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.