Thursday, May 25, 2006

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.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

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.

Friday, May 19, 2006

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.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

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.

Friday, May 12, 2006

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!