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.