The Power of Eleven

I'm not big into numerology, but I figured it had been a while since I blogged here and what better day to post than on 11.11.11.  The eleven theme started when my St. Louis Cardinals won their 11th World Series Championship, in 11 post season games, in 2011!


To continue the theme, I'll list 11 data center items of interest (and some misc. things):


1. One of the (many) reasons I don't find the time to post here as much any more is because of some white  paper work I have been doing.  Through Data Center Knowledge I completed two papers this past summer/fall and I think they both turned out great.  The first was on data center strategy and is a high level view into the decision processes involved in developing a comprehensive strategy for the data center. The second paper was one I was pretty anxious to dig into, as it has been of particular interest for some time.  The DCK Guide to Modular Data Centers explores the definition of modular vs. container and what the benefits are and what the market looks like for modular.


2. One blog I very much enjoy reading is Irving Wladawsky.  He recently wrote a very interesting post on the emergence of Cognitive Computing. In it he talks about an IBM colloquium that defined the four grand challenges of IT: nano systems, exascale, big data, and cognitive computing.  Exascale and big data are regular topics on my reading list, but cognitive computing is particularly fascinating when thinking about how the potential this field has. Irving references an excellent YouTube video of Dr John E Kelly, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research called Pioneering the Science of Information.  The post also talks a fair amount about IBM's Watson project and David Ferrucci, IBM Fellow and the principal investigator for Watson and Deep QA. The opportunity for developing cognitive systems like Watson has the potential to impact those three other grand challenges of IT and greatly benefit all.


3. An interesting post on Srinath's blog about a list of known scalable architecture templates. Software architecture and scaling, like data centers is best approached on a case by case basis to design what is best for your particular needs. As Srinath puts it - it's more art than science.


4. I don't know much about Apache's Casandra - but the Netflix Tech Blog had a nice post about achieving a million writes per second - benchmarking Casandra scalability on Amazon Web Service.


5. SC11 is next week in Seattle. My favorite session title that I pretend to understand the meaning of:  "Biology: Parallel Graph Algorithms with Applications to Metagenomics and Metaprotemics.


6. The 7x24 Fall conference is also next week.


7. Cisco just posted a YouTube video of their container solution.


8. Chatsworth blog post covering the first ever KyotoCooling Conference.


9. World's fastest Ethernet Switch?  It looks like Extreme Networks will demonstrate this at the SC11 conference next week. 


10. Cloud security compromised through Google Code search?  Of course - and here is why.


11. Did I mention that the Cardinals won the World Series!!!!




I'll even try to post this at 11:11:11pm on 11.11.2011.  :)