supplementing our green fire system instead of replacing it, we’re going to reuse doors instead of purchasing new ones, etc.
• The ability to reset the ambient temperature of the data center much higher – we expect to set it around 80 degrees instead of the 68 we maintain today
• The installation of over 220 Kw solar system onsite to more than offset the power draw of the data center
• The use of in-line cooling instead of the two air handling units currently in the room (these will be recycled for other purposes in the District)

In addition, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the District has been committed over the last two years to slowly introducing greener, more sustainable approaches to our information technology infrastructure, including virtualization and consolidation, switching to blade server technology, replacing older equipment with more energy-efficient equipment, and testing desktop virtualization.

All of these steps make solid financial sense for the District – an especially important consideration given the tight financial times we are currently facing.  I could not in good conscience recommend these investments if I could not show solid ROI for our troubles.  While we want to be an agency with a priority on sustainability as part of our mission, it is logical that we could not choose to make these investments if they required a corresponding reduction in service or positions at the District.  Instead, choosing to follow the more sustainable path will realize direct operating cost savings on a monthly basis for the District.

We of course face some challenges to our ambitious timeline.  One of those challenges is the delay of a system migration project by 90 days after its anticipated completion.  This project is attempting to move our Prime System applications (installed in 1986) from a minicomputer to a client-server web interface.  We cannot risk downtime on this environment and therefore out-of-the gate may see a 90-day delay.  But every IT project faces challenges, and I am confident the team will find an approach that gives us what we need.

Over the next several weeks I will be blogging about the adventures of upgrading our data center.  Hopefully in March I will be able to say that we’ve completed the work and that we are on track with our ROI.

But alas not all that is green is gold. The company stopped accepting new customers a little over a month ago, and today the letter came with the sad news that in September all lights will turn off.

I have chosen to move to AISO.net. They also now offset all of their power demand with their own solar installation. They have provided a nice analysis of their estimated reduction of carbon output based on the solar installation which was certified by the USEPA.

This was interesting to me because not only would we like to provide some analysis of what we’ll offset with our solar installation at NCTD, we would also like to investigate some consistent methology for comparing an individual ride with a public transit ride between destinations.

We have a series of ‘nodes’ that we’re installing at about 1 mile intervals that provide a wireless infrastructure along the rail.  With that network, we can then install other wireless devices – for example cameras, or VOIP devices.  But what would this have to do with being green?

Our approach to these nodes has been to install solar panels at each node.  On the one hand this is simple practicality because some sites are very remote and far from existing power sources.  But, for more than half of the nodes we could have chosen to plug into wired power sources.  So as a CIO, I had to make a choice- use solar or use grid power?

The business case is not so straight forward.  While we will save power using the solar, we incur higher installation and maintenance costs to ensure the solar systems provide consistent, reliable power to each node.  We cannot claim that we chose to use solar simply because it was the greener choice – that would be a deceptive message.  However, I can say that as the CIO I had the architectural design choice to go with either solution and chose solar – it seemed to be the more stable choice, and the choice that would still operate if we had a power outage, and yes when all solutions were compared it was the more sustainable, environmentally-friendly approach. 

So I leave it in the reader’s mind – perhaps security at NCTD is green, and perhaps not.  You be the judge.