Open Data Center Alliance - Sustain andustain

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1 sm OPEN DATA CENTER ALLIANCE : National Australia Bank Carbon Neutral White paper SM

2 Table of Contents Legal Notice... 3 Executive Summary... 4 Leading the Carbon Neutral Commitment in Australia... 5 Continued Focus on Carbon Reduction... 5 NAB Fuel Type Usage Report... 6 The Tri-Generation Advantage... 6 IT Efficiency: A Strategic Advantage... 7 Outsourcing Infrastructure Management... 7 Transition and Migration Planning... 8 Power and Cooling... 8 Decreasing Carbon Footprint Across the Organization... 9 Future of IT Efficiency...10 Guidance: Moving to an Efficient Data Center...10 About NAB and the Alliance

3 Legal Notice This Open Data Center Alliance SM National Australia Bank Carbon Neutral White Paper is proprietary to the Open Data Center Alliance, Inc. (the Alliance ), and/or its licensors, successors and assigns. NOTICE TO USERS WHO ARE NOT OPEN DATA CENTER ALLIANCE PARTICIPANTS: Non-Alliance Participants are only granted the right to review, and make reference or cite this document. Any such references or citations to this document must give the Alliance full attribution and must acknowledge the Alliance s copyright in this document. The proper copyright notice is as follows: 2012 Open Data Center Alliance, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Such users are not permitted to revise, alter, modify, make any derivatives of, or otherwise amend this document in any way without the express written permission of the Alliance. NOTICE TO USERS WHO ARE OPEN DATA CENTER ALLIANCE PARTICIPANTS: Use of this document by Alliance Participants is subject to the Alliance s bylaws and its other policies and procedures. NOTICE TO USERS GENERALLY: Users of this document should not reference any initial or recommended methodology, metric, requirements, or other criteria that may be contained in this document or in any other document distributed by the Alliance ( Initial Models ) in any way that implies the user and/or its products or services are in compliance with, or have undergone any testing or certification to demonstrate compliance with, any of these Initial Models. The contents of this document are intended for informational purposes only. The scope and content of any methodology, metric, requirements, or other criteria disclosed in this document does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Alliance of such methodology, metric, requirements, or other criteria and does not mean that Alliance will in the future develop any certification or compliance or testing programs to verify any future implementation or compliance with such methodology, metric, requirements, or other criteria. LEGAL DISCLAIMER: EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE EXPRESSLY SET FORTH HEREIN, NOTHING CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT SHALL BE DEEMED AS GRANTING YOU ANY KIND OF LICENSE IN ITS CONTENT, EITHER EXPRESSLY OR IMPLIEDLY, OR TO ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OWNED OR CONTROLLED BY ANY OF THE AUTHORS OR DEVELOPERS OF THIS DOCUMENT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY TRADEMARKS OF THE ALLIANCE. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS PROVIDED ON AN AS IS BASIS, AND TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE AUTHORS AND DEVELOPERS OF THIS DOCUMENT HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR AT COMMON LAW, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, VALIDITY, AND/OR NONINFRINGEMENT. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND ALLIANCE MAKES NO WARRANTIES AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF OR RELIANCE ON ANY INFORMATION SET FORTH IN THIS DOCUMENT, OR AS TO THE ACCURACY OR RELIABILITY OF SUCH INFORMATION. TRADEMARKS: OPEN CENTER DATA ALLIANCE SM, ODCA SM, and the OPEN DATA CENTER ALLIANCE SM logo are service marks owned by Open Data Center Alliance, Inc. and all rights are reserved therein. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. All other service marks, trademarks and trade names referenced herein are those of their respective owners. To be published July

4 SM sm OPEN DATA CENTER ALLIANCE : National Australia Bank Carbon Neutral White paper Executive Summary As we all know, IT demand, and thus carbon emissions, are growing significantly around the world. As data center footprints expand and energy consumption rises, the ability to effectively manage demand, control IT costs, and report on and reduce environmental impact have all become co-requirements to the sustainability of many large organizations--now and into the future. National Australia Bank Ltd ( NAB ) has taken up this challenge, serving as an industry leader and partner for this worldwide effort. NAB first reached carbon neutral status in September 2010, but that is far from the end of the story. NAB sees its efforts to remain at the leading edge of technology and environmental efficiency and its environmental agenda as smart and essential business practices, critical to maintaining NAB s strategic advantage. This white paper explores NAB s ongoing efforts to seek out and apply innovative technical solutions to drive higher technology efficiency and lower carbon emissions. Continuing improvements to NAB s operational footprint, as well as the development of a new strategic data center scheduled to come online in late 2013, will play a role in NAB s ongoing success. Most impressive is NAB s projected Power Usage Effectiveness ( PUE ) figure for the new data center. Computer models have shown the worst-case scenario to measure 1.35, a very significant reduction from the 2.1 PUE for NAB s current data center. A great deal of efficiency is being achieved by the NAB s reliance on virtualization. The goal is to realize 90% virtualization of servers across the company by the time the project is completed. Also discussed here is the impact of NAB s technology strategy on its long-term business sustainability. Finally, NAB provides guidance for other organizations that plan to update their data center operations. NAB is a founding member of the Open Data Center Alliance SM Steering Committee and has been an active participant in the organization s working groups. 4

5 Leading the Carbon Neutral Commitment in Australia We were the first Australian bank to commit to becoming carbon neutral, and we have achieved this important milestone, Cameron Clyne, Group CEO at NAB, announced in Against a planned target of 20% greenhouse gas emissions savings (46,000 tons), NAB developed and delivered programs that reduced business as usual emissions by over 25% (59,200 tons). Recognizing that continued sustainability into the future is not only critical for the planet, but also for the longer-term growth and viability of its core banking business, NAB set about making changes throughout the organization. Launched in 2007, NAB s Carbon Neutral 2010 program achieved its goal of attaining carbon neutral status by Over the course of this program, NAB invested in over 350 energy efficiency and emission reduction projects across Australia. Projects include heating, cooling and lighting adjustments, major refurbishments at office buildings, automatic switch-off of PCs not in use, and the design and installation of a trigeneration plant. NAB s technology department contributed significantly to the effort. But NAB is not standing on past achievements. As Clyne stated in 2010, NAB s journey to carbon neutral over the last three years can best be described as learn by doing and, through this process, we have discovered a tremendous amount about our impact on the environment. NAB continues to learn and to apply that learning to achieving even higher technology efficiency and producing a smaller carbon footprint, as they steer a successful course to the future. Continued Focus on Carbon Reduction An ongoing focus on carbon reduction presents many challenges and opportunities for NAB s business. Gavin Slater, NAB s Group Executive, Group Business Services, states in NAB s Beyond Carbon Neutral Report 2011, prioritization of our energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction opportunities is based on implementing projects that deliver the most environmentally and financially effective outcomes. We face challenges to our goal of reducing energy use, in particular from our data centers, as energy consumption from these operations continues to grow to meet increasing demand for data processing capability. In response to these challenges, the IT department at NAB has: Virtualized 2000 Operating System Instances (OSIs) since January of Consolidated NAB s server storage footprint. Reduced NAB s draw on the Australian national electricity grid by moving to a gas-fueled tri-generation system. As over 83% of Australia s electricity is coal-generated, drawing electricity from the National Grid yields a heavy carbon load, said Tim Palmer, Senior Manager, Data Centre Transformation at NAB. Relying on natural gas generators directly at the source also reduces transmission losses by eliminating distance travelled. The following graph illustrates how NAB s energy mix has changed over the past 7 years to take advantage of this cleaner approach. 5

6 NAB Fuel Usage by Type Source: National Australia Bank, 2012 Diesel Gas Electricity Forecast The Tri-generation Advantage NAB has successfully implemented the use of tri-generation technology to positively influence its fuel mix and reduce its overall carbon footprint. Tri-generation refers to the simultaneous generation of electricity and useful heating and cooling from the combustion of a fuel (in the case of NAB, natural gas) or a solar heat collector. The supply of high-temperature heat first powers a generator, which in turn produces low-temperature waste heat that is suitable for both heating and cooling data centers. Critical and expensive cooling requirements of large data centers that produce large amounts of excess waste heat at a fairly constant rate can make tri-generation an effective solution. The following diagram illustrates a traditional generation facility vs. a cogeneration (or trigeneration) facility. NAB s tri-generation facility is an on-site, natural gas-driven generator that supplies one of NAB s existing strategic data centers with over 60% of its total energy requirements. Tri-generation reduces carbon emissions by approximately 20,000 tons per year, and accounts for a 10% reduction in NAB s overall Australian carbon footprint. Emissions savings from this one project equate to emissions generated by 1,400 households. With the demands of its two strategic data centers equating to approximately 43% of NAB s overall energy usage, efficiency savings are absolutely critical. Mains Electricity Tri-generation Process Overview Natural Gas Data Center Generator Greener Electricity Heated Water Chilled Water Heated Water Engine Absorption Chiller Exhaust Gases Graphic courtesy of National Australia Bank 6

7 IT Efficiency: A Strategic Advantage NAB is in the midst of a transformation program that is positioned well to deliver significant efficiency gains for the organization, according to Palmer. NAB s transformation program is rebuilding its entire platform using an infrastructure on demand (internal private cloud) model to maximize overall efficiency and relieve the growing demand on NAB s two existing strategic data centers, while providing improved stability, reliability and flexibility for the organization and its customers. The technology department has been challenged to continue to support business growth while reducing environmental footprint and operational costs. Areas for immediate focus: Deliver a strategic, high-efficiency data center, and distribute workloads across facilities. Transform the underlying technology infrastructure platform to consolidate environments. Focus on achieving high-density virtualization. NAB currently runs two very large strategic data centers, both located in Melbourne, that provide support for the majority of the NAB s operations. To answer growing demand, NAB has partnered with Digital Realty Trust and IBM in designing and building a new strategic data center on modern technology and retiring its oldest data center. The primary driver for the new facility is to consistently provide the capacity necessary to run NAB s business operations, now and into the future, while also reducing NAB s overall carbon footprint. Goals for the new data center include: Driving NAB s technology vision through an endorsed data center strategy. Delivering a new data center aligned with recognized global, industry standards. The new data center is being built to a LEED Gold standard, demonstrating leadership in energy and environmental design. Modernizing NAB s data center infrastructure to ensure that NAB is best protected from unplanned technology outages or incidents, and that it has the capacity for future needs. Leveraging vendor technologies (e.g., IBM, Oracle, and Telstra) within the new facility to support NAB s underlying technological requirements for deployments and implementations. Migrating all technology infrastructure from the existing site to a new facility without adversely impacting business operations. Decommissioning the existing data center site. Outsourcing Infrastructure Management NAB is outsourcing the management of most of the company s physical data center infrastructure to IBM. This allows NAB to focus on its core work, operating as a major financial institution, while allowing technology specialists, such as IBM, to focus on their core competencies. IBM is now responsible for the hardware within NAB s two existing data centers, and for implementing IBM s Infrastructure on Demand platform model. IBM is slated to build out the new data center in the same manner, and will manage the migration of existing functionality into the new facility. According to NAB s Tim Palmer, Infrastructure on Demand allows capacity to be delivered in line with actual business demand. Business projects can focus on delivering business functionality, whilst technology can focus on delivering an efficient underlying platform with minimal unused capacity. NAB is now purchasing resource units from IBM, scaling functionality up or down as per demand. In the former model, data centers consume a lot more electricity and physical space than is necessary, and require IT staff to manage and maintain a higher number of servers than required. The new model allows NAB to reduce its carbon footprint to a level of support that matches actual customer demand and service expectations. NAB is now focusing as much as possible on increasing the density of virtualization in its data centers, while at the same time pushing away from the old model where NAB managed its own infrastructure. As Palmer says, it is now up to IBM to try and be as efficient as they can. It s in their best interests to increase efficiency, reduce the physical footprint of their server space, and thus reduce their operating cost and carbon footprint. 7

8 Transition and Migration Planning In addition to its two primary data centers as referenced above, NAB over time has added approximately 30 other smaller data centers (or computer rooms) around Australia. One of the two primary data centers continues to be a major strategic asset and will stay online for at least another 20 years. However, the other data center is aging and as mentioned above, is due for replacement. The new facility currently under development will replace this aging data center, and will be located on the outskirts of Melbourne, which not only increases security, but also positions it closer to fuel feed from multiple power grids. In addition to migrating existing functionality to the new data center, NAB will also consolidate or retire the smaller computer rooms and data centers, thereby ensuring that they are housed in purpose-built facilities with efficient infrastructure. The new facility will be ready to run a pilot of the new Infrastructure on Demand platform by July It is targeted to have fully migrated functionality by September Regarding details of the migration, NAB s Palmer says: There are over 2,000 servers across the data centers that will be consolidated, with approximately 10,000 operating system instances handling the functionality, all of which need to be migrated to the new facility. Ultimately, as we go through this migration, our standard principle is that everything is virtual, by default. We want to minimize as much as possible bringing any old technology over to the new facility. NAB has chosen a standard data center design from Digital Realty Trust, a data center outsourcing service, with a goal of customizing as few options as possible, in order to more easily measure outcomes against established benchmarks. Changes to the design include: Power and Cooling Doubling the amount of on-site diesel storage to run emergency generators in case of significant delay. Adding 10,000 liters of on-site rainwater collection to reduce the amount of water pulled from the main supply, and ensuring all hot water is provided by solar heaters Choosing a sprinkler system that sprays fog rather than water. Fog has proven to be more effective at suppressing fire, while causing the least amount of damage to electrical equipment. NAB s new data center will have 2.8 megawatts coming in through dual redundant power feeds from the Australian National Grid, and 3 megawatts of cooling power. The projected Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) figure for the new data center is 1.35, a very significant reduction from the 2.1 PUE for the aging data center it is replacing. One of the most effective PUE-saving innovations employed at the new data center is its efficient free-air cooling system that provides: Pressurized cold air flowing under the floor, and then up through floor tile air conditioning grids, coming up just in front of each of the server cabinets. Chimney hoods above the server cabinets to direct the air to the venting area in the ceiling, which sucks out the hot air, and then cools it again before sending it back through the system. Overall, the cooling system minimizes waste of cool air by directing it onto the circuitry where cooling is needed the most. NAB may also consider using chilled water cooling for computer chips, but not at the initial launch of the data center. 8

9 Decreasing Carbon Footprint Across the Organization NAB has applied their efforts to improve technology efficiency and reduce carbon usage broadly across the organization s operations under the Beyond Carbon Neutral resource efficiency program. The program will not only put in place new processes to continue to improve efficiencies in how NAB uses resources but will also focus on increasing NAB s understanding of the impact of their operations on the environment. NAB s 2013 Beyond Carbon Neutral program, measured from a 2010 base year, involves: Reducing building energy greenhouse gas emissions by a further 10 percent per person. Reducing the waste generated by 20 percent per person. Reducing the amount of paper used by 20 percent per person. Ensuring a zero percent increase in water usage per person. 1 One key aspect of their success has been in shifting the overall corporate culture toward efficiency. NAB has included all staff members in the initiative, helping them to understand that they are part of the solution and that they stand to gain a lot, professionally and personally, from lowering their own, as well as the organization s carbon footprint. According to NAB s Palmer, You have to make this message personal for everyone. Let them know that they are part of the process. Business units need to understand the cost of requesting test environments, for example, and need to apply due diligence to reducing their impact as much as possible. We re looking for behavioral change. People need to internalize this message at work every day. The most effective strategy has been applying transparency to the costs generated by each business unit, providing them and their staff with continual, positive reinforcement. Tons of Carbon Output Per Employee source: National Australia Bank, T/FTE 5.5 T/FTE (-16%) For other examples, NAB has: Increased facilities capability to run virtual meetings via video conferencing, which has decreased the amount of business travel. Implemented double-sided printing by default. Begun establishing a process, in which staff members swipe their ID card at the printer before they can print and pick up their print jobs. This is expected to greatly reduce the amount of paper wasted due to pages that are printed but never picked up Baseline September 2011 performance Carbon output is calculated per full-time employee to help personalize the commitment to reducing carbon emissions. 1 All based on a 2010 baseline except for paper usage, which is based on a 2009 baseline. 9

10 Future of Technology Efficiency As both the demand for data management capacity and worldwide carbon emissions continue to increase, there will always be the need and incentive to continue looking for ways to further increase efficiency. Future efforts for NAB may include: Significant decommissioning of old systems due to NAB s total transformation of its technology environment. A much higher density of server virtualization. A decrease in the number of development and test instances, relying, instead, more on shared virtual instances for piloting and testing new features. Similarly, a decrease in the number of full copies of the databases required for testing purposes, relying instead on subsets of data for specific tests. Guidance: Moving to an Efficient Data Center For other organizations moving to a more efficient data center, NAB s Tim Palmer has this very tangible guidance: Consider applying the concept of free air cooling, such as NAB is implementing in their new data center (see the section, Power and Cooling ). He states that between the electricity cost, which is dependent on the number of physical boxes and the density of virtualization, and the cooling requirements for the facility, you want to make sure that you re not wasting cool air going into spots that are not the highest priority for cooling. Focusing the cool air directly on where the circuitry sits is ideal. By today s standards, this approach certainly provides the best value per cost for air conditioning, the largest percentage cost for data centers. In addition, Palmer advises, Large data center migrations can be very complex, especially if combined with a platform transformation (operating system, virtualization, & consolidation). Detailed application analysis, dependency mapping, resource forecasting, and especially DR/Business Continuity/Roll Back planning is essential. For some applications, it s safer to perform a limited migration into the new facility, and then run the transformation to the new platform. Or, to complete the transformation to the new platform within the existing facility, and then run a virtual-to-virtual migration to the new facility. The key is understanding the risks and dependencies. About NAB and the Alliance The Open Data Center Alliance is an industry standards organization working actively to shape the future of cloud computing by encouraging the adoption of interoperable standards. For more information, please visit: National Australia Bank is a founding member and active participant in the Alliance, and plays a leadership role on the Alliance s Steering Committee. NAB s best practices for carbon management are being shared in this white paper to help other organizations understand the many ways carbon reductions can be achieved through IT operations. Additional guidance about reducing carbon footprint of IT operations can be found in the ODCA Usage Model: Carbon Footprint Values Rev 1.1 which establishes an open standards approach to measuring carbon footprint of services provided from the cloud. 10