Data Center Links and Information Overload

When I started this blog many years ago one of the primary reasons for it was to simply post the links to sites or stories that I had been reading about in the data center industry. I am an information junkie -- I won't join the support group, because that would mean I want to stop being an information junkie.

A very interesting New York Times article published this past weekend describes what I probably would have been like, had all of this wonderful technology been around when I was in high school. It discusses the fact that kids are wired for distraction and that ...... well, enough on that, on to the next link.

Blogs

A primary source of information I scan on the net in order to keep

up with technology and the data center industry are blogs. I started using Bloglines a number of years ago but switched to Google Reader a few years back. As I sat endlessly clicking through blogs and articles today I wondered if there were statistics about how many feeds I subscribed to.... this is Google after all. Sure enough, there was -- somehow I think I can keep track and somewhat regularly read 139 different feeds. I think I sense a new years' resolution forming.

Links

I have read a number of interesting things in the past week or so, and in order to get back to the roots of why I started this blog.... sharing... here are a few of the highlights (this also allows me to close some of the 3-4 dozen browser tabs I have open!):

• James Hamilton documents a 46MW data center in Switzerland, achieving a 1.1 PUE. As James notes, the overall stats are impressive, but mechanical systems especially. Using 43F source water from 197 feet below the surface water is brought in through dual redundant intake pipes to the pumping station with 6 high-capacity pumps in a 2 * (N+1) configuration. The pumps move 668,000 gallons per hour at full cooling load.
• Volume 2, Issues 08 of the Site Selection Energy Report is out. The ACEEE scorecard ranks states on their energy efficiency policies and programs. The recently popular data center hub of North Carolina scored 24th.
• Jon Battelle's Searchblog documents the recent Web 2.0 Summit 2010. Of particular interest (to me) were the videos with John Doerr and Fred Wilson and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
• Dell cloud evangelist Barton George interviewed Rackspace CTO John Engates on the promise of OpenStack at the Web 2.0 summit.
• Google's Vijay Gill has a couple of very interesting publications on network innovations needed to support warehouse scale computing. This Light Reading article from October talks about how Google basically re-invented their own optics used in the data center to meet their needs.
• I opened this tab a while back -- as an interesting article: NASA looks to protect U.S. Power Grid with 'Solar Shield' project.
• I thought David Gross had an excellent post earlier this month on Seeking Alpha. It discusses the top 5 mistakes investors make with data center stocks.

MOST importantly, I am happy to point anyone interested in the European Colocation market to a white paper I recently finished - European Colocation Best Practices Guide.