5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me

I have been tagged by Rich Miller at Data Center Knowlege to respond to the "5 things you probably didn't know about me" thread. While it is an honor to be tagged by Rich I am really in awe that the tag list (via Isabel's blog entry) goes back to Jeff Pulver. I have read Jeff's blog for some time and am a huge fan of his work.

Here are 5 things you probably don't know about me:

1. I am a HUGE fan of the TV show 24. My wife and I only discovered it two seasons ago and have been hooked ever since. This last week Best Buy put the normally $57 box sets on sale for $20 and we jumped all over that. Only 16 days until the new season premiere!!

2. I am married with 3 kids. I absolutely adore my kids and will usually do everything I can to show them off. To show grand parents and relatives pictures that we take I have a web site that is devoted to just that. It was originally intended to show case other interests, but we basically just use it to show off pictures of the kids. Check it out at www.rath-family.com

3. I am a Google Earth fanatic. Ever since it came out I have spent countless hours just surfing the globe. Geography was my worst subject in school....if I would have had this though, I think I would have done MUCH better.

4. I am a packrat. As I have been a computer geek since 7th grade I have a few antique computers. I was an Apple fan, so the basement holds an Apple IIe, IIc, IIgs (Woz limited edition), Mac, Mac+ and several Mac Performa models. I also have some PC relics, but nothing noteworthy. I also have a beautiful SGI Indy. For some reason I still have my 300 baud modem that I used in the the Apple IIgs (anyone remember the BBS?). For any other old Apple game fans, I highly recommend http://www.virtualapple.org/


5. I've mentioned this in a blog post before, but in this case it is worth mentioning again. I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan!! For the sake of mentioning it..... they are the 2006 WORLD CHAMPIONS! It was quite a year and I was very happy to be able to go to a game at the new Busch stadium. My son's hero, Scott Rolen hit a home run and they won the game.

I don't have a lot of fellow bloggers, but I'll tag Ben Stineman and Leo Laporte (I do not know Leo, but am a BIG fan of the TWiT podcasts.

Internap Stock

I've always wanted to dabble a little in buying stocks, but have just never had 'that' much money that I was not bothered with throwing it away. The best advice for investing in stocks is to only put in what you can afford to loose. :) I would always want to invest in the tech companies that I knew a little about. I really wanted to buy SGI stock when it was 38 cents ( I didn't), and then they declared bankruptcy.

Anyway, I have another tech company that I sure think would be a good investment and it is one that I am familiar with and use! It was nice to see this report at Envoy Global that backed up my thoughts on Internap.

Christmas Surfing

I've found several good things while surfing today that I thought I would share:

1. Motley Fool has an interesting article from a financial perspective on Equinix and their similarities to the old Exodus.

2. Chuck Hollis has an interesting blog article on Netapp. I've always liked the Netapp products, but have recently had an un-easy feeling about them for reasons unknown. I think his blog post might have brought those unknowns to light. I thought it was a very good post and worth the read. Please note that Chuck is an EMC employee, but for the most part keeps a pretty good perspective on the post.

3. While on the topic of storage -- I've run across a company (new to me) that I like. I haven't researched them a lot, but plan on doing so. They have a pretty unique approach to storage and storage solutions. The company is Compellent.

4. Elk River Minnesota started the "energy pitch" back in 1997. It's an attractive place for companies needing cheap or alternative power to consider relocating to (i.e.: Data Centers :)

5. I don't think this is anything 'brand new', but I was reading a good article at ZD Net blogs on HP's Dynamic Smart Cooling. It is a good read with a link out to a HP video.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Google's Magic

I'm a sucker for any post on Google, their data center automation or the petabytes of information they manage. While this post isn't necessarily anything new, I found it to be a very interesting read.
Check it out here.

M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S !

Grid Technologies

Grid technologies have been a side interest of mine for some time. I am not actively involved in any projects, but really enjoy reading about what people are doing with it and the potential it has. I have a product offering in my head wrapped around the DataSynapse products, but just can't get it on to paper. DataSynapse makes very cool software and seems to have a very balanced suite of applications.

While surfing around today I ran across this article at WHIR. It is worth a read as it explains how hosting companies are starting to utilize grid technology. It also has several good links to technologies and companies.

White House Data Center

As a fan of the TV show 24 it is fun to imagine what the White House situation room must be like. According to Cnet the overhauled information hub is due to open up December 27th. Check out the article and photo gallery here.

Another Google Mega Data Center?

With the words "Google" and "secret facility" in the title, I couldn't pass up this post on Digg.com.

The WebProNews article is here. It looks as though Google may be planning a data center in Goose Creek South Carolina (map here).

$980M , 470k sq.ft Data Center!

Wow! The DC deals keep pouring in for Texas. While declining to give any details, Microsoft confirmed they are looking at San Antonio for a new data center. This would be next to the $68M Lowe's data center. Here is the link to the MySA.com article.

DC Powered United Airlines Data Center

Here is a link to yet another good article over at Tech Target. I like it because data centers that use DC power intriuge me and there is a link to a nice power calculator. Very much worth a read!

Gartner DC Conference

Just a quick link over to a Matt Stansberry article on his notes from the Garnter Data Center conference. He goes over the details of the trends that emerged at the conference.

Netapp - Topio Acquisition

I don't normally link to stories on infrastructure, but I am a particular fan of Netapp. This article at Eweek discusses the recent acquisition of Topio and what it means for them.

India Data Center Market Worth $100M

Although it seems like more of an ad for Symantec, here is a brief article claiming that the India Data Center market is worth $100M and could reach $200M by 2009.

Hosting Provider Aplus Acquired

I thought it was interesting that hosting provider Aplus recently announced that they were being acquired by Catalyst Investors. The line in the release that caught my eye was:
"Catalyst was advised by Daniels & Associates, of Denver and New York, on the acquisition and debt financing of the transaction"

I think it is both a good and bad thing. It's good because they are a strong enough company to come out of this, restructured and financed to take another shot at competing with Godaddy.com and 1 and 1. I think it is bad because I kind of wonder what direction the investment group will take them. I've used their billing software and registrar services extensively over the years.

Just have to keep an eye on them over the next few months to see how/if things change.

1000 IBM Bladecenter Servers

I haven't had a lot of experience with using blades yet, but their power and cooling requirements have sure kept the news headlines full. This story outlines a deal where OSGI selects 365 Main to deploy more than 1000 IBM Blade Center servers in San Francisco. It should be interesting to see how those work out and what power and environmental solutions were used to support this infrastructure.

Heat in the Data Center

After reading Data Center Knowledge's article, Heat or Hype I continued my normal surfing. I just so happened to stumble upon an equally interesting article. It's a story on HP, their cooling experiences and knowledge on the subject. I sat in on a session at Data Center World last September given by a senior VP at HP. He was the one responsible for consolidating all of the HP data centers in to half a dozen or so. As the article and the presenter explained, they intend to use themselves as a test case for how various technologies work out in the enterprise data center.

This article talks about a HP product offering due out summer of 2007 that that the company claims will offer 20- to 45-percent energy cost savings. Beyond this they discuss CFD and some general thoughts on cooling. I found it to be a very interesting article.

Virtualization on Steroids

There....now I finally have a post with the word virtualization in the title!

I don't post much on the topic because there is so much coverage on it. It is very cool technology and will hopefully not get over-hyped.

Another topic that I am extremely interested in is Grid technology. If you are unfamiliar with it, check out the Grid Cafe. The purpose behind this post is a cool article I read recently at Byte and Switch. It discusses an EverGrid virtualization product due out next year. "By positioning its software between the application and the operating system, instead of between operating system and hardware, EverGrid claims to avoid the performance constraints of a hypervisor, which can slow down processors as it handles different virtualization tasks."

The combination of grid (massively scalable architecture) and virtualization technologies has me very intrigued. Check out the article here.

High-Stress Data Center

If you think your data center experiences are stressful and have security issues, check out this facility! :)

World's Highest Density Data Center

for now......

I am amazed at this record, but the way things are going and being built, I imagine it won't stay a record for long. The Data Center Journal reports that CH2M designed the world's highest density data center at 500 Watts/sf!!

Since I am a Google maps fanatic I checked it out (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=5680+Greenwood+Plaza+Blvd,+greenwood+village,co&ie=UTF8&z=10&ll=39.626846,-104.924927&spn=0.41886,1.384277&om=1)

I've always liked the Denver area and have some friends and relatives out there. Maybe I'll check it out the next time I am out there.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon

Over the Thanksgiving break I caught up a little on reading my magazines. I read this article in Business Week about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I have tracked Amazon for quite a while and am thoroughly intrigued by Jeff Bezos. A lot of times it is the idea that sounds absolutely ludicrous that ends up being revolutionary. Jeff demonstrated this the first time around with the online bookstore / marketplace and I (personally) think he is in line to do it again.

The article explains all of the new services that Amazon is coming out with and the associated risk with doing it. It seems kind of silly to mention what the stock market analysts think of his ideas because I really don't believe they have the technological foresight to understand his genius.

Now.... I am not totally naive on this and believe everything he does is pure gold, but I do think he is going to be a market leader in a lot more than online retail in the years to come. I love the S3 service and the ECC is my current research interest.

Their Alexa search engine certainly has a following, but has not achieved the popularity I imagine they hoped for. As I was surfing tonight I ran across this article at Netcraft explaining some performance problems that Alexa ran in to.

Anyway.... for anyone curious, here are some links to the EaaS (everything as a service) services at Amazon.

S3
EC2
Mechanical Turk
Unbox

Risky? Yes, but if I had bet on risky ideas, I would bet with Jeff Bezos!

Data Center Management Article

MidwestBusiness.com has a nice article on an IDC white paper that covers energy and cost concerns for data centers. While it is really just a re-hash of dozens of other articles on cooling techniques and how things are rapidly changing in the data center environment, I enjoyed the article anyway. I work for a colo so I am always glad to hear it mentioned in such a positive light.

CIO Today Article on Data Centers

Just a quick link to a good summary article : "An Inside Look at Data Centers for Business"

Quincy, Washington

Wow! A third data center to build in Quincy. They must be giving away the land here!

$32 Million Data Center

Corporate Office Properties Trust is developing a 102,842 square foot building, which will house a tier II+ data center and call center. For a $32 million data center I find it surprising that it is only a tier II facility!

Check out the Glob St. com article here.

The Perfect DC story link!

I was happy to run across an article that combined news about a data center and my favorite sports team.

I have to take a moment and gloat that 'my' St. Louis Cardinals are 2006 WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am still in shock after having a small nervous-breakdown watching the team win. :)

Anyway.....to return to my data center location selection tangent, I found it interesting that the Cards selected a DC in Tampa, FL of all places to host! First of all I kind of figured that mlb.com had a pretty tight grip on where sites were hosted since they seem to control all content on mlb teams. Second observation is that a lot of other professional sports teams seem to host with E Solutions in Tampa.

So I'll make the offer -- if the Cards want to host their server(s) with the company I work for, just let me know (I'll throw in free reboots and remote hands services) :)

Amazon's ECC

I'm not sure what to think of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud just yet. I have read quite a bit on their S3 product and am impressed with the concept and practical uses it can have. Maybe I just haven't read enough on ECC yet, but I'm just not sold.

This article on thier Web Services blog kind of caught my attention. The idea is catering to the millions that have an idea and don't want to invest in infrastructure in order to tell if the product/service works. No investment of their own data center, colo or even hosting provider! To me it still sounds like the ASP model, but I suppose I can see the differences and recognize the maturation of the model.

I'll keep an eye on this one and S3 though as I believe they each have some definite potential.

Perot Systems Opens New Data Center

I like to link to articles on new data centers that aren't on either coasts or in Texas/Florida. This will be the first one I have heard of (lately) in Kentucky! You probably figure it is some small company you have never heard of, but it is IT giant Perot Systems. The Dallas Business Journal reports on the new 24,000 square foot center to be built in Florence, Kentucky.

DC for Sale!

I had to post a quick link that my boss sent me. There is a data center for sale on Ebay! Just as many are being built, this company is selling one off!

Check it out here.

Next-gen Cooling

Just a quick link out to what I found to be an interesting article on a new cooling technology from IBM's Zurich research lab. Check it out here.

365 Main in SanFrancisco

Just a quick link to a nice article on the 365 Main San Francisco data center. It lists some impressive stats.

I'm glad I don't have to worry about all of the technology they have put in to make the facility stable for earthquakes. I'm also (once again) puzzled on the 90,000 square feet of raised floor space .... still trying to figure out the attraction to raised floor.

Check out the Searchdatacenter.com article here.

DC in a Box, Part 2

I haven't written in a while -- between Halloween, doing my best to ignore political ads and a lot of things going on at work there just hasn't been time. Rich Miller has certainly had a lot of good articles to keep me up to speed on the industry. :)

I ran across this article though that brought up the Sun data center in a box solution again. I am going to stick with my original convictions, however I found the points raised interesting and at least something to think about. I am trying to picture RV-like camps throughout america where you drop your container, select how much bandwidth and power you want and just let it run.

I think Sun has certainly made some good products in the past and I'm not ready to write this one off yet. Sun is definately on the right track with power efficiencies in their new servers.

Anyway....check out the blog post here.

Putting My Gartner Hat On

It's back! It's back! Everyone seems to be exclaiming the return of a boom for the data center industry. Seattlepi.com has a nice article on the subject as well as a brief one at Nicholas Carr's blog.

My inbox is flooded with stories of companies expanding, building new data centers and record growth. On top of this there have been many stories on how there is a shortage of generators due to so many new facilities being built. Waiting periods of up to a year!!

I am by no means an expert, but here is my take on all of this. We have a record number of "small" companies building data centers that are either the right size for them or all that they can afford to build. Meanwhile the guys that really know how to do this (HP, Google) are not necessarily building 'more' data centers, but consolidating into a smaller number of HUGE data centers. Combine this with virtualization really catching on and automation helping out the "lights-out data center" and I really think we'll see all of these small data centers moving into mammoth mega-data centers in the next 5-10 years. With real estate and power being such big factors, I just think that economies of scale will come in to play and make it more economical for the mega centers to flourish over the small ones. Servers are becoming more and more hands off and it really won't matter where they are as long as you have good bandwidth and remote administration tools.

With journalists reporting on another 'bubble' in the industry happening and having lived through the last bubble I tend to get cautious with so much development going on. A sound business plan and the ability to adapt to fast-paced changes is crucial to survival.

DC Consolidation

Here is another story of Data Center consolidation. The state of New York is consolidating four data centers into one at the SUNY institute of technology. 75,000 square feet, 27 state agencies and 3 years to build.

They call it state of the art to accomodate for future needs. The strange thing to me, considering that many square feet is that it is raised floor!

Guess there is no second guessing the location selection here. :)

Data Center Outsourcing

Just a quick link to a story I liked on staffing a data center. I struggle with non-business hours staffing and find it a hard one to fill and manage. The article mentions Lee Technologies. I spoke with Lee Technologies at Data Center World and found them to be a pretty interesting company. I like the fact that they quickly place personnel to manage your infrastructure and if they don't work out you simply tell them and they pull the individual immediately. The company does many other cool things as well and have an impressive client list.

The links:

Lee Technologies

SearchDataCenter.com article

Cardinls Win Tonight!!

I apologize for the off-topic post, but just have to say that the St. Louis Cardinals will beat the pants off the Mets tonight and then take the Tigers in 7 next!

Of course I may have to discover the "delete post" function in blogger.com if not. :)

Go CARDINALS!!!!!!!!

DC in a Box

The press was all over Sun's "data center in a box" announcement. Here is a quick run down:
Data Center Knowledge
Seattle Pi
Information Week
Sun
News.com

I won't link NY Times because I absolutely hate their free user login stuff.

I really don't get this play by Sun. I suppose I can see a few applications like the oil rig in the middle of the ocean and others where a quick drop of massive computing power might help. Overall though I just don't see people biting on this. If you want quick computing power and don't want to build your own facility -- OUTSOURCE to a colo! They have the facility covered and some quick financing with your vendor of choice(s) .... not 'just' Sun and you are off and running.

I also don't understand the "park the container in the parking garage" mentality. Who has fiber run to their parking spot?! Another thing I found interesting is that there wasn't mention of using it as a disaster recovery possibility? Sell it without the Sun servers and let companies quickly rent/lease one when it is needed for DR.

I like Sun Servers....I like the whole energy efficiency thing...I'm just not sold on this idea.

TWiT and The Planet

I just had to post a link to this story for two reasons: I LOVE the TWiT.tv network and it's a story of how The Planet (a semi-competitor to where I work) messed up. :)
Leo - if you want to host at a real data center just let me know.

Location, Location, Location

Ok -- no, I'm not writing about Data Center site selection again. Cooling and equipment placement within a data center room has been of recent interest to me. This article at Data Center Journal was a good one on real estate within the room. Check it out!

Outsourcing

After attending Data Center World I came away feeling that practically everyone worked for a corporate data center that was run by the company. There was a Target presentation about a finely tuned center with awesome policies and procedures. There was a presentation about how the state of Oregon consolidated all of their data centers into one. I do however, also see a fair number of companies that stick to the "do what we do best and outsource the rest" mentality.

Two examples I ran across recently of keeping things in house, were Workstream opening a new data center and liquid web hosting opening a second data center.

Looking through some of my old bookmarks I found this article that gives a lot of good statistics about outsourcing. I am still a strong believer in outsourcing what your company does not excel in. Many take it to the extreme of outsourcing everything that is not the core business of the company. As with most things I suppose it is just a mix of working with what you have, beliefs of management of the company and timing. I have worked with another company recently that did outsource a number of things and for whatever reasons they hired a new CIO and had him start bringing everything back in house.

I think in the end it is just a numbers game and proving to the board of directors what you believe works best and ROI.

Forget the East & West Coast

Continuing my curiosity for why companies select various locations for their data center, here is a good article on why Chicago is an equal if not better place than the primary spots on either coast.

LA has One Wilshire, Florida has Peak10 and the NorthEast coast is littered with hot spots. I think all of these facilites have amazing bandwidth, carriers and security; so you would hope that the companies that offer better customer service and accomodations would win out. I (for one) am just glad to see the Midwest talked up so nicely. A look at any map of the U.S. that outlines natural disasters and I wonder why anyone would locate on either of the coasts.

Disclaimer: if not already very apparent, I am from and still live in the Midwest. :)

M&A Mania

Like any other industry it seems there has been a lot of mergers and acquisitions going on. Today Quality Technology Services announced that they have acquired the hosting operations of Globix. Data Center Knowledge has an excellent write up on other Quality Technology Services activities here.

Also in the news, just yesterday, Digital Realty acquired the AboveNet data centers. Again, DC Knowledge has a write up on the details here.

Once again.... "if" anyone is actually reading this blog I'm interested in what you think the next acquisition or merger will be in the colo space. I'm thinking that some of the intermediate players out there will start acquiring smaller operations in order to compete on the same level as an Equinix type of company. What do you think?

Press on Power Issues Gaining

This article at Data Center Knowledge covers the Information Week article on the power and cooling crisis. Ever since I returned from Data Center World this issue is really starting to get a lot of press! I'll point you to the article for the rest of the links and details.

To me, this just further presses the opportunity and advantage to moving the corporate data center OUT of the corporation. Keeping up with power and cooling issues like we will have to in the foreseeable future should be a job for Data Center operators and not corporations.

Afcom wrap up

I've started this post a few times and decided that I would probably just end up boring everyone with the all of the details of the Data Center World conference. This is of course assuming that anyone reads this blog. :)

I enjoyed the conference very much and feel I came out having learned many new things. I was also able to talk with several interesting vendors of Data Center products. It was rather interesting that the vast majority of attendees were employees of corporate data centers. I think it has spawned another curiosity for me to follow links to....why corporations still manage and operate their own data centers. I've always been a firm believer in doing what your company does well and outsource the rest. Why don't these companies (some actually struggling to justify a generator) just put their infrastructure and servers in a colo facility?

While browsing through my Google alerts, I ran across this article at Pharmacy Processing. The part I liked reads " One of the areas where outsourcing can improve the cost structure is in Information Technology (IT). Does a pharmaceutical company really need to operate its own data center, maintain a sizable IT staff, and develop its own applications? In most cases, the answer is no. By outsourcing the function to a service provider, a company can take advantage of that provider’s economies of scale and ability to spread the costs of its technology infrastructure among several clients. As long as the pharmaceutical company’s most important “product” – its proprietary development data – is adequately protected, it probably doesn’t matter who owns the hardware".

This statement seems pretty elementary to me, but I am hoping a trend in companies that may finally realize it is easier and more cost-effective to outsource their computer room equipment to a colo facility.

Now of course my disclaimer is that I work for a colo facility. It still makes sense. :)

Anyway, Data Center World was a blast, I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Dr. Khankari, and next time I'll have to take the family along to see all of the sites in Orlando.

Afcom Data Center World

Data Center World was wonderful!! I had a really good time in Orlando at the conference and feel that I learned a lot. There were some good educational sessions and I have a ton of literature from the exhibiting vendors.
I'll do a complete write-up some time this week, but I had to do a brief post to say hello to Dr. Kishor Khankari, Lead Consulting Engineer at Fluent Inc. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Dr. Kishor on the plane ride home. Talking about cooling and the data center that I work at proved to be the most valuable experience of the trip. Fluent is the world leader in computation fluid dynamics software and services.

Check back soon for my thoughts and lessons learned on Data Center World Orlando!

Data Center World

I am going to Data Center World!!!!! I am pretty pumped -- leaving this Sunday I will be attending Fall Data Center World in Kissimmee Florida. If anyone reading this is going and well and would like to meet up just let me know! Email me at johnsr4@gmail.com
I'll hopefully be able to do some posts from the show, but if not, I will immediately following.

Afcom's Data Center World

Boyd Study - Delaware

Here is another article that pulls from the Boyd study done on Data Center location. I think you will see more and more data centers be built in these type of city versus the New York city or Houston, Texas type cities.

I could list a lot of the statistics quoted, but the article is a good read..... so click here! :)

Sun, Free Hardware and Application Fabrics

Here is a link to what I found to be a very interesting article by Robert Cringley. It discusses a memo by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz on how it is to compete with the large competitors in the systems and storage space. The article continues with some insight into an application matrix, and how Appistry scales applications across hundreds of processors.

I found it to be a very interesting story and now that his column is going to be a blog, I will most definitely subscribe.

Austin, TX Power Outages

Here is yet another story that isn't necessarily data center related, but it was a power outage and in Texas, so I couldn't pass it up. The Austin American Statesman reports on the numerous outages that two prominent businesses have endured over the past months.

It just underscores the problems that can be seen in the larger cities. The story explains that a Data Center (Onramp access) endured the outages as well, but that their backup systems took over as designed. They were still upset that they have had to rely on their generators to supply power.

Top Tech Hub?

Here is a Mercury News article that isn't about Data Centers, but is of interest in regards to my research for Data Center location selection.

The article discusses all of the advantages that the silicon valley has over other tech hubs, but the statistics that stood out to me were this: "The valley ranked dead last in a comparison of 12 U.S. tech hubs on a matrix that gave equal weight to six ``critical issues'': unemployment rate, housing costs, traffic congestion costs, 8th-grade math achievement, electricity costs and state tax rates "

For a business deciding where to locate their infrastructure or build a data center these things are pretty important.

It was a very interesting article that is worth a read. The statistics were from an annual study by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a public policy advocacy organization.

1&1 Internet to Open New Data Center in Kansas City

Web hosting provider 1&1 Internet plans to open a new data center in Kansas City. The 55,000-square-foot center chosen will employ 15 people and cater for 40,000 servers. It is scheduled to open early 2007.

Netriplex picks Asheville for new data center

Here is another article show casing my curiosity on Data Center site location. Netriplex has Data Centers in major cities all over the U.S. and even Canada and Paris. Citing a need for locating to a city that wasn't on the top 25 terrorist targets, Netriplex "announced plans to move its international network operation center from Boston into a 10,000-square-foot space at Biltmore Park this fall. "

Other reasons that Asheville, NC was selected was a high quality of life and the massive fiber-0ptic network of the Education and Research Consortium. While some of their top managers are relocating, they expect to hire technical staff locally.

So once again, the big city is bypassed for site selection, and a connectivity and quality people are cited as top reasons for selection. Not being a terrorist target in a big city is clearly a good reason for not setting up shop there. However, I still wonder if they researched the natural disasters, possible brown outs and cost of power in Asheville.

Verizon Facility Uses Fuel Cells for Power

Rich Miller has (yet another) interesting article on how Verizon has been using fuel cell technology. Very interesting read.... check it out here

Unsinkable Data Center Crashes in Seattle

I have to thank the boss for this link. Check out an article at E-Commerce Times about a Data Center in Seattle that crashed on July 30th due to a "string of malfunctions in the facility's electrical power system."

I continue to think back to what makes people decide on location when picking a data center for their infrastructure. Brown-outs in Texas, power issues in Seattle, hurricanes in the south.... and yet these mega Data Centers still go up in these places.

Anwyay....it is a very good article with a time-line of events that surrounded the outage.

Data Center Locations Ranked

I have recently come across several articles that discuss a Boyd Company Study that compares the cost of operating a data center in 35 U.S. cities. Being from the Midwest I was elated (and not at all surprised) to see 2 Iowa cities in the top 10!! I really struggle with why companies choose the location they do for building new data centers. I know the driving factors, but they seem to ignore the Midwest (other than Chicago) when considering sites.

This SearchDataCenter.com (and searchcio) article does the best job of explaining the details of the study done and listing the top 10 sites. Check it out!

Searchdatacenter.techtarge.com artilce on using DC power

SearchDataCenter.com has an interesting article on a study done at The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It's a study that compares using AC power vs DC power in a data center. Check it out here

Network World Article: IT Architecture

While this article is not directly about Data Centers I found it very interesting. It is basically a case study for Burlington Coat Factory and a good article on their new grid-based, virtualized architecture. I like architecting solutions like this and the technology they are using is pretty cool stuff. I'll let the article speak for itself....check it out at http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2004/ndc4/0621bcf.html?page=1

Google Data Center!!

My co-workers know me as a Google fanatic. So you can only imagine my excitement when I ran across the digg.com post on the no-longer-secret Googleplex being built. Just 130 miles south of the Microsoft and Yahoo planned Quincy data centers, Google is building a massive facility (as only Google can). There are too many details to write about here; check it out at:

International Herald Tribune
or
New York Times (with a picture!)

I think I will setup a new Google alert to track progress on this data center! :)

Microsoft/Yahoo data centers

Just a quick follow-up on the Microsoft/Yahoo data centers planned for Quincy. This Business Week article also does a good summary on the data center industry as a whole.

$600 million Data Center ; Site Selection Thoughts

I had read about massive data center projects going on in Quincy, Washington before by Microsoft and Yahoo. These projects seemed pretty big and selection was based on cheap land, a good work force and in still close proximity to Microsoft headquarters. A few posts back I also wrote about a $400 million data center going up in Birmigham, Alabama. Well, now the stakes are raised again...and who better than Microsoft. It seems they are considering San Antonio for a $600 million data center build. The article at mysa.com states "People close to San Antonio's talks with Microsoft said its site-selection staff likes the area's inexpensive electrical power, work force and lack of exposure to natural disasters."

I also ran across a new blog I had not seen before this weekend called Planning for Business IT Continuity. While I found it to be an interesting blog with some good articles, I started to wonder why it seemed so biased. Upon further investigation I discovered it was written and hosted by Sterling Network Services, LLC. I certainly don't blame them for using the blog as a marketing tool, and as I said, they were good articles.

The thing that really puzzles me between this blog and the last article on Microsoft Data Center site selection, is what really drives location selection? I know the obvious ones like cheap power and superior connectivity options, but with data centers placed all over the country what are the other factors? Does the Data Center really need to be in close proximity to the business placing infrastructure there? Is it merely price? Is it access to a good work force and major transportation hubs?

I'll be digging into this and post my thoughts back to this blog. Just in case anyone is actually reading this, feel free to post a comment!

Virtual Tape Article

I have followed backup strategies for a while, and as an administrator I have had my share of frustrations with tapes. While disk-to-disk backup technologies are promising I really like the VTL (Virtual Tape Library) after reading a Network World article. This article in their New Data Center series follows a story of CitiStreet using a Sepaton 35TB VTL. It is a very interesting article that shows the advantages CitiStreet found in switching to this equipment. For larger organizations with established scripts and procedures, VTL emulates tapes, so you are not completely switching backup architectures. I've enjoyed the Network World series, and highly recommend reading this article.

First entirely liquid-cooled Internet data center

I have read several articles on companies using liquid-cooling technologies, but this one was interesting in that it is the first data center that is using it throughout the entire facility. The lack of further details about the facility make me a little curious, but it will be one to keep an eye on from here out. Check out the article by Rich Miller from Data Center Knowledge, here.

Cisco Data Center Podcast

I listen to a number of podcasts (favorite one is TWiT), but I really enjoyed one recently on Data Center Facilities. It is a Cisco Data Center podcast from December of last year and was two Cisco employees and representatives from APC and Panduit. Equally enjoyable was the joint white paper that they put together titled Facility Considerations for the Data Center. If interested in either the podcast, the white paper, or a nice portal of Cisco Data Center information check it out here.

HP Data Center Consolidation

HP is consolidating 85 data centers worldwide into 6. They report it will save $1 billion in IT costs. The data centers will be spread between three cities, with two facilities each in Atlanta, Houston and Austin. The consolidation will serve two purposes; to consolidate a lot of aging data centers and to show case HP hardware and software solutions. Here are two articles on the recent news release:

Austin Business Journal
EWeek Channel Insider

Here is the official news release from HP

New 220,000 sq.ft. Wachovia Data Center

Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge reports on a $400 million Data Center completed by Wachovia recently. Some of the items of interest I found from the Birmingham Business Journal article were:

• 18 to 36 inch raised floors used
• the facility is equipped with chemical, biological and radiological filter units
• construction was completed in less than a year
• earlier in the year 100 members of the Site Uptime Network toured the facility

Check out the full article here for details on this amazing new facility.

Welcome!

This is my second attempt at writing a blog for me. It will be a place for me to post links to industry news and events about Data Centers. It is partially inspired by Datacenterknowledge.com and partially through my interest in the growing market of Data Centers. If you want to contact me or send an interesting Data Center story, please email johnsr4@google.com
Enjoy!