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.