Japanese Nuclear Reactor’s inaccurate monitoring creates embarrassing statements

It is amazing how little time, effort and money is focused on monitoring systems, and to a large extent I have taken a break from focusing on monitoring solutions for data centers as I watch many companies try and sell monitoring to data center users.

One example of the problem of monitoring systems is the current Japan nuclear reactor disaster where engineers and politicians are making decisions and statements based on inaccurate readings. The Guardian joins hundreds of others who discuss the problem in Japan’s nuclear plans.

Japanese nuclear firm admits error on radiation reading

Tokyo Electric Power says initial reports of levels 10m times higher than normal in parts of No 2 reactor were inaccurate

• Justin McCurry in Tokyo
• The Guardian, Monday 28 March 2011

Opponents of nuclear power staged a protest in Tokyo on Sunday. Photograph: Itsuo Inouye/AP

Fresh doubt has been cast on the handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis after officials admitted wildly overstating levels of radiation, prompting an evacuation of the nuclear site damaged by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said initial reports of a level 10m times higher than normal in parts of the No 2 reactor were inaccurate, although it could not say by how much.

Tepco said at first that the worker who took the measurement, of a pool of water in the reactor's basement turbine building, had fled before taking a second reading. The discovery prompted another evacuation at the site, halting work to pump and store radioactive water that has built up in the turbine buildings of three of the six reactors.

Tepco later said the pool of water had been contaminated but the extremely high reading was a mistake. "The number is not credible," spokesman Takashi Kurita said. "We are very sorry."

However, later reports on Sunday showed contamination 100,000 times normal in water at reactor No 2, and 1,850 times normal in the nearby sea, the most alarming levels since the crisis began.

Unfortunately many times people don’t know how good their monitoring system are until there are disasters and the information from the monitoring system is used to make business critical decisions.

Are the 4 biggest management vendors the dinosaurs with the arrival of clouds? IBM, HP, CA, BMC

SearchDataCenter has an article on system management tools in the virtual age.

Systems management in the virtual age: Out with the old

By Alex Barrett, Executive Editor

15 Mar 2011 | SearchDataCenter.com

Consider how Facebook has changed the fabric of society by providing new ways for people to connect. With its large, relatively new data center, the social media company and other organizations like it provide fresh ideas for IT pros working on an old problem: systems management.

Many of these large companies use open source tools and tweak them as they see fit. Stuart Radnidge, an infrastructure architect at a large, multinational financial services firm, viewed a video demonstration of Facebook engineers and their back-end management. “You never see guys like them buying from the Big Four,” Radnidge said. “They use open source tools and modify them for their massive scale.”

Indeed, in era of the Internet and virtualization, IT managers seek inspiration on how to manage their environments from everywhere except the Big Four-- otherwise known as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, BMC Software and CA. And for the up-and-coming generation of systems administrators, traditional systems management tools are almost anathema.

The tools of choice are open source.

While most open source software is associated with Linux, these tools can monitor an impressive breadth of systems, said FSW’s Foran. In Hyperic’s case, “I think the only operating system they can’t see is BeOS,” he quipped, surely a corner case in any modern data center.

Further, having access to the source code and a community of developers translates into new features much faster than in a monolithic, closed-source environment, said the senior product manager at a large Canadian telecommunications firm, which last year replaced traditional Big Four monitoring tools with the commercial open source Zenoss.

The article does point to some who are making the change.

In their defense, traditional systems management players have awakened to the new world and responded by acquiring new forward-looking management players. In the past year, for example, CA purchased 3Tera, a cloud and grid management platform, and Software as a Service-based monitoring provider Nimsoft Technologies.

As ZDNET's  Dan Kunetsky has had conversations with CA's Jay Fry, so have I.

CA's Jay Fry touches on the Golden Rules of IT

By Dan Kusnetzky | February 4, 2011, 2:54am PST

Summary

When good enough is no longer good enough, and management is screaming about costs, cloud computing just could be the answer.

From time to time, I have the chance to speak with Jay Fry, of CA. We’ve had many similar experiences over the years and have come to present similar viewpoints. A blog post he published a while back, Making ‘good enough’ the new normal focused on a couple of the Golden Rules of IT

I wrote something on these rules a long time ago (see Reprise of the Golden Rules of IT if you’d like to torture yourself by reviewing the rules) and believe that Jay has a point. Golden Rule number 4 is “Good enough is good enough” and Golden Rule number 5 is “Don’t make major changes unless people are screaming!” Let’s look at the definition of those rules

4. Good enough is good enough. Although it would be nice to have the luxury of unlimited amounts of time, resources and funding and be able to develop every conceivable feature, most IT executives know that they are only going to be allowed the time, the resources and the funding to satisfy roughly 80% of requests for new capabilities.

5. Don’t make major changes unless people are screaming! If they’re not screaming, see Rule #4, good enough is good enough. If they are merely asking for changes, see Rule 2, don’t touch it, you’ll break it, and Rule 3, if you touched it and broke it, it will take longer to fix than you think. If they begin screaming, you’ll have to do something to respond, just touch things as lightly as possible.

Feb 2011, who visits GreenM3

It has been a month since I switched to Squarespace and a good time to check Google Analytics for some data.

The Top 10 Service Providers are ISPs as expected.

What gets more interesting is the companies who are listed as Service Providers.  Note: it can be difficult sometimes to separate a Telecom company visiting vs. an ISP so I am not including Telecoms in the following list of companies.  Here is a sample from a scan of who is reading GreenM3 from their work locations.

• Microsoft
• RIM
• Cisco
• HP
• Emerson
• Dell
• APC
• Intel
• Extreme Networks
• Apple
• Opera Software
• Amazon.com
• IBM
• Savvis
• AMD
• Hughes Network Systems
• JP Morgan Chase
• Seamicro
• Boeing
• Waggener Edstrom
• Best Buy
• Softbank
• Oracle
• Yahoo
• Data Center Dynamics
• EMC
• Facebook
• Morgan Stanley
• Accenture

HP announces New Zealand Data Center with Carbon Emissions Reporting

HP announced a new green data center in New Zealand.

HP Announces Multimillion-dollar Next-generation Data Center in Waikato, New Zealand

Data center to help organizations simplify IT and invest more in innovation

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, March 9, 2011

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HP today announced a multimillion-dollar investment to build and lease a next-generation data center to be located in the Waikato district.

Part of the data center is a carbon emissions reporting service.

the HP Carbon Emissions Management Service, an assessment service that helps organizations calculate energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the use of IT. This will assist organizations with compliance-based carbon footprint reporting.

The data center of course supports cloud computing.

The facility will provide the infrastructure organizations need for cloud computing services, application modernization and data center transformation, enabling clients to devote more resources to innovation and increase productivity.

“New Zealand has a vibrant economy which encourages technology innovation and environmental sustainability. HP’s energy-efficient data center in New Zealand, incorporating a high standard of design and capabilities, will support digital infrastructure growth and initiatives,” said Rasika Versleijen-Pradhan, senior IT services analyst, IDC New Zealand. “The facility will assist the New Zealand IT industry and provide a local platform for the provision of new high-tech infrastructure services to the region well into the future.”

HP launches Energy Services as an alternative to IBM Smarter Planet, partners with Hara and C3

HP launched its Energy and Sustainability Management Solution and I had an interview with Jay Allardyce, Director, Growth Initiatives, Energy and Sustainability Management, EB and Ken Hamilton, Director, Global Energy and Sustainability Services, HP Technology Consulting along with customer references from executives with Hara, and Avaya.

My first question was this is great you talk about energy what about water?  Jay and Ken both went into more detail on how their solution addresses the growing need for managing water as a resource in addition to energy.  I regularly use water awareness as a test to see if companies are really thinking about sustainability.  I saw an IBM presentation 4 years ago, where an executive discussed water as a resource we need to focus on.  Both HP and IBM pass my simple test, they think of water in addition to energy in their resource management solution.

Here is HP’s Energy and Sustainability Management Services page.

Here is IBM’s Smarter Planet page.

IBM’s marketing machine is tough to beat.  Here is a 8:36 video that has 39,764 views.

HP signed up two top companies to work with - Hara and C3.

Open approach to partnering

To enhance the overall solution and customer experience, HP also announced an ESM partner network in which HP, along with organizations that complement HP’s services, will evaluate a client’s environmental impact and develop best practices for improving resource utilization.

“Customers are seeking solutions that optimize both sustainability and energy management throughout their organizations,” said Amit Chatterjee, chief executive officer and founder, Hara. “Pairing our environmental and energy management solutions with HP’s industry reach and expert delivery provides clients with a superior, holistic approach to identify, prioritize and act on energy- and resource-efficiency strategies that drive cost savings, minimize risk and create value.”

There is no mention of C3, but GreenTech Media choose to make it part of their headline.

HP Teams With C3, Hara for Energy Consulting

Did HP invest in the companies as well? No comment, it says.

Hewlett-Packard wants to become a big player in energy management and energy efficiency, so it has reached out to two rising stars for help.

The company has launched a series of nine consulting services that will leverage the software from Hara and C3 to lower energy and resources consumption, retool organizations for efficiency and make energy reporting and accounting easier. HP's consulting services will focus on reducing energy in overall operations and will not, in most circumstances, get involved in redesigning finished products, according to Jay Allardyce, director of growth initiatives in the energy and sustainability management group. We asked if HP invested in either or both companies and Allardyce declined to comment.

ZDNet also covers the announcement and lists the 9 service offerings.  2 are data center focused.

• HP Critical Facility Sustainability Tradeoff Analysis, an analysis of the impact that certain data center design approaches might have
• HP Critical Facilities Energy Certification Service, a service for helping achieve certifications such as LEED or the EPA’s Energy Star for Data Centers

We’ve reached a new stage of green data centers where both HP and IBM are offering services where the data center is part of an overall sustainability strategy for a company.