The Green and Virtual Data Center [Hardcover]

Greg Schulz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1420086669 | ISBN-13: 978-1420086669 | Edition: 1

The Green and Virtual Data Center sets aside the political aspects of what is or is not considered green to instead focus on the opportunities for organizations that want to sustain environmentally-friendly economical growth. If you are willing to believe that IT infrastructure resources deployed in a highly virtualized manner can be combined with other technologies to achieve simplified and cost-effective delivery of services in a  green, profitable manner, this book is for you.

Savvy industry veteran Greg Schulz provides real-world insight, addressing best practices, server, software, storage, networking, and facilities issues concerning any current or next-generation virtual data center that relies on underlying physical infrastructures. Coverage includes:

Energy and data footprint reduction

Cloud-based storage and computing

Intelligent and adaptive power management

Server, storage, and networking virtualization

Tiered servers and storage, network, and data centers

Energy avoidance and energy efficiency

Many current and emerging technologies can enable a green and efficient virtual data center to support and sustain business growth with a reasonable return on investment. This book presents virtually all critical IT technologies and techniques to discuss the interdependencies that need to be supported to enable a dynamic, energy-efficient, economical, and environmentally-friendly green IT data center. This is a path that every organization must ultimately follow.

Take a tour of the Green and Virtual Data Center website.

CRC Press is pleased to announce that The Green and Virtual Data Center has been added to Intel Corporation’s Recommended Reading List. Intel’s Recommended Reading program provides technical professionals a simple and handy reference list of what to read to stay abreast of new technologies. Dozens of industry technologists, corporate fellows, and engineers have helped by suggesting books and reviewing the list. This is the most comprehensive reading list available for professional computer developers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The book reviews the latest developments in facilities, server, storage, networking, and monitoring technologies and provides a roadmap of how each can be used to create next-generation data centers that combine efficiency with scalability . . . Schulz’s book provides an excellent primer for those wanting to understand how to create data centers for this new paradigm.
—Kurt Marko, in Processor, March 2009, Vol. 31, No. 11

What I like about Schulz’s approach is that he doesn’t really pass judgment on whether or not you should re-adjust your IT initiatives around some greener-good agenda. He’s focused more so on illustrating how some of the technologies you’re already considering for the good of your business – virtualization, blade platforms, cloud computing power management – might otherwise be pretty cool for the environment, too.
—Heather Clancy, Green Tech Pastures, in ZDNet, February 26, 2009

Greg Schulz has presented a concise and visionary perspective on the Green issues. He has cut through the hype and highlighted where to start and what the options are. A great place to start your green journey and a useful handbook to have as the journey continues.
—Greg Brunton, EDS/An HP Company

I must admit that I have been slightly skeptical at times, when it comes to what the true value is behind all of the discussions on ‘green’ technologies in the data center. As someone who has seen both the end user and vendor side of things, I think my skepticism gets heightened more than it normally would be. This book really helped dispel my skepticism. ...extremely well organized and easy to follow.  Each chapter has a very good introduction and comprehensive summary.  This book could easily serve as a blueprint for organizations to follow when they look for ideas on how to design new data centers.  It's a great addition to an IT Bookshelf.
—Dr. Steve Guendert, Global Solutions Architect, Brocade Communications

About the Author

StorageIO Group, Stillwater, Minnesota, USA

Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: CRC/Auerbach Publications; 1 edition (January 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1420086669
• ISBN-13: 978-1420086669
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #855,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Greg Schulz is the founder of the IT industry advisory and consultancy firm Server and StorageIO. Before StorageIO, Schulz worked for several firms in their IT departments. Later Schulz joined the ranks of vendors with several firms as a systems engineer, sales and marketing along with technologist roles. Along with his extensive expertise in data center operation and data infrastructure technologies, Schulz has a background in electric power utilities, having worked in IT at a regional energy generating and transmission company.

His past experience also includes hands-on technology jobs as a systems developer, systems administrator, disaster recovery consultant, and capacity planner across different technology domains, such as servers, storage, I/O networking hardware, software and services.

In addition to his analyst consulting and research duties, with an insightful and thought-provoking style, Schulz is a prolific writer, blogger, and sought-after speaker, sharing his expertise on a global basis. Schulz lives in Stillwater, a suburb of Minneapolis on the Minnesota and Wisconsin border where he spends time fishing, listening to music, cooking and relaxing in the great outdoors when not working or traveling.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely information for CIO's and IT Directors, October 16, 2009

By 

Paul D. Collins "CTO, Total Tec Systems" (Edison, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Green and Virtual Data Center (Hardcover)

Greg Schulz has delivered with both a timely and informative book. With the economic meltdown occurring in 2008 every company has become focused on cost containment both for Cap Ex and Op Ex and the data center is in forefront. This is taking place at the same time as heighten awareness of our planets ecology and the impact of IT and data centers. As Schulz states in his summary chapter: "The objective is to lower cost, boost productivity, and improve service delivery to meet performance and availability objectives in a flexible or agile manner that also helps the environment."
In the first chapter Schulz coins the acronym PCFE for power, cooling, floor space and environmental to aggregate the IT infrastructure issues that are core to green initiatives. As I read through the book I substituted PC Fe for Politically Correct Iron because in my mind it reflects what Schulz calls the "green gap". This "green gap" is the separation of ecological and economic factors that are tied to the data center. On one hand we have the concerns about global warming, green-house gases, and carbon emissions while on the other we have data growth, power and cooling cost, stock holders looking for profits and the perceived cost to be green. The case is presented that this gap is more one of language and attitude as opposed to reality. If IT directors and facility managers implement best practices to design and run their data centers they will find in most cases they align with green objectives because it makes business sense.
The book is divided into four sections. In the first section there is a summary of the issues facing CIOs and IT directors around energy consumption, safety requirements for the disposal or equipment, and what green IT means. The second section looks at current trends in data center infrastructure and how they can be effectively monitored and managed. The third examines the technologies which are enabling virtualization and driving current trends like cloud computing. This is Mr. Schulz's area of core competency and has the most in depth coverage. In the final portion of the book there are practical applications of the concepts discussed in the other sections. I found the format to be a good organization that kept key areas together and the overall coverage of the topics to be of sufficient depth. I would recommend this book to anyone wants to understand the impact of "green IT" as well how the convergence of a number of technologies has created potential for virtual IT infrastructure.
About the reviewer
Paul Collins is CTO for Total Tec Systems a leading enterprise solution provider for data center infrastructure, and server and storage virtualization. He has a 20 year history of helping customers design, implement and manage IT infrastructure. Total Tec Systems is headquartered in Edison, NJ.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book! If you work in the computer industry, it is a must read!, February 4, 2009

By 

Thomas G. Becchetti - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Green and Virtual Data Center (Hardcover)

This book is packed full of information. From ecological and energy efficiencies, to virtualization strategies and what the future may hold for many of the key enabling technologies. Greg's writting style benifits both tehnoligists and management levels.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book to understand green and virtualized next generation data centers, May 8, 2009

By 

Zen Kishimoto "Zen" (Cupertino, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Green and Virtual Data Center (Hardcover)

Overall this is a well-structured and organized book with comprehensive coverage of necessary technologies and practices, including virtualization to understand next-generation data centers. Some technical contents require an IT background, but the book will certainly give you a good understanding of current data-center problems and solutions and what next-generation data centers will require to mitigate their environmental impact.

Because of the wide variety of subjects, several shorter versions of the book will be a good addition. In addition, I would like to see new topics discussed in the next version of the book.

The complete review is given in http://bit.ly/12K5Cw.