AISO and IBM Deliver a Green Inaugural Ball Site

By Pedro Hernandez
January 20, 2009

Email Print Digg This Add to del.icio.us

There's something different about the festivities surrounding this Presidential inauguration.

In keeping with the green and cleantech themes of Barack Obama's campaign, AISO.net was entrusted to provide hosting for the Green Inaugural Ball website for event producer Event Emissary.

The ball took place on January 17th in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, which was supplied with all manner of green products, meals and services -- including carbon offsets -- and was headlined by recording artist Wyclef Jean.

Providing a website for the event is no small undertaking, according to AISO's CTO Phil Nail. Not only must they power and provide connectivity for an IBM blade server chassis that can serve up a site for up to "millions of users," but they must do so in a facility that has the distinction of being completely powered by the sun. Other clients include the Discovery Channel and "largest indie Imax production company.

AISO, says Nail, is providing "website hosting on the dedicated server" for the event in a data center that pulls no power from the grid. It's a source of pride for Nail and his team and a big part of the reason why every watt is carefully accounted for.

A Little AISO in Every Data Center

Despite the demanding requirements of such an "extreme green" example, the lessons from such deployments can benefit data centers of all stripes, especially in these tough economic times, according to Alex Yost, vice president of BladeCenter platform for IBM.

His BladeCenter team worked with AISO "on a number of neat projects and spent a lot of time working with them," which in turn helped inform IBM's approach to developing systems and technologies for energy conscious customers.

AISO required a "super energy efficient platform," hence the AMD-powered blades that provide ample performance in a tight power and heat envelope. The BladeCenter server platform is especially suited for IT operations, both big and small, that are striving for energy efficient server computing, says Yost, if for no other reason than "doing more in that same physical footprint."

And IT buyers can soon calculate their own computing capacity upgrades and potential energy savings with set of online tools and consultancy services under the Designed for Efficiency banner.

The tools are aimed at IT managers that are struggling to grow capacity and keep energy costs in check, but for whom an AISO-style data center isn't realistically in the cards. "The average CIO says, 'I'm never going to do that. What's in it for me?'," says Yost.

IBM hopes that Designed for Efficiency will help put those questions, and the notion that green computing is cost prohibitive, to rest.

IBM's server hardware also plays a role. In addition to low-power processors, a BladeCenter chassis can be outfitted with an advanced management module that "allows clients to know exactly how much power they're using." While monitoring may be a handy feature, the real draw is power management. Among the module's several capabilities, "the client can cap the amount of power consumed," reports Yost.

Squeezing every last bit out of renewable sources won't end with Green Inauguration Ball website, however. AISO is continually working to optimize its data center. These efforts include the use of thin clients in lieu of desktops, turbines to draw power from heat exhaust, and new air units to cool the server room that that "have only two moving parts: fans and a solenoid," says Phil Nail.

More importantly, they draw only "600 watts," less than some desktop systems and servers.

Such electricity-sipping components may seem unfathomable for operators of power-hungry data centers, but such forward looking investments are part of the reason, says Nail, that AISO remains the "only green data center, powered by ourselves and 100 percent solar."