Sentilla Blog

What do 15,000 Java developers have in common? Besides a love of object-oriented programming languages and an oddly-shaped mascot named Duke, Java developers act en masse. How do we know? Sentilla was commissioned by Sun Microsystems to instrument the Moscone Center in San Francisco with over 200 pervasive computers during the 2008 JavaOne conference. Sun wanted to have greater insight into the behavior of attendees during the conference so that organizers could adjust energy-usage in real-time and better plan for future events. Each morning, John Gage presented Sentilla's findings.

With the Carbon Reduction Commitment (now CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme) turned into a flat tax and delayed by a year, many are questioning whether carbon regulation is real.  Last year, Mike Manos described a doomsday "CO2K" scenario similar to Y2K.  Now that some time has passed, governments have changed, and we've interviewed data center operations about the impact of carbon regulation, I'm weighing in on the issue.  Let's put it this way -- unless carbon tax is about FIVE TIMES the cost of electricity, there's no financial motivation to change behavior.  That means CO2K is more likely to be like Y2K -- essentially a lot of hype but ultimately a bust. Check out the video blog below, or at Data Centre Solutions.

Randy Katz, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has embarked on a new project called LoCal. Short for any number of things, including "Lo(w) Cal(orie)", "Local Information", and of course "Cal", Katz has thrown Berkeley's hat in the ring to make energy smart in the 21st century. I had the privilege of bouncing ideas off Katz while a graduate student at Cal, and he gave a talk about LoCal at the 2009 EECS BEARS Symposium.

Sentilla is honored to win another product award.  We’re very excited that energy management has gained so much traction this year.  But it’s no surprise.  As the UK embraces the Carbon Reduction Commitment and with the publication of the European Code of Conduct for Data Centres, it has become clear that a solution is needed for managing and tracking data center energy use. The award validates the need for energy management in data centers and Sentilla is humbled to be part of this movement.

When it comes to "efficiency", there's a lot of different definitions for what makes a data center efficient.  Fundamentally, efficiency is how much work is done per unit of energy.  And when it comes to Cyber Monday, today is the most efficient day for many data centers.

Just think about it -- normally servers are sitting around idle, waiting for a job a to do.  They have low utilization, but are needed for availability to ensure that all customers can access your websites and make purchases without any hassles when the demand picks up.  Most servers in data centers run at a utilization rate of around 8 to 12%, but what's even more frightening is 83% of data center managers don't even know what the utilization of their systems is.  When it comes to ensuring availability of compute resources on heavy demand days like Cyber Monday, it is scary to think that most don't even know how much headroom they have.