IET Virtualization Subsidy Proposal

IET Virtualization Subsidy Proposal

April 2010

Proposal

On January 7, 2010, the Strategic Approach for Investments in Computing Facilities (SAICF) committee reviewed concepts for the subsidization of the campus virtualization service provided by IET in order to reflect the savings in power and cooling. Various subsidies were discussed, and the committee encouraged IET to consider the most aggressive subsidy that could be justified by the data. Based on this advice and substantial analysis, IET now requests a campus subsidy in the amount of 50%. The campus cost of this subsidy is almost equivalent to the power cost savings campus will realize by clients participating in the virtualization service. The power savings,coupled with the space savings, are incentive enough for campus to fund this program.

Overview

In June 2009, IET launched a campus virtualization service. In December 2009, five months into production, the service was at 75% utilization of existing hardware. Due to the high utilization of the service, in March 2010, IET doubled the capacity of its hardware. This new hardware can support a 30 to 1 virtualization ratio. This means 30 physical servers can be replaced with a single physical server running the virtualization software. Additionally, these new servers supporting the campus virtualization service are blade servers which utilize less power and space over traditional servers resulting in even greater savings.

At our current virtualization utilization, campus conservatively realizes annual savings of 338,000 kWh[1]in power, $28,800[2]in power costs, and 111metric tons of reduced CO2[3]emissions over traditional servers. Campus also saves approximatelyfourcomputer racks of space[4]resulting in annual space cost savings of $3,360[5].

These cost savings are all at a campus level. This proposal seeks a campus subsidy for the service to pass these savings on to the departments and further increase the overall savings by creating an incentive for departmental participation.

Servers that are capable of supporting 40 – 50 virtual guests are on now available. As IET invests in these newer servers, campus will realize even greater savings.

Campus Benefits

There are multiple benefits to both the campus and individual departments with greater participation in the virtualization service.

A number of the benefits listed below are also directly supportive of goals in the UC Policy on Sustainable Practices related to energy use reduction (Clean Energy, Section IIa, IId) greenhouse gas emissions reduction (Climate Protection Practices, Section IIIa); waste reduction (Recycling and Waste Management, Section VI); and environmentally appropriate purchasing (Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Practices, Section VII, energy efficient appliances, reduction of hazardous electronic waste, environmentally responsible packaging, and effective recycling and manufacturer takebacks).

• Annual savings, conservatively estimated, of 338,000 kWhr of electricity, which equates to $28,800 in purchased electricity costs. These savings do not include additional savings for reduction in ventilation and cooling needs, or the labor savings associated with reduced service calls for distributed server closet HVAC equipment maintenance, repairs, and replacement.
• Annual savings of approximately 111 metric tons of CO2, which, if offset at current market prices for high-quality, verified carbon offsets, would range in cost from $1,111 to $1667.
• Space savings of approximately 35 square feet per rack removed, for a possible total of 140 square feet. Leasing this space in the current Davis real estate market would cost $3,360 annually.
• Fewer servers purchased resulting in reduced packaging and hazardous electronic waste in addition to labor savings associated with procurement, physical installation, tracking, and disposal of equipment.
• Departments achieve a higher level of availability and fault tolerance by participating in the service. Data is automatically backed up for disaster recovery. Services running on a piece of hardware that fails will automatically come up on other available hardware. Downtime due to hardware failure is reduced from hours or days to minutes.Clients will no longer face downtime due to hardware upgrades.

By subsidizing the virtualization service, campus can assist in making these benefits available to departments.

As campus power costs increase due to market forces and the requirement to purchase clean energy, the savings realized through the virtualization program will increase while the subsidy contribution will remain the same. At $0.12 / kWhr, with existing virtualization utilization, the energy savings of 338,000 kWhr would save campus $40,600 annually.

Subsidy Process

Campus has approved rates for the virtualization service. We propose that campus create a subsidy process by which the cost to clients for a virtual server is reduced by 50%.

The virtualization service is currently supporting 108 guests. The average for FY0910 is 67 guests. At a 50% subsidy, the estimated cost to campus for FY09/10 is $22,900 to support the average of 67 guests. As more servers are virtualized, the subsidy cost will go up proportionally to the associated campus savings in space and power.

As memory prices continue to drop, the cost for providing the service will go down along with the associated campus subsidy. The market for memory is difficult to predict, however. Therefore the following table estimates subsidy amounts with prices staying the same over the next three years.

Estimated Cost of the Program at 50% Subsidy
Virtual / Service Cost / Energy Savings / Subsidy
Guests / Amount
FY0910 / 67 / $ 45,775.26 / $ 17,841.96 / $ 22,887.63
FY1011 / 247 / $ 168,753.56 / $ 65,775.59 / $ 84,376.78
FY1112 / 427 / $ 291,731.87 / $ 113,709.21 / $ 145,865.93

ARM and IET need to determine guidelines for the subsidy process that establish:

• Actual subsidy process. We suggest ARM establish an account to which IET can bill 50% of the client cost.
• Whether existing clients are reimbursed for their use of the virtualization services for FY0910, or whether the subsidy applies only to the service in the future. Existing clients have not yet been billed for service for FY0910.
• Annual review of program to review client costs and subsidy amount. This will allow ARM to have accurate projections of the annual subsidy amount

Any campus subsidy of the virtualization service should be ongoing until campus develops a model to pass power utilization costs on to departments.

As part of the annual review of the subsidy program, IET will report on the energy, power cost, CO2, and space savings resulting from the virtualization service.

Supporting Calculations

The following table showsenergy savings for the virtualization service running at 75% utilization. As the service grows, campus will realize greater space and power savings, and the subsidy amount will increase proportionally. Each server virtualized saves the campus approximately $270 in annual power costs.

Virtualization Energy Savings Calculations (75% service utilization)
Virtual Hosts (physical servers) / 5
Available Memory (GB RAM) / 288
Memory in use at 75% utilization (GB RAM) / 216
Virtual Guests (average 2GB RAM per guest) / 108
Average Number of Guests per Host / 22
Single Server Power Consumption (w) / 250
Power Cost / $ 0.085
PUE / 1.5
Hours per year / 8,760
kwhr of sample server / year / 2,190
kwhr of sample server / year (including PUE) / 3,285
lbs CO2 per kWHr / 0.725
Annual Power Usage -- All Virtual Hosts (kWHr) / 16,425
Potential Power Usage -- All Virtual Guests (kWHr) / 354,780
Total Power Savings per year (kWHr) / 338,355
Total Power Cost Savings per year / $ 28,760.18
Carbon Footprint Reduction per year (metric tons) / 111.27
Power Cost Savings per Virtual Guest / $ 266.30
Power Cost Savings per Virtual Host / $ 5,752.04

PUE Explanation

The Power Unit Efficiency measures how much power it takes to cool 1 watt of computer power. Almost all power drawn by a computer is converted to heat that needs to then be cooled. A PUE of 1.5 means every watt of compute power takes 0.5 watts to cool.

The PUE value of 1.5 used in these calculations is based on measurements in the 2112 Watershed and is a very low estimation of the actual PUE of the server rooms that are currently housing the physical servers we are trying to virtualize. Those servers rooms are considerably less cooling efficient than 2112 Watershed. As we remove physical servers from these inefficient server rooms, the actual power savings for cooling will be greater than estimated in these calculations.

[1] Data as of April 20, 2010 supporting 108 virtual servers. PUE of 1.5 based on calculations in 2112 watershed, 250W server.

[2] $0.085/kWh

[3] 0.724 lbs CO2 / kWh

[4] 108 servers averaging 1.5 rack units totaling 162 rack units or approximately four racks

[5] City of Davis real estate price of $2/sqft