Looking at data center power of the future

Network World - The "No Power Struggles Project" sounds like some utopian political system where different factions work for the common good. In fact, it's the name a Hewlett-Packard Co. researcher gives to his dream of a harmonious data center.

Researcher Parthasarathy Ranganathan foretells a future in which power management features will be built into the processor, memory, server, software and cooling systems. Coordination will be paramount. "What happens if you turn all these elements on at the same time?" the principal research scientist at HP Labs asks. "How do I make sure that the system doesn't explode?"

Power management systems will have to operate holistically, without one component conflicting with another, Ranganathan says.

Ranganathan is just one of many researchers at the tech industry's biggest labs looking beyond virtualization, multicore processors and other established technologies to see how future data centers will handle increasing demands for processing capability and energy efficiency while simplifying IT.

Another is Laura Anderson, information systems manager at IBM's Almaden Research Center. "I think we're on the cusp of another revolution," she says. "We're talking about doing something to simplify and integrate these things in a way so that mere mortals can manage them."

Cloud computing

This spring, IBM will take the concept further, offering BladeCenter servers with power and x86 processors, as well as service management software -- a "'Cloud in a Box,' so to speak," says Dennis Quan, a senior technical staff member at IBM's Silicon Valley Lab.

Cloud computing will mature in coming years as enterprises increasingly turn to IT to serve their markets, Quan says. Certainly Web 2.0 sites posting user-generated content will proliferate, driving the need for cloud computing. But demand will come from mainstream enterprises, too. "Financial services firms are saying, 'We've run out of space ... so what can we do?'" he says. "They need to have a compute infrastructure that's scalable."

Liquid cooling