TPC-Energy spec will spur higher data center efficiency

Sticker price, engine power, and luxury features have long been selling points for vehicles. Over the years, however, MPG (miles per gallon) has increasingly played a role in swaying a car buyer to choose one model instead of another. For some drivers, the impetus for purchasing a fuel-efficient car has been to reduce pain at the pump. For others, it’s also a matter of better environmental stewardship; less fuel consumption means a smaller carbon footprint.

Similarly, data center operators who formerly based hardware-purchasing decisions on sticker price, processing power, and features such as storage capacity are increasingly taking an interest in machines’ overall energy efficiency — that is, how much electricity a system consumes to perform a specific number of tasks. Again, the driving forces here are primarily economic. Energy efficiency means lower electricity bills, and the cost of powering a server is by no means trivial. Energy efficiency can also mean fewer machines and more floor space in the data center. Moreover, environmental concerns play a role.

[ Other groups have introduced energy-efficiency benchmarks geared at the data center, including the EPA, SNIA, and SPEC. | InfoWorld blogger Paul Venezia demands the banishment of power-hungry spinning disks from servers. ]

In an effort to provide companies with a means of measuring the energy efficiency of data center equipment, the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) this week introduced a specification called the TPC-Energy spec. TPC-Energy is intended to complement the group’s existing specs, designed to measure the raw performance of a data center system (including server, storage equipment, and database) simulating an OLTP workload, as well as the cost/performance stats of data center setup — specifically, performance in the context of the setup’s purchase cost.

Notably, TPC-Energy should not be confused with TPC-E. The latter is a stand-alone TPC benchmark that simulates the online-transaction processing workload of a brokerage firm and specifically refers to the number of Trade-Result transactions a server can sustain over a period of time. 

Performance at a price Measuring performance in the context of price is important. Consider a simple scenario: Two data center operators are running the exact same workloads — same OS, same databases, same storage equipment, same everything except for the servers. Operator A has a high-end 64-socket machine loaded with the latest, fastest processor and loads of memory. Operator B has a single-socket machine with a midrange processor and modest memory. Presumably, the first setup will yield better performance — but that data alone will be of limited interest to a data center operator on a budget and can’t make purchases based solely on raw performance.

That’s where TPC’s price/performance measurement becomes important. It essentially tells you how much performance you get at a given workload per dollar spent buying the system. The intent is to prevent hardware vendors from gaming the system by simply reporting astronomical performance figures. Sure, a fully loaded server from Vendor X might yield three times better performance on a particular workload compared to a bare-bones model from Vendor Y — but Vendor Y’s server comes in at a quarter of the price. Factoring in those costs gives a data center operator more information to work with.

Notably, the TPC benchmarks also take into account the type of server OS and database being used, which is highly relevant. Some workloads perform better on certain platforms than on others.

MPG for the datacenter That brings us to the newly introduced TPC-Energy spec. TPC-Energy adds yet another important piece of information to the equation: which system delivers the highest level of performance, measuring in transactions per second, using the least amount of energy.

TPC-Energy and other TPC specs aren’t without their drawbacks. To their credit, they’re highly detailed, which means you can get price and performance information about specific systems running a particular OS and a particular database, which is great if vendors report results for setups that match what you need for your own data center. That’s correct: TPC test results are reported by vendors, as setting up these types of tests in-house, comparing the endless combinations of hardware and software, is prohibitive for all but the largest organizations.

Thus, vendors crunch the numbers themselves, adhering to the TPC benchmark standards. A vendor can then decide whether to submit their results to the TPC, which are audited and posted for public viewing at tpc.org. You’re at the mercy of vendors to report numbers applicable to your data center’s situation. If you see that IBM reports data on a system that matches your needs but, say, HP doesn’t, does it mean that HP hasn’t conducted the test — or that HP has conducted it but its numbers fell short of IBM’s?

There’s a possible exception regarding the lack of tailored energy/performance/price data for your company’s needs: if, for example, your organization puts out an RFP for millions of dollars’ worth of servers. In that scenario, the company could require bidding vendors to include price/performance and energy/performance measurements for the buyer’s given data center setup and workload.

MPG for the data center The big question is whether vendors will report their TPC-Energy results. Mike Nikolaiev, chairman of the TPC-Energy Specification Committee, says data should appear on the TPC site in the next 30 to 60 days. Notably, the spec received unanimous approval from the 22 members of the TPC who voted, which is remarkable in and of itself. How often do competing vendors agree on anything if they fear they’ll end up looking bad in the end? (TPC has 24 full members, including big-name hardware and software vendors such as Microsoft, AMD, Intel, HP, IBM, Dell, Oracle, and more).

The TPC-Energy spec isn’t perfect. In the perfect world, each server would have a little sticker reporting in clear, simple numbers their energy efficiency for different workloads, similar to the city and highway MPG stats you see on the windows in car lots. In reality, there are just too many variables at play, and there isn’t enough room for that many stickers. It’s worth nothing, though, that the stickers on vehicles don’t tell you MPG for when the air conditioner is running or if you’re carrying a half-ton of lumber in the back.

The good news is the TPC-Energy spec represents important progress in driving both hardware and software vendors to improve the energy efficiency of their offerings, notes Nik Simpson, senior analyst at Burton Group. If HP servers consistently beat Dell servers in publicized energy-efficiency tests, for example, Dell knows it has to work to catch up. The same goes for AMD and Intel if the AMD machines consistently have better energy/performance. Anything that spurs vendors to make their products more energy efficient ultimately saves you, the customer, money in the long run — and spares us all the carbon emissions associated with energy waste.

This story, “TPC-Energy spec will spur higher data center efficiency,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in green IT at InfoWorld.com.