Apollo 11 Guidance Computer - Has software moved on?

21st July 1969 was a big day for computers! Apollo 11 made history when the first man landed on the moon. Migration Solutions MD, Alex Rabbetts, has been taking a look back at the technology in use at the time and how it has evolved today.

The Apollo Guidance Computer, (Apollo 11 actually had two - one in the command module and one in the lunar module), was very advanced for its time. It had 2k of memory, 32k of storage and a processing speed of 1.024 MHz and it managed to guide Apollo 11 all the way to the moon and back.

Let's put this in context - it had 2kb of memory ... the machine used to write this article has 2.75GB of memory. That's 1,441,792 times more memory! It had 32kb of storage ... the machine used to write this article has 139GB. That's 4,554,752 times more storage! It had a processing speed of 1.024MHz ... the machine used to write this article has 3.4GHz of processing speed. That's 3,320 times faster!

So, what can be concluded from this is that a machine with over a million times less memory, almost 4.5 million times less storage and a processing speed that is 3,400 times slower than the PC in my office managed to fly man to the moon and back! But then my PC does run Windows ...

Taking a quick look at the Microsoft support website and I find the minimum requirements for running Windows XP:

At least 64MB of memory (128 MB is recommended) - 32,768 times more memory that the Apollo Guidance Computer
At least 1.5 GB of storage - 49,152 times more storage than the Apollo Guidance Computer
A 233 MHz processor (300 MHz is recommended) - 233 times faster than the Apollo Guidance Computer

The question therefore must be ... such a low spec computer such as the Apollo Guidance System is capable of flying man to the moon and back, what is my PC with such a vastly superior specification capable of doing?

One could be forgiven for wondering exactly how this relates to data centres! The answer really is in that very large storage number. The IDC estimates that by the end of 2010 the amount of data storage worldwide will reach 1 zettabyte (1,180,591,620,717,410,000,000 bits of data) and it will continue to rise at an exponential rate. The recent Digital Britain report supports this view of exponential rise in the storage of digital media. All this data has to be stored somewhere ... much of it in data centres.

Data Centres require huge amounts of power to drive the storage equipment used for all this data that is produced. There are all sorts of drives to reduce carbon emissions from data centres, ranging from The Green Grid, the EU Code of Conduct to the Carbon Reducation Commitment. Greater efficiency in data centres is the right way to go, but we mustn't forget the software. 1.5 gigabytes just to install an operating system is a massive amount of storage when compared to that of the Apollo Guidance Computer - the real question is whether this vast increase in the amount of code required simply to run the computer is so much better than the system used to send the first man to the moon!

And one final thought ... if we were told that we were to fly to the moon today and that the computer that would get us there and back was running Windows XP or Vista, would we still want to go?

Chillerless Facilities

In the news this week is another of Google's data centres. Their facility in Belgium does not use chillers and traditional air conditioning, but utilises fresh-air cooling to effectively cool the data centre for free. Fresh-air cooling is not a new technology and it is in use by many different facilities around the world, but the clever part is that Google have done away with the need for backup air conditioning units for the few days a year when temperatures rise above the safe operating levels of their computer equipment.

To allow this facility to run at optimum levels, the technology employed had to be redesigned from the ground up. Google already build their own servers which mean they can purpose build them to their specific requirements, using minimal components and reducing the need for expensive casings and multiple drives. These servers can be run at a temperature of 27 degrees centigrade which allows for cooling requirements to be minimal in the first place. The average summer temperatures in Brussels are between 19-21 degrees which allows a 6 degree variance for heat waves or unseasonal hot days. If the temperature in the data centre rises to a level where the IT equipment cannot handle the heat, Google, using its virtualisation technology, starts to transfer the servers activity to different facilities around the world which allows the data centre to cool naturally, restoring a lower temperature and allowing the facility to continue to operate at normal levels. This process is performed automatically by the data centre, which can recognise when it may be over heating. There is also an increasing reliance on local weather forecasting so they can pre-empt any problems that may occur.

As the world moves towards virtualisation as a more efficient method of server utilisation, the question remains, is the Google data centre blueprint the future of the modern computer room? Google have the ability and the financial backing to be able to take a problem, dissect it, and redesign it so it works most efficiently for their requirements. This is their plan for Google OS, but are Googles requirements the same of the rest of the worlds?

Making your Data Centre as efficient as possible will reduce your yearly power bill significantly. Some very small, often free changes can return 5-10% savings in power. Migration Solutions are specialist consultants who created their ERA, Environmental Report and Assessment, to help Data Centre and computer room operators save running costs and extend the life of servers and their support equipment. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Wind Power

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) has released a report this week about domestic wind generation, which could change how and where wind turbines are installed. The report, which sampled a number of homes across the UK, used predicted and actual average wind speed readings to map the UK and decide where the most appropriate location for wind turbine installations actually are. Although the ideal position and geographical location was no surprise, findings about return on investment (ROI) and home installations were revealing.

Manufacturers figures for domestic wind turbines suggest that on average, building mounted turbines make 10% of their ratings a year and free standing turbines make 17% of their ratings. If a turbine is rated at 1kW, this would equate to 100 Watts and 170 Watts respectively. In direct comparison, the large wind farms get closer to 30-40% of their rating on average, reaching 59% efficiency at peak output. The EST's findings revealed that building mounted turbines actually came closer to being 3% of their ratings, a difference of 7%. This would mean that a £4,500 1kW wind turbine would generate 262.8 kWh of power per year, which equates to £34. Therefore the ROI for a 1kW wind turbine mounted on a domestic house in an average area would be 132 years!! This therefore is not a very environmentally friendly method of power production! If they are located in an ideal location such as Scotland where it is windy, with few obstructions and either by the sea on on a hill, this average rises to 7.4% of the rating. This equates to 648.2 kWh for the same turbine per year or £84. This lowers the ROI to 53 years and 5 months!

On the other hand, due to the ideal location of free-standing turbines, they have a much higher efficiency and much lower ROI. Free standing turbines need a large area of open ground so that they are safely positioned and not a danger. They should ideally be in a high position with no trees or buildings obstructing the wind flow. In the EST's tests, the average load was 19% of the turbines rating which almost certainly is because of their location. The benefit of a free-standing turbine is that it can be larger than one that is building mounted. So for example, a 6kW free standing wind turbine costs £17,200 to buy. At 19% of its rating it will generate 9,986.4 kWh a year or £1,298. Therefore, the ROI would be 13 years 3 months. In perfect conditions either by the sea or on top of a hill, the efficiency rises to 30% which makes the ROI 8 years 5 months. After this period it will start giving you free electricity.

So what has this got to do with data centres I hear you cry? Reducing power costs in data centres is big money, and many new facilities are trying ways to make their data centres or computer rooms "green". One idea is to have private power generation through wind and solar generation, but as was discussed before in this blog, solar power generation is not at a level yet where the benefits can be gained in the UK. If you have a data centre or building located in a remote area which has high average wind conditions, installing 10 free standing wind turbines could power four 3kW racks. Although the ROI would be a major factor, for a domestic situation, the government will provide a grant of up to £1,000 per kW of turbine installed and similar incentives are provided for businesses. In Dubai a number of different designs are being considered by architects to build wind generation into new skyscrapers. These could produce 1,200,000 kWh of power a year, enough to power a 20 Rack data centre with cooling included. If every new building had this technology included in the design, the possibilities of "free power" are endless.

Making your Data Centre as efficient as possible will reduce your yearly power bill significantly. Some very small, often free changes can return 5-10% savings in power. Migration Solutions are specialist consultants who created their ERA, Environmental Report and Assessment, to help data centre and computer room operators save running costs and extend the life of servers and their support equipment. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255

Google to re-invent the netbook OS

ChromeOS - could this be the new face of cloud computing? Google announced on their blog last night that they were developing a totally new operating system that will be specifically designed for netbooks. Chrome OS is expected to be ready for shipping towards the end of 2010 but will be available for the open source community later this year.

Google has revealed that they are planning to include in-built security. This has been totally redesigned in order to do away with processor hungry anti-virus and malware products, and to ensure that from switch on to internet browsing there is only a a few seconds delay rather than the few minutes needed by Windows. By starting from scratch, Google hopes to be able to redefine the operating system into something that will "just work" rather than a tool that constantly has problems. All web-based applications will work on ChromeOS and Google is concentrating on ensuring that all the ChromeOS apps are usable on all other operating systems.

This could be the future of operating systems - to give users what they want rather than what they are given. One question remains, although there are many people who disapprove of Microsoft's strangle hold on the market, will Google start to carry the torch?

Super-Data Centres

Has anyone got a spare million lying around? How about cheeky $2 billion?

The NSA (National Security Agency) in America, has announced plans that they intend to build a $2 billion, 1 million sq ft data centre in Utah as they are fast growing out of their Fort Meade headquarters. The proposed 65 MW facility will be sited on 2 major power corridors and will house new supercomputers that the Fort Meade facility can no longer support. The NSA, who watch and listen to most communications - via the internet, phone calls, radio broadcasting and other communications methods. They watch over the whole world's communications, attempting to spot dangers to the USA from foreigners. An element of this information is shared with GCHQ, the UK's version of the NSA. The NSA build bespoke supercomputers to break ciphers and encryption around the world, which require huge amounts of power and cooling to operate effectively. As an example, the world's most powerful supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner takes up 296, 42U racks and uses 2.53MW of power, not including the water-cooled CRAC units.

In the UK we can presume that GCHQ must have a similar sized computing capacity. There is not much information as you would expect from a highly classified branch of the government, but they have stated that “It’s hard for an outsider to imagine the immense size and sheer power of GCHQ’s supercomputing architecture.” This does beg the question, does the government/GCHQ have access to vast amounts of power that is not readily available to the public and average data centre operator. There is a severe shortage of power in the UK which has been highlighted through the reserving of electricity for the Olympics by many companies who have been paying vast sums of money in a bidding war to secure the limited power available. The government has a plan in place to build a number of new nuclear power stations and clean coal powered stations (which will include carbon capture) by 2018, but many sources are saying that the UK will run out of power by 2015 as old power stations come to the end of their lives.

The best way to safeguard your data centre or computer room for the future is to make it more efficient now so that you will not require excessive power in the next 10 years. Migration Solutions are specialist Data Centre consultants who design and build, operate and migrate data centres all over the UK and Europe and have recently won Information Age's Data Centre Innovation award for ERA, an Environmental Report and Assessment which looks at ways that computer room and data centre operators can cut costs and improve their facilities efficiency. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com or call 0845 251 2255.

UK Government says more data centres needed!

According to the widely publicised 'Digital Britain'report, it is anticipated that 'the volume of digital content will increase 10x to 100x over the next 3 to 5 years' and that 'we are on the verge of a "big bang" in the communications industry that will provide the UK with enormous economic and industrial opportunities.' The question posed in the report, however, is where is all this data going to be stored? The answer, of course, is in data centres.

The report continues; 'All of the information on the global Internet, whether for commerce, industry or consumer consumption, has to be stored somewhere in digital form on servers. This is the function of the Data centres. They are a crucial part of the underlying infrastructure and a vital foundation block of much of the digital economy.'

'The current demand for highly-connected data centres in the UK points to constraints in supply which is of concern as these facilities can take up to two years to build from initial inception. The private sector needs to look beyond the current recession since the up-turn in the economy will not be the only driver of expanding demand - the quantity of information to be stored continues to rise exponentially across the world.'

Those involved in the industry already know about the shortage of supply, but if the report is only half right, this shortage will soon become a drought. Putting this in context, the introduction to the report states, 'Yesterday, 20 hours of new content were posted on YouTube every minute, 494 exabytes of information were transferred seamlessly across the globe, over 2.6 billion mobile minutes were exchanged across Europe, and millions of enquiries were made using a Google algorithm.'

Assuming a rather conservative view is taken and that digital content increases just 5 times over the next 3 to 5 years, this would result in 100 hours of YouTube content being posted every minute, 2,470 exabytes of information being transferred and 13 billion mobile minutes being exchanged across Europe. This would result in the current shortage becoming chronic!

It is evident, not just from the report, but also from what is happening today, that new data centres must be built ... and soon! The average data centre will take 6-12 months to construct (some longer) and that's only after all the relevant permissions have been obtained. Building a data centre isn't that easy either. In order to support all of the technology - servers, storage, network equipment etc., there is a significant amount of infrastructure required. Firstly, any site that is identified as a potential site for a data centre needs power ... lots of it! And there isn't much of that around at the moment. Some towns and cities are reported to be down to their last megawatt of power, and that isn't nearly enough to power a data centre of any size. A data centre of just 100 racks of equipment is likely to need at least 1 megawatt of power, the average commercial data centre will have upwards of 500 racks ... some will run into thousands. A second consideration is the communications required. These data centres need big communications links. Not a 200Mbps connection as is currently being trialled in Kent, but several Gigabit, or even Terrabit, connections will be required. Getting these connections to the data centre is not cheap!

Getting the design right is going to be crucial. It isn't, as some newer entrants to the market seem to believe, a case of chucking a load of power and communications into a shed and calling it a data centre. Very careful consideration needs to be given to the operation of these data centres after the builder has gone. It needs specialist design with the ongoing operation at the forefront of that design. In some existing data centres an upgrade will be necessary, in others it won't be possible as their design and infrastructure simply won't support the new demands.

The report states, 'London is the largest data centre market in Europe and a location for international businesses looking to expand into Europe.' This is currently true, but the clever people are going to be thinking slightly outside the box. London is the largest data centre market in Europe but with the chronic shortage of power in London at the moment and the lack of investment in infrastructure meaning it won't get better anytime soon, London may not be the panacea to the problem. The UK certainly, but the clever money will be building outside of the capital. Some will need to be close enough to allow synchronous replication of data, but most applications don't need this - digital storage being one.

Smart operators should be looking to build data centres in locations where both power and connectivity are available. Really smart operators should be looking at sites where both power and connectivity are available and where the power comes from a 'green' source. Whilst the government, through the Digital Britain report, has rightly identified that there is a need for more data centres and that there is a current shortage which can only get worse, they have, as ever, balanced this with the introduction of a promise to heavily tax those users of significant energy, or which data centres are one.

Interesting times are ahead for the data centre industry!

Migration Solutions has many years of experience in computer room and data centre design and construction. Utilising operational experience to create a data centre that runs as efficiently as possible, but is easy to use for the operations team is the most important aspect of any data centre or computer room design. For more information visit www.migrationsolutions.com

Heatwave!

As you may be able to tell there is a heat wave happening in the UK! Throughout this week the temperatures will be increasing reaching a peak on Thursday. The Met Office has issued a Level 2 Heat-Health warning to prepare the public for the weather. While the temperatures may not be high compared to many places around the world, the UK is used to a more moderate heat and infrastructures are designed with this in mind.

Older data centres and computer rooms often start to overheat and fail in high temperatures, as the air conditioning struggles to cope with the increased heat levels and cooling. These facilities are also likely to be full to capacity. In a facility that is already on the limit of cooling, a heat wave becomes very dangerous, especially if a CRAC Unit (Computer Room Air Conditioning) were to fail. Old servers are also very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature. Increased heat requires the internal fans to spin faster to cool the equipment and if a fan stops working, a server can very quickly over heat and shut down. If any 1 server has business critical applications on it, you should be prepared.

Migration Solutions created a health check for data centres and computer rooms which looks at all aspects of a facility and gives it a scored rating. The ERA report comes with an entire section on improvements that can be made to help your Data Centre run more efficiently and effectively, and can identify possible problems that could result in down time. These improvements range from free, low man-time changes that can yield a 5-10% reduction in power costs to major works which include changing a facility layout, rack layout and replacing old plant equipment. An essential part of Data Centre management is preparing for the worst, and identifying the strengths and weakness of your facility is key. For more information on the Environmental Report and Assessment visit www.migrationsolutions.com.