Data Center Photos

I'm a visual person. As such, I Love to see pictures of data centers around the world.

Every one is (obviously) different and it's nice to see what they actually look like instead of just reading about them. Of course, it can always be fun as well to see the lesser data centers that don't put very much effort into it, and those data centers that apparently have money to burn.

So -- thanks to Filipe Freitas for this photo gallery.

Savvis sells assets to Microsoft

Savvis sold assets in two adjacent data centers in Santa Clara, Calif., to Microsoft Corp. for $200 million. This includes forgiveness on $10 million of previously advanced revenue.

Check out the article here

Internet Governance

While perhaps a little bit 'deep' for my interests....I found an article at the IGP blog pretty interesting. It discusses a model for the typology of global economic governance.

Check it out here.

Google in Iowa

I simply couldn't resist a post to comment on the searchdatacenter.com follow-up article on Google selecting Iowa for a Data Center. Bridget's article created a response to some things about Iowa that people coming here to work should know.

"2) Don’t laugh at the names of our little towns (Greeley, Strawberry
Point, Cresco, etc.) or we will have to kick your butt."

Yes, we have some interesting town names (don't most states?). There are 947 cities (and towns) in Iowa!

"3) Don’t order a bottle or a can of soda here. Here it’s called “pop”. Accept it. Doing otherwise can lead to an butt-kicking."

Yes -- very true: I have called it 'pop' all of my life. Check out a link here -- to a map of what people call it all over the U.S. (thanks for the link Ben)

7)Don’t complain that Iowa is flat and that all you can see is corn and hogs. If you whine about it, we’ll kick your butt all the way back to Milwaukee."

Iowa has 52 persons per square mile vs. the national 79.6. Honestly though, I get so tired of this stereotype.....Iowa is 'not' ALL corn fields!! Flat? yes. Think -- wind generation :)

Let's not forget the famous people born in Iowa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa#Miscellaneous_topics). I used to live close to 2007 Masters Champion Zach Johnson.

Anyway -- it was a humorous response to the Google article -- thanks Matt. Check out the post here.

50% Reduction of Energy to Cool a Data Center

"A former defense scientist has figured out how to use satellite technology to cool data centers and he has reported unprecedented results."

Details are yet to come, but Microway CTO Stephen Fried claims his system reduces the amount of energy required to cool data centers up to 50%.

Interesting article....

Check it out here

21June2007 Links

• Google's Iowa Data Center -- well.... too many to mention; and they are pretty much all the same story anyway.
• I couldn't agree more with Eric, over at the Next Generation Data Center blog. I've attempted to preach that the midwest is the ideal place for DC site selection for some time. So much so that I'm working on a white paper on the topic......however with my current schedule it might be a few years before being complete. :)
• I have watched a few really good videos recently. Check them out
• Data Center Capacity Planning (hey TechTarget - how about something 'other' than RealMedia?!?) : BTW-I saw Richard at DataCenterWorld - very nice guy and very knowledgeable on DC technologies
  
• "Lowering Datacenter Costs Through Value Engineering" and "The Common Sense Guide to Planning & Building a Green Datacenter"- Digital Realty Trust
  

• Here is an interesting SearchServerVirtualization.com article on a patent for eGenera for an all-in-one N+1 tiered disaster recovery solution that combines grid technology and virtualization to provide a hardware-neutral Disaster Recovery product that takes your entire data center and encapsulates it.
• 3Tera continues to intrigue me - check out their new demo grid ( 1TB RAM, 400 CPUs, 40TB storage)

Google in Iowa - news roundup

I'll say it again -- I'm ecstatic that Google is coming to Iowa!! The buzz is all around at work and otherwise and everyone is incredibly excited that Google selected an Iowa site to build.

The press releases and news articles are starting to blur, so here is a round-up of the announcement:

Primary Des Moines Register article

Others

• Cedar Rapids Gazette
• Waterloo Courier
• Sioux City Journal
• Business Week
• Data Center Knowledge
• WOWT in Omaha
• Search Engine Land
• Information Week

Companion Data Services

After reading in the Aperture white paper how health care companies were 9% of the surveyed organizations, I ran across an article on Companion Data Services LLC. They have gone live with their Enterprise data center to host applications used to process Medicare claims

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is consolidating its data center operations at more than 20 facilities into four state-of-the-art Enterprise Data Centers. In 2006, CMS awarded a 10-year contract to three companies to operate the new data centers: CDS, EDS and IBM. The contract qualifies those companies to compete for task orders with a total value of $1.9 billion.

Check out the article here.

Holistic Data Center View

There are several good articles I've run across recently on the big picture for data centers. They cover software, automation tools, trends and why humans are the weakest link in data center risks. :) I really like the paper from Aperture that gives a state of the industry report on capacity demand and problems that the data center faces.

Each article is very much worth the read:

• Aperture: Data Center Professionals Turn to High-Density Computing as Major Boom Continues
• Processor.com: Harness A Holistic Data Center View
• Processor.com: Taking A Data Center Snapshot

It's Official!!

On Tuesday Google plans to announce that the Council Bluffs rumors are true: They are building a data center! They will receive $48 million over 20 years in property tax rebates as long as Google provides at least 100 of the 200 jobs promised. Construction, and more importantly, security crews are already on site.

What was surprising, yet extremely cool to me is that they expect one of the buildings to be up by the end of the year! I am already planning a trip down there to take some pictures if at all possible.

I am very excited about this and can't wait to follow the progress through to completion. Maybe I can talk someone in to giving me a tour once they are operational! :)

Check out the Omaha World Herald article here,, Des Moines Register article here, and post from DataCenterKnowledge.com here.

Nuclear Distance

There is a nice article in the New York times explaining how Pennsylvania is selling itself as a DR site for New York finance companies. They want to be close enough for synchronous data storage, but more than 50 miles to be out of a blast zone.

Mr. Abdel from Level 3 is quoted as saying

“There is a need for large data center space measured in tens of thousands of square feet, and cheap real estate helps,” he said.

Mr. Rendell admitted that developing Wall Street West “is a little bit of a chicken and egg.”

It's Wall Street West (Rich Miller article here) vs. Conneticut and others North of New York - all trying to say that they are the ideal place for all New York companies to have disaster recovery in.

Check out the article here.

06.05.07 Links

It's been a while since I have posted (again) -- this time I was on jury duty for a week! It was kind of nice to get away from my field and experience what lawyers and judges go through on a typical day. BTW: he was guilty ......... very, very guilty :)

Here are some links of interest I've come across in past days:

• IP in building automation systems is becoming a pretty hot topic. Check out these articles for some good discussion and news:

• The Changing Face of Infrastructure Monitoring
• GSA paves way for IT-based buildings

• Tivo for your data center (I like the analogy) - yet another excellent post from Chuck Hollis at EMC.
  

• Infrastructure databases - good article from SearchDataCenter.com
  

• Not everyone is jumping on the 'green data center' bandwagon.
  

• After reading this release -- I was curious : does Digital Realty Trust have any real competition (REIT's) in the Data Center industry?
• .
  
• IIJ Technology Chooses Opsware for End-to-End Data Center Automation

• "National Digital Medical Archive, Inc. (NDMA) announced the completion of an $11 million upgrade to its enterprise medical content communications infrastructure". I had to laugh when reading a bullet point they have -- it seemed straight out of a BS engine on the web I like...

"Enable enterprise aggregation and integration of medical information across heterogeneous and geographically dispersed environments"

• Verari Systems Secures over $20 Million
  

• El Paso targets the data center market. Jeeesh...I wonder where they got this idea? Hardly anyone in Texas targets data centers to come build there. :)