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Green Tech

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

There has been a lot of noise around companies adopting 'greener'

technologies related to IT equipment of late. The greener approach not only

saves on power costs but also lets you do your part for the environment. Vendors

have been pretty restless as well pushing their power friendly equipment to

catch on with the pulse. Through this story we look at technologies that enable

a green data center, relevance of cloud computing as a green technology, the

concepts behind building a green office; plus a tour of some of the newest green

buildings.

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The biggest challenge for a datacenter today is to go green. And this is not

because we have suddenly become very nature friendly but it's because at the end

of the day when we save nature by cutting down our power, cooling, space, heat

emissions, etc we directly or indirectly save costs. The reasons for this are

simple. IT is a must for every business, and as the business grows, an

organization needs to invest more on the IT infrastructure. With the rising

energy costs, more IT equipment translates to higher costs of power consumption,

and also more space, which anyways comes at a premium. So, if products continue

consuming the power they have been consuming, then it could have serious

implications. Last year, Gartner estimated that ICT accounts for 2% of global

CO2 emissions, which is the same as the aviation industry. That's a high figure

by any means, and unsustainable as suggested by Gartner.

To understand this need of going green, let's take an example. Well! this is

not an example but is a real life case. It's about an office in Gurgaon. The

office has around 400 computers and a small datacenter with somewhere around 30

servers and 5 blades which eats up around 150 to 200 KW of power in a day. The

consumption includes the power consumed by the cooling and lighting equipments

running in the datacenter as well as in the building.

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In Gurgaon power is a major problem and to address it, the company has a 320

KV diesel generator which eats 1000 rupees worth of diesel every hour and also

throws out a lot of pollutants. But surprisingly, when in the night the city

undergoes major power cuts for hours and the office is closed, except the

datacenter which is a 24x7 operation. So, the datacenter should not require more

than a 20 KV generator, the same 320KV generator is used and a lot of fuel is

burnt without any reason and a lot of money goes for a toss.

Such a situation is nothing but wrong planning and is very common in our

neighbourhood. However, with a bit of planning, a lot of money and environment

can be saved. Below we talk about some of the key technologies that should be

used in a datacenter to make it greener.

Virtualization



This is a trend that has really picked up momentum across the IT industry,

and is a key technique being touted for going green. Every organization today is

combating the evils of server proliferation in the datacenter. There's a server

for just about every application: mail, web, proxy, business apps, security,

content management, file sharing and so on. The sad part is that their average

utilization hovers around 30-40%, if not less. And yet they continue to run 24x7

and consume energy even when they're idle. So, in effect, you're paying the

energy cost of servers, which are idle almost 70% of the time. That's not a very

pleasant thought indeed, which is why the whole concept of server virtualization

has become so popular. It helps combat this problem.

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Virtualization allows you to abstract the hardware from the software. So a

server, which traditionally runs a single OS and application in the data center,

is able to run multiple OSes and apps simultaneously. This would allow you to

load a single server with more applications and increase its utilization. This

reduces the number of servers in the data center, and also helps you defer your

server purchase. With new servers more and more processing capabilities are

coming to the market and so adopting virtualization has become more easy and

efficient. In the second week of September this year, Intel has released its

7400 series Xeon processors which has 6 cores per processor. Such innovations

are driving the industry to go greener with more widespread use of

virtualization.

Just how green is your equipment?
We did a small reality check in our survey to determine how

green our respondents' respective organizations were. Out of all activities,

replacement of CRT monitors with LCD ones received the highest votes. Nearly

38% had already done this activity. All other activities received less than

30% of the votes, which basically means that organizations still have a long

way to go before they become truly green.

Cloud Computing



If you extend the concept of virtualization from a single server to a

complete grid, and make its access available over the Internet, it's called a

Cloud. Just imagine, if virtualizing a single server can save you 50 to 70% of

resources then how much savings will happen in case your complete data center

acts as a single grid and is then virtualized. We have a complete section on

what Cloud computing is and how it helps in going green, at the end of this

story.

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Power and backup



It's always good to use renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind.

But it might not be feasible for all datacenters to go for such deployments as

the costs are huge and the ROI is slow. But there are certain things which can

be easily done, such as using UPSes instead of generators.

Yes, even though UPSes are not great for the environment (especially if old

batteries are not disposed properly) then it can cause a lot of harm to the

nature. But they have their share of goodies as well. First, they don't eat up

oil and second, they save a lot of smoke and money given the sky-rocketing

prices of petroleum products.

Moreover, they preserve power. So, if I go back to the Gurgaon datacenter

example, we can easily replace the generator with a UPS, and so when the

utilization of power is less in nights, the UPS will only supply the desired

amount of power and will increase the backup by preserving the unutilized power.

So if the UPS can give a 2 hour long backup in the day when the office is fully

active, it can give you a 6 hour backup in the night when only 10 or 20%

equipment are working.

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Blade servers



Blades are a great way of saving energy and e-waste. They let you increase

the density of your datacenter to multiple levels. A single 7U blade chassis can

take up to 14 blades which saves your real estate space and in turn reduce the

ambient cooling requirements (as you can host your datacenter in a smaller

space). Blade servers are generally built with specialized processors which eat

less amount of electricity. In Intel's dictionary these processors are called LV

(low voltage) processors and their performance per Watt is higher than others,

but are not the highest performing processors in the lot.

In our tests we found that a single blade server while running eats up around

150 to 180 watts of electricity whereas a standard server rack mountable server

eats up 250+ watts. So, you can see a sure power saving in this.

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The other benefit which you get with blades is that most of the blade vendors

today provide chassis which are both backward and forward compatible, which

means you can easily replace the existing servers with new ones as and when they

are available, and can do more virtualization to consolidate instead of buying

new servers. The vendors also provides buyback schemes for old blades against

new ones pretty often, so it also solves your e-waste problems as you don't have

to throw away those blades. You might as well save some money by giving them

back to the vendors.

Green equipment and components



It's not just servers and blades that need to go green and consume less power,
many components today come with a greener version. These versions are

essentially products with slightly reduced performance (in some cases) and

better power efficiency along with less harmful elements in the body of the

device (paint, metal, wires, etc). A lot of such products are available out

there, ranging from a simple network switch to hard disks and even processors;

all of them today have greener versions. And yes, all these components are a

part of your datacenter, so if while building or upgrading a datacenter, you

should look forward to such equipment.

Shield Your Datacenter-or be Doomed



As data scales up, the processing power to manage it, storage capacities,

cooling needs and server numbers surge skywards. IT managers and consultants

have turned to consolidate the number of servers that run on their network, or

they chose to virtualize depending on data load at any given point of time, in

order to use lesser servers at optimum levels of capacity. Most enterprises

today have embraced virtualization to the point that RoIs are calculated easily

by analyzing business needs and virtualizing a considerable number of servers to

reduce losses. Everything is going just fine. Profits for the next financial

year sound very promising. Right?

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Wrong. While virtualization has given businesses a fair say in how the

network and IT operations of a company perform, there is still one important

component of the IT infrastructure which is by and large ignored — security.

Interestingly, there are products out there that do not require you to dent your

company finances too much. Besides exorbitant costs, the other big reason for

security being rated quite low on a network manager's list is the complexity of

having to interact with multiple vendors for multiple applications, software and

maintenance of network security. To a great extent, this concern can be

eliminated as security vendors are looking to go to market with 'all in one' box

format security devices which require the network manager to deal with just one

vendor.

An ideal example is Check Point's newly launched Power 1 range of online

security applications and the more robust UTM 1 Total Security offering. The

idea of Power 1 is to combine firewall, IPSec, virtual private networks (VPN)

and intrusion prevention with advanced acceleration technologies, delivering

high-performance multi-Gbps security platforms. They promise performance up to

14 Gbps firewall throughput, at a price/performance ratio of around $4 per Mbps.

With a 6.1 Gbps intrusion prevention speed, application layer threats can be

identified and eliminated fast. Also, mission critical businesses that happen to

experience application security threats, such as worms or buffer overflows, are

now capable of stopping them while maintaining high performance and

uninterrupted business. Hardware upgradations are needed only when the company's

networks grow or need to be scaled up. According to an internet vulnerability

study by IBM's X Force Global Technology Services, high severity vulnerabilities

increased last year by 28 percent, and interestingly vendors with the most

vulnerability exposures were Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM and Cisco. To add to

the misery, only 50 percent can be corrected through vendor patches, and even in

2007, 90 percent of vulnerabilities could be remotely exploited, and this

percent has marginally gone up this year.

UK based network security trends portal OpenXtra warns network managers

against four types of attacks. These include email based attacks, where

fictitious mail exchanges are used as a vehicle through which worms can be

carried into the heart of the network. Then there is Denial of Service (DoS)

attack, where the aim of the attacker is to render your systems inoperative for

the duration of the attack. Such attacks range in sophistication from a single

disgruntled person to a massive, worldwide, cooperative attempt to disrupt a

large corporation, bringing to surface, the risk of internal attacks. Next is

unauthorized access where the attack will either deprive you from using your

system or give partial control of your system to the hacker. Then there are the

common trojans and worms, and the fast evolving Wireless Specific Network

Security Attacks, where attackers work on the logic that boundaries of wireless

networks invariably are outside the pervades of your workplace, making it

vulnerable to masquerade IP address attacks.

A strong security checklist should ideally lay emphasis on three points: one,

a multi-tiered, multi-domain central administration of all firewalls, VPNs, and

IPS gateways and compliance policies in the enterprise; two, virtualization of

firewall, VPN, and IPS gateways, and concerned network hardware; and three,

automated logging, analysis, and reporting of network and endpoint security

events across the enterprise. Though this looks like a lot of investment, one

only needs to cleverly choose from vendors who give cost effective solutions

with higher shelf life, or a single vendor who has more or less provided most of

the functions in it. Check Point is the first entrant in India that has decided

to test out its 'security in a box' concept. It's only a matter of time before

bigger and smaller vendors jump on to the bandwagon to provide integrated

security solution application and products.

Green Buildings and Campuses



Damage to environment can be significantly minimized by creating new 'GREEN'

buildings and making existing buildings 'GREEN'. Indian Green Building Council

defines a green building as "A green building uses less energy, water and

natural resources, creates less waste and is healthier for the people living

inside compared to a standard building." If you go by the stats given at Indian

green building council's website, India currently has only 259 registered

buildings and a mere 29 certified buildings. While we expect this number to go

up considerably in coming years as many corporates across India are putting

'going green' as their mission, but it is still a very low number for a nation

with a population of more than 1 billion. Not to mention how many buildings, be

it home or offices or factories are coming up in India every year. Just imagine

how much of damage can be saved to environment and can be prevented if all

buildings were green. Adds to it the benefit Indian corporate can get from so

called carbon credit business.

Useful Resources related to

Green Buildings




http://www.igbc.in


Indian Green building council


http://www.usgbc.org/


US Green Building Council


http://www.carbonminus.org/


CARBON MINUS INDIA (CMI) is a green initiative from Indian Institute of
Sustainable Development New Delhi.



http://www.greenerbuildings.com/


A portal with wealth of information about going green for commercial
buildings







In UAE, it has been made mandatory that all buildings coming up in next year

will have to comply with its 'Green building code', otherwise their building

plans wont be passed. Perhaps Indian government should learn from them and make

laws and standards for all buildings to be green. Similar were the words of many

Indian top shots, when we visited their green building campuses to find out what

they have done to go green. We will give you an insight to their green campuses

later in the article. First let us share with you some of the practical ideas

and techniques we have learned from these campuses, which will help you to make

your buildings green.

Turning your existing building GREEN



It is always easy to start with a new idea, then to incorporate a new idea

in to existing system. But turning an existing building that was not built

keeping environmental factors in mind is actually not that complex. In fact an

existing building has number of factors in favour like existing infrastructure

and material. And if the building is very old then it is built to harness

natural resources like light and air that in turn is what whole idea about being

'GREEN' is i.e. maximum utilization of existing resources. Now the question

arises is, considerations to be taken care of.These are the areas we are trying

to focus on in this section. Let us start with the green building rating system:

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for existing building,

developed by USGBC (U S Green Building Council). USGBC also certifies buildings

after reviewing them.

How to Make Money from Carbon Credits?



Under the Kyoto Protocol, the developed countries have voluntarily decided
that they will bring down the level of carbon they are emitting to the level

of early 1990s. These countries have set different norms for their companies

and factories to bring the level of carbon emission and other green house

gases. Carbon Credits are a part of international emission trading norms.

Credits are awarded to companies that reduce green house gases below their

emission quota. The total annual emissions are capped and the market assigns

a monetary value to any shortfall through trading. Business can exchange,

buy or sell carbon credits in international markets at prevailing rates.

These credits can be used to finance carbon reduction schemes between

trading partners and rest of the world.

Companies in developed nations

have two ways to reduce emissions. One is reducing green house gases by

adopting new technologies. Secondly, these companies can tie up with

developing nations and help them setup new technology that's eco-friendly;

thereby helping those companies earn Carbon Credits. These credits are

bought over by companies of developed countries to show their contribution

in reducing the carbon emissions in the environment. India and China have

emerged as biggest sellers of Carbon Credits, while European countries are

the biggest buyers, and the US hasn't signed the Kyoto Protocol.


LEED for Existing Building: Operation and Maintenance version (LEED-EB:

O&M)



\Is the latest rating system (updated from LEED-ED) was built for existing

building in both public and private domain as major chunk of commercial

buildings existed long before environmental consciousness was gained.? And these

buildings are responsible for major carbon emission and consume considerable

amount of energy. Now to bring these buildings under green certification and to

sustain green nature of newly certified buildings LEED-ED: O&M was formulated.

This system requires at least three months of operational data plus building

needs to be operational for twelve months before certification process can be

initiated. Some other criterias are, only 25% of vacant space is allowed and

project scope must cover 100% floor area. Building should also be compliant with

local laws and regulations. Prerequisite and credits in LEED-ED: O&M addresses

six domains: sustainable site, water efficiency, energy & atmosphere, material &

resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation in operation. To attain

this certification, first step is to register; this can be done through web site

(www.usgbc.org). Once registered, the next phase is data collection and

submission that can be done online, through templates on LEED-Online. The review

of the submitted data is done and certification is given in last phase, if

required one can also appeal after final application review. There is a fee for

LEED-EB: O&M certification, details of this fee can be found in 'Register Your

Project' section of USGBC website. One important point to note here is that

application for certification would be reviewed based on latest version of LEED-ED

certificate.

Many simple ways



There are many old buildings and small old offices which don't really have

space or architecture to go green but there are many simple and effective steps

they can take to reduce carbon emission and lower their power consumption. This

can be as simple as using CFL's or switching of all workstations or turning

their office into a paper less office, car pooling etc. To give a an example of

how powerful these can be, in many companies where not all employees work 24x7,

most employees do not switch off their PCs. Now this not only consumes power but

in country like India where power goes out often and generators have to work

even at nights to ensure those servers meet their 24x7uptime. Now those PCs will

also be consuming power from generators, not only increasing the oil

consumption, but carbon emission into the air is also increased. Pretty much

similar is the case with paper, especially the print outs taken for small

purposes. While recycleable print paper is yet to come out commercially,

deploying a solution for printing quotas can help organizations in reducing

wastage of paper as well as printing cartridges.

LEED New buildings



Process to get LEED certification for new buildings is pretty much the same

as for existing buildings. LEED certifications for new buildings have five main

categories namely Sustainable Sites,Energy and Atmosphere, Water Efficiency,

Materials and Resources, and Indoor Environmental Quality. Plus in additional

category, there 5 possible points given if there is any new innovations done in

the design process.

According to the rating system, to get certified you would need 26-32 points,

and 33-38 points for silver, 39-51 points for gold and lastly 52 to 69 points

for platinum. A maximum of 69 possible points can be scored. Guidelines of LEED

certification for new buildings and rating system can be found at Indian green

building council website and also at US green building council website.

In next few pages we will tell about some of India's beautiful green

buildings and campuses and innovations done by them.

Ecofice from Ngenox



So once you have built your green building, how do you monitor how much

carbon you are actually emitting into environment? Ngenox has a unique solution

called Ecofice, which is basically a carbon footprint monitoring solution. It

can do prediction of GHG(Green House Gases) emission and carbon accounting by

gathering relevant parameters from electro mechanical devices running in a

building such as generators, building management systems etc. It does

calculation of green house gas emission based on UNFCCC accepted protocols. It

provides real time montiroing and archival of data from facilities present in

the building as well as can predict future emission trends based on current

emission trends.

Ecofice Dashboard is largely meant for building

owners, CEOs etc. Through this dashboard real time data through Graphs can

be viewed. These graphs can be fully customized according to requirements.

Solution has seven key modules which can also be easily customized depending

upon the needs. its first module Methodology Definition consists of standard and

custom methodologies for calculation of GHG emissions. The methodologies created

here are then assigned to particular organization or business unit in its next

module called Methodology Assignment. Its next module Parameter configuration is

where constants and factors linked with methodology as well as GHG combination

of factor type, values etc can be configured.

Next is Automated and Manual Data Entry module is where integration with BMS

and SCADA interfaces is configured. There is also a provision for manual data

entry Next is very interesting feature called Simulation Analysis. Here with its

in-built simulation engine Ecofice allows you to see future GHG emission

according to the parameters defined. Ecofice also provides detailed reporting.

It allows users to generate business as well as organizational reports based on

individual emission values for a chosen period. Reports can also be exported

into standard formats like xls and pdf. Lastly also present is a Dashboard which

gives one shot view of all key performance indicators configured for an

organization. The dashboard displays data in real time and can also be fully

customized.

Overall Ecofice is a useful software, it can help users with issues like

emission management, carbon monitoring during construction as well as post

construction. It can also help buildings to comply with carbon related

legislations and provide all relevant information you need if you are into

carbon trading. More information about the product can be found at



http://www.evolve.ngenox.com/ecofice.html

The Eco-Friendly Face of Wipro



A close contact at the communications team of Wipro told us that Chairman

Azim Premji, who lives less than half a kilometer away from the corporate office

in Bangalore, is often seen taking late evening walks along the corridors and

boulevards that lead to his office, and makes it a point to personally have all

lights, and power equipment turned off to conserve energy. It is not surprising

then that all of Wipro's facilities boast of ISO certifications for

environmental sensitivity and at least 14% reduction on an average, of power and

energy consumption. Apparently, the motto of conservation is embedded in the

basic design of all Wipro properties-initiatives ranging from maximum

utilization of natural light, retaining landscapes and natural water sources,

building water recycling plants everywhere possible and educating employees on

the whys and hows of reducing power. Take for instance the corporate office

which PCQuest visited. The latest initiative here is to replace all the tube

lights in the parking lots and path connecting the different office blocks with

home grown LED tubes which reduces power consumption by a fourth and ensures

that they run for up to 50,000 hours before requiring a replacement. As a pilot

project, mini LED lamps are placed along the campus, on the lawns, serving as

path lighting systems, and also at various points in the underground parking

lot. The technology, which Wipro is currently in the process of mastering, hopes

to replicate and maybe even sell to consumers as part of its retail electrical

division. The power for these LED tubes comes from solar panels that have been

installed on the roofs. On a relatively sunny day, these can work up to late

mornings after successfully lighting up the campus all night. The other

interesting initiative is utilization of recycled water in the restrooms and for

watering plants and other vegetation, which forms more than 80% of the 80 acre

plot. Food waste at other facilities in Bangalore, like the Electronics City

campus have undertaken an endeavor to collect the waste food after consumption

by the employees and have an active vermiculture facility. The same campus also

churns out tons of waste paper every month, which is recycled in house and used

as scribbling pads for employees. But what really sets Wipro apart from the rest

of the tech companies is the fact that it has a dedicated team of employees

constantly brainstorming on various ways to conserve energy. Wipro houses a

consortium of employees who meet regularly to chalk out conservation of

plans-called Eco Eye. Among other short and long term initiatives, this

consortium works with internal and external partners to involve more employees

to support the cause, with simple starting points like carpooling and reducing

wastage of canteen food.

The replacement of tube lights

in the parking lots and path connecting the different office blocks of Wipro

with home grown LED tubes.

Delta Green Factory



Delta Group launched its first green factory in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand in

August. Delta is widely known for its power management solutions, visual

displays, industrial automation and its networking products. As part of the

Delta's green mission, this eco-friendly factory is spread across 16657.48

square meters which uses various energy saving and waste reduction techniques to

provide a healthy environment for its employees. 60 % of the factory area is

open and green.

Turbo Ventilation fans at the

roof of the delta factory which help in reducing overall temprature of the

factory

Eco-friendly green materials such as, fly ash, gypsum and brick cova were

used in the construction with low VOC paints to reduce toxic emission. The

factory utilizes natural light harvesting, and on a sunny day major part of the

factory can work without using artificial lights and any dark spots. The factory

also uses Turbo ventilation to lower temperatures in the factory by 2 to 3

degrees; it has some odd 215 turbo fans at the roof of the factory. According to

delta Natural Light Harvesting,Turbo Ventilation reduces carbon emissions by

36800 and 55200 pounds respectively.

Front view of Delta's Green

Factory in Rudrapur

Solar panels in the factory building are placed intelligently according to

the position of the sun to get enough sunlight, and delta claims that these

solar panels would reduce the carbon emission levels by 5 million pounds. Also

used is linear panel polynum insulation which saves electric energy due to

minimum requirement of forced cooling. For its air conditioning delta has used R

407 eco-friendly gas.

Solar panels around the factory

are placed intelligently, to recieve maximum sunlight. according to the

position of sun.

Factory also saves electric energy by using 0.99 power factor instead of

0.85. As per delta, this saves electric energy by 12 to 15%. For recycling and

reuse of water purposes, the building also has sewage treatment plant. The plant

uses Anaerobic Bacterial action for recycling of water and recycled water is

mainly used for non contact applications. At the back of the factory, there is

also a storm water harvesting site for water conservation which gives factory a

nice landscape.

ITC Green Centre in Gurgaon



Starting from the exterior of the building, there is an extensive rainwater

harvesting system. A network of underground pipes feed collected rainwater to

multiple reservoirs, which then recharge ground water. But wait - if you thought

that rainwater harvesting didn't make much of a difference, get this - the

amount of rainwater harvested by the building in a year actually exceeds the

consumption. Niranjan Khatri, GM of ITC's WelcomEnviron initiatives prefers to

call it their 'water bank account.' His reasoning being that only when water

acquires the status of money, will users realize its importance.

The Green Center focuses on multiple use of water. All water that is used in

the building goes to the sewage treatment plant. The recycled water is then used

for the cooling towers, gardening and for flushing. All fixtures are also

designed to minimize wastage of water.

All that glass you see on the building? It's special e-glass, which filters

out all the heat and noise, but not the light. The roof is coated with special

high-reflectance 'albedo' paint. These two features alone are responsible for

the building's 375-ton AC plant as opposed to the 500-ton plant that was

initially suggested. Walk into the large atrium and you immediately notice the

absence of artificial lighting. This is possible because of the large skylight

and windows surrounding the atrium. Also in the lobby is a touch-screen

terminal, listing out ITC's Green initiatives. What's nice is that even

homeowners can find tips on how to save energy and cut costs.

As Mr. Khatri further explained, an office building, built using conventional

methods is a 'sick' building. Studies have also shown that working in natural

light increases productivity and reduces lethargy. If employees fall ill

regularly or are not at their productive best, the company actually pays for it

through life cycle costs. This kind of health cost has not been quantified yet.

The Green Center however, uses special carpets and paints with low VOC (volatile

oxide compounds). CO2 sensors refresh air if needed. A more productive workforce

leads to greater profitability in the long run.

Looking at a typical office inside the building, full-length glass ensures

ample light. The electrical lights meanwhile have sensors, and will come on only

when needed. At least 10% of wood and building material used is recycled. All

additional wood must come from a certifiable sustainable forest. A sustainable

forest plants 10 trees for every one that it cuts. Every aspect has been taken

care of. Now here's a model to follow. This building really cares for the

environment.

The rooftop houses the solar power water heating system with a 4000-liter

tank. Outside, all lights are capped to prevent nigh sky pollution. This is out

of respect for nocturnal bird life and astronomers who find it difficult to view

stars because of the excessive light given out from a city.

Patni Green Knowledge Centre



Major enterprises world over are taking their initiatives towards an

eco-friendly environment. In view of that, they are adopting green architecture

for their buildings and factories. Patni Computer Systems, a leading IT and BPO

service provider, launched their first Green IT-BPO centre in Noida, called as

Patni Knowledge Centre. The centre is spread over 5 acres and incorporates green

architecture for better utilization and conservation of energy, water and

natural resources. The state of art eco-friendly facility was setup with an

investment of 175 crores and compliments the organization's green initiatives.

The facility is designed and constructed as per the guidelines of LEED

(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). The facility is also currently

under certification process which is jointly audited by the Indian Green

Building Council (IGBC) and US Green Building Council (USGBC). Patni has applied

for the Platinum certification for this Green centre.

The facility has a climate responsive architecture, and also features over

50% green area and the use of natural light. The facility is designed in a

manner that 75% of the area can get sunlight, and thus, reducing the consumption

of electricity. The design also lets 95% of the occupants to get access to

outside views. In addition, it's a zero discharge building, which is possible by

100% recycling of the sewage. Also for water conservation, the facility

incorporates rain water harvesting system, whereby even the pavements have been

designed in manner to let the water seep into the ground. Solar water heating

system and drip water irrigation is used so that energy and water can be

conserved. Even the materials used for the building's interiors have low

volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, also eco-friendly recyclable

materials have been used to the maximum -be it the glass or the aluminum

required for the facility. There are CO2 sensors placed along the

air-conditioning vents to monitor the air quality inside the building. Whenever

the CO2 level increases at a particular place, which can happen due to more

occupants gathering at a place, the fresh air is pumped into the area to

maintain healthy air quality. Also the lighting system inside the building is

based on motion detection. So the area gets lighted up only when people move

into a department or room, thus reducing electricity wastage. The design of

building is as such that natural light is available at most of the areas,

thereby again reducing on power consumption as there would be less amount of

artificial lighting required during daytime.Thus, Patni Knowledge Centre is an

initiative that minimizes adverse environmental impact as the building is

designed to use less amount of energy and water compared to conventional

buildings and also creates less waste.

Clouds! Wherever you look



Cloud computing has emerged as a big enabler for green computing. It's still

in its early days and the adaptation is yet to become widespread, but we can

foresee a future where Cloud computing would become a mainstream computing

platform to save deployment and environmental hazards. But before we go further

and discuss how Cloud computing could be a great enabler for green computing,

let's first understand what is Cloud computing.

If you understand what is a Grid and what is Grid Computing, then

understanding Cloud becomes pretty easy. But if you don't, then here is a recap

of Grid. Grid is essentially a Cluster of computers which are loosely coupled

with each other, by loosely coupled we mean whose interconnect is either not

100% available or the latency of the interconnect is high if you compare it

against an HPC. But the prime job of a grid is to share a distributed job load

and process it aggregately.

We have talked about Grids many times and every time we have taken the same

example to explain it, and that is the SETI@Home (a.k.a Search for extra

terrestrial intelligence at Home), where the data captured by the SETI radio

telescope is distributed across the globe to millions of home PCs so that the

job can utilize the PC's free processing time and process the data and send it

back. This is a very easy and good example to understand a Grid in action. To

make the example more topical, the LHC (Large Hardon Collider) project is also

going to use a similar grid to distribute the data captured by the mammoth

machine across the world to get it processed on the free processing power of

millions of user PCs.

Now, as we have gone through a quick recap of a Grid, let's understand what a

Cloud is. Ok, the simplest example. Deploy any virtualization architecture on

top of your grid and you get a Cloud. But in this case the grid nodes are not so

loosely coupled, and managed inside a datacenter. What's the benefit? The main

benefit is that as you have aggregated and consolidated all our computing

resources under one single grid platform and you have deployed a virtualization

platform on top of it, it becomes very easy to cut a slice of the grid into a

desired configuration and provide it to the user as and when required.

So, let's suppose I have a pool of 400 processing cores and 800 GB of RAM in

my Grid, I can pull out a virtual slice of let's say 16 cores and 16 GB of RAM

at any point of time and provide it to a user who requires it. Once the work is

done or if the resources are not utilized at a particular point, the resources

goes and merges back to the all mighty Cloud and is utilized for some other

purpose.

The Green Cloud



Now the question is where and how the concept of Green fits into Cloud? To

understand that, first of all you have to understand how virtualization helps in

consolidation and as a result saves power, space and resources. Once you

understand that you can easily see the benefits of Cloud. We could achieve x

amount efficacy in terms of our resource utilization if you use virtualization

on a single server, just imagine how many times of x we would be able to achieve

if we virtualize our complete cluster. Technically we would be able to utilize

100% of our resource all the time and hence would be able to achieve a much

higher degree of consolidation. And as a result we would save more space, more

power and more money. Even if you use Cloud computing as a client and don't



want to deploy your own Cloud for consolidation. Then also you are saving nature
as you are reutilizing pre-existing resources on some huge datacenters instead

of deploying your own datacenter for the same task.

Cloudstatus dashboard shows health status of

cloud computing services such as Amazon web services, Google App Engine etc.

It also offers a plugin to developers, with which they can monitor their own

application in the cloud through cloudstatus portal

Now let's see some of the Cloud computing offerings from different vendors

which you can use to reduce the size of your datacenter.

Intel, Yahoo, HP Research Test Bed



This one of the major recent developments in Cloud computing, IT biggies HP,

Intel and Yahoo have collaborated together to provide an open source muti-data

center research test bed. This global computing research bed will be made

available free of cost to researchers doing research related to Cloud computing.

What are the current trends in Cloud

computing? How is AppLabs related to Cloud computing?




The current trends in Cloud computing are more in an investigation and
proof-of-concept stages by the enterprises. As Cloud computing provides

unique challenges, AppLabs is well placed with the extensive background in

both functional and non-functional testing across all platforms and

technologies.




Rajesh Patil, AVP, BFSI,



AppLab

How does AppLabs test performance and security of the Cloud computing

solutions? What are the most common tests you perform on the Cloud?




Independent validation organizations like us play a key role in establishing
and maintaining the credibility of the providers as well as protect the

interests of the consumers. As we move to linking to the 'Cloud', there are

aspects of quality that include both functional and non-functional. Ensuring

the Cloud works as expected would be the domain for functional testing. The

non-functional testing would include Security, Performance, Availability,

Certification etc to ensure the end user experience is not compromised in

any way.

  •  Security and Privacy-ability for the provider to effectively

    provide both Security and Information Privacy. This is very important in

    Financial and Healthcare related application and data.
  • Availability-clear compliance with the specified Service Level

    Agreements on the availability and uptime on the environment.
  • Migration-an ability to migrate in and out. The key is the ease by

    which this can be done.
  • Regulatory compliance-ensure the provider does and keep in compliance

    with the requisite regulatory needs.
  • Standards compliance-ensure the provider supports and complies with

    industrycomputing standards. Any deviations would increase the dependence

    on a specific vendor and would impact the ability to migrate or move.

When choosing a cloud computing solution, what standards and

compliances an Enterprise should look for? What advice you would like to

give to enterprises going for Cloud-based solutions?




Cloud computing standards are evolving. An enterprise should look at the
standards being developed and supported by the key technology vendors. There

is a risk of the standards being introduced by a specific vendor which will

address any short term issues, but will be detrimental in the long run. Key

is to be able to influence open standards adoption. For compliance, there

are industries where this is quite critical-like financial and health care.

Specific compliance requirements related to customer data, privacy,

security, and regulatory needs should be addressed.

Expected to be available to researchers by the end of the year, test bed

initially will be hosted at six locations and hardware for this Cloud will be

provided by HP with Intel processors and according their press release, it will

have 1000 to 4000 cores at every location. Test beds will mostly run Apache

Hadoop which is an open source distributed computing project of and other

similar distributed computing software such as Pig which is a parallel

programming language developed by Yahoo! Research.

PaaS making waves



Platform as a Service(PaaS) or on demand platform until now were major used

by developers who were building applications which will run on the Cloud or use

Cloud in some form or another. But now these on demand platforms are also being

used for commercial purposes by companies. To give an example popular Live

blogging company ScribbleLive runs entirely on GoGrid Cloud. GoGrid one of major

player in Cloud computing with Google and Amazon with its EC2 and S3. We talked

about EC2 in our last Cloud computing story, since then one major development in

EC2 has been introduction of persistent storage called Amazon Elastic Block

Store (EBS). With EBS, users can now create volumes from 1GB to 1TB and attach

it with an amazon EC2 instance. EBS is largely meant for applications which

require a file system or a data base or a raw block level storage when running

the application in Amazon EC2.

GoGrid



As we mentioned earlier GoGrid is one of major commercial players in Cloud

computing. Currently in its public beta allows users to scale servers within

minutes. At present it lets you deploy server images of windows 2008, windows

2003, Cent OS and versions of Redhat enterprise Linux. It allows users to manage

servers through its multi-server hosting server control panel and users can add

or delete servers according to their needs. Every account in GoGrid is given a

public and private VLAN and users also have the option to use a Load Balancer

which is powered by F5 load balancer. Coming to billing, it follows two main

models one is Pre-Paid plans and second is Pay-As-You-Go-Plan. Just to give you

a small idea it charges $0.19 per Server RAM hour and $0.50/GB for outboud data

transfer in starting Pay-as-you-go-pricing plan. More plans and details can be

found at www.gogrid.com

Google App Engine



Currently in its preview release, Google App Engine is a treat for developers.
It allows developers to run their web applications on Google infrastructure

Cloud. Developers can built application online Application Environment of Google

App Engine or create them offline through its SDK which is available for

download. Each application can use 500 MB of storage and with page views upto

5000 per month. You can try out Goolge App Engine at http://code.google.com /appengine/.

Citrix Cloud Center



This came in just when we were finishing the story. Citrix has announced a whole
new product family for Cloud service providers under Citrix Cloud center

solution (C3). The solution has four main components namely Platform, Delivery,

Bridge, and Orchestration. On the platform part solution comes with Citrix Xen

Server Cloud edition. According to its press release Cloud edition of Xen Server

comes with an new consumption based pricing model, which caters to the needs of

service providers who charge customers as per the resource usage. For the

delivery part, C3 uses Citrix NetScaler for delivering resources from the Cloud

to users. Citrix claims NetScaler can reduce server requirements in large Cloud

centers by offloading protocol and transaction processing from backend server

pool . Bridge component is powered with Citrix WANScaler and lastly the

orchestration component contains Citrix Workflow Studio.

NetPC



This one is for those, who always say Cloud computing is for large

enterprises. A company called Novatium haslaunched a Nova Net PC which is

basically a thin client PC for SMBs and homes. Novatium has tied up with

various ISPs, e.g. in Delhi with MTNL and a small Cloud is hosted, in

Mauritius with Mauritius telecom to offer netPC. For operating system net PC

gives options of Windows, Linux and Solaris. NetPC currently costs about Rs

5000, however, in addition to that every month a user has to shell out 400

to 500 rupees as subscription in which it gets 30 hours of Internet access.

This is just not for Internet, even if you are using any application like MS

Office, your hours will count.

Build your own Cloud



If you think deploying your own Cloud in your own datacenter is not simple

and requires huge amount of development, technical expertise and cost, then

think again. Today we even have simple open source solutions to deploy your own

Cloud. Next month we will take you through a step by step guide on building your

own Cloud. Watch out for that.

'In the Cloud' malware analysis



Vendors like Mcafee, Trend Micro, and F-secure are looking to use power of

Clouds to perform real time in the Cloud analysis of malware detected to provide

enhanced security. Within the Cloud malware analysis as soon as an unknown or

suspected malware is detected in the machine, Anti-virus will immediately upload

it to the Cloud and execute in a sandbox to figure out whether it is actually a

malware or not. In case the sample turns out to be a known malware, immediately

signature files of that malware will be sent to machine. For new or unknown

malware's signature files will be created, and as soon as they are available

they will be sent to all anti-virus clients connected to the client, to ensure

they are updated about new threats. Usually it takes more than 24 hours in

analyzing a malware and developing its signatures and by the time all anti-virus

clients are updated it can be a week or even more depending upon how users have

scheduled their anti-virus to update from the server. With this since anti-virus

client will be connected to Internet all the time, it can refer to Cloud for

every malicious activity it detects and new signatures are delivered to the

clients on the fly.Another advantage in the Cloud malware analysis is that

instead of keeping all signature files of known malware on the disk, only the

signatures of the viruses present in the wild can be kept. This also frees up

the hard disk space as well as bandwidth used to download all these signature

files in each and every workstation.

Anindya Roy, Hitesh Raj Bhagat, Rahul Sah, Sandeep Koul and Swapnil Arora

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