Archive for the ‘Data Center Reliability’ Category
It’s been a notable year for Web outages. From Netflix going down at extremely inopportune times, to Amazon Web Services’ multi-day breakdown in the spring, Internet services are still seemingly as unreliable as ever. SmartBear Software just published its list of the top Web Outages of 2011, and there are some memorable ones on there. It should be noted, though, that only outages that weren’t caused by a third party made the list — hacks like the one that took out Sony’s PlayStation Network weren’t included.
More of the Mashable post
You know those cabling contests that try to get systems administrators to show off their racks? If this article from the MIT Technology Review is right, those may become a distant memory as researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Intel and IBM have shown how they can send data between servers without those pesky cables using 60 GHz wireless and bouncing those radio signals off the ceiling.
That means rapid data transfers up of to 500 Gigabits per second (current Ethernet cables in data centers are generally 1, 10 or maybe 40 gigabits per second) and less mess with physical cables. Of course, every switch at the top of a rack would have to get a radio card slotted into it, and there’s also the matter of putting reflective panels on the ceiling for the wireless signals to bounce off of. The top of the servers would also need some kind of signal-absorbing surface so the signals don’t continually bounce around the data center. From the article:
To maximize the bandwidth and reduce interference between signals, it needs to be focused into narrow beams that require a direct line of sight between endpoints. “Any obstacle larger than 2.5 millimeters can block the signal,” she says.
More of the GigaOM article from Stacey Higginbotham
The tunnels linking data halls in the Green Mountain Data Center in Norway, which will use cool water from a nearby fjord to support its cooling system.
A small but growing number of data centers are slashing their cooling costs by using the environment as their chiller, tapping nearby rivers, underground lakes, wells and even the Baltic Sea. A new project in Norway plans to draw cold water from an adjacent fjord and use it to cool data halls.
The Green Mountain Data Center is located on the shores of the island of Rennesoy, inside concrete buildings within caves carved out of the mountain. Racks of servers will now fill underground halls that once stored ammunition for NATO.
More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller
When I visited the data center for 1&1 Internet, a huge hosting and cloud services provider located in Lenexa, Kan., I was struck by the size of the emergency generating system. The Caterpillar diesels that power the generators are the size of locomotive engines.
The four generator sets power the 40,000 servers in an N+1 configuration, and they provide the power to operate the cooling and other building services necessary to keep the data center alive when the power goes out. N+1 refers to a widely used practice in IT to allow for at least one extra system or a set of systems that will serve as a backup in case of failure.
It’s all on a grand scale. The rows of server racks seem to go on forever, networking equipment rooms line each side of the building. The main hallway of the building seems to stretch into infinity. In short, 1&1′s data center is one big place.
More of the CIO Insight article
Should your outsourced data center (colocation) provider also be your IT services provider?
Your purchasing department would probably say yes. Your legal department might too. One throat to choke. They’re looking at the problem from a vendor management perspective, and fewer vendors is better. Or is it?
Ask yourself these questions:
What if you love the data center facility but the quality of the IT services offered are marginal?
What if you already have vendors for specific IT services?
What if you prefer to choose best of breed vendors for specific projects and technical support?
What if your staff does most of the IT work?
Would it be more sensible to separate the choice of data center provider from the choice of IT services provider?
Most companies that choose wholesale data centers over self-built data centers make the decision based on the uptime they get per dollar spent. That’s because these pure data centers, also known as wholesale colocation, concentrate on one thing: mission critical facilities. 99.995% uptime requires incredible attention to detail with hardened data center buildings, redundant power, cooling, telecom access, and data center regulatory compliance. But not all colocation providers are alike; data center reliability varies greatly based on the companies power, cooling, telecom systems, and compliance. If data center uptime is important, then the sensible approach would be to pick the best-designed facility for your needs.
Does it make sense to reject the best-fit data center facilities provider because they don’t do router work, or AS/400 support, or eCommerce platform support? The answer could be yes. It depends on your organization’s applications and your own staff’s talent in supporting these business-specific applications and their platforms. When considering full-service providers, make sure that you understand the quality of the data center behind the provider’s services. You have the option to pick your own wholesale colocation facility and require your vendors to support the hardware in your colocation space.
If you’re purchasing rack space from a full-service provider, you may be paying too much for your colocation space. Especially if your provider maintains a large staff of IT Support Engineers. Bench time is expensive, and unless these Engineers are fully utilized, your rack space pays for part of the Engineers’ wages. Make sure you consider competitive pricing from other colocation facilities. Data center pricing models are excellent indicators of what vendors value and how they handle their overhead.
Your outsource data center provider does not have to be your IT services provider. You have options. You can choose the best among data center vendors with a little homework.
Indianapolis, IN – Midwest colocation provider Lifeline Data Centers has finalized a 25 year lease with the Indianapolis Department of Public Safety (DPS) for 76,000 square feet of secure office space. Lifeline’s Eastgate campus, a 41 acre former shopping mall on the East side of Indianapolis, will house the Regional Emergency Operations Center and Regional Department of Homeland Security offices. Alex Carroll, Co-owner of Lifeline, said “We are pleased to be working with both city and federal authorities to provide secure office, data center, and telecom access on a long-term basis.”
Lifeline Data Centers owns and operates a secure outsourced data center complex on the grounds of a former shopping mall, the city’s first, built in 1958. Over 450,000 square feet are converted into secure office and related facilities. Lifeline co-owner Rich Banta said “The Emergency Operations Center lease marks the beginning of the second phase in Lifeline’s long-term strategy; retooling the remainder of the mall into a data center campus that includes large scale office space.”
The Indianapolis DPS selected Lifeline’s Eastgate complex for:
•Close proximity to three interstate highways, with ample parking
•Secure office space with high-uptime data center facilities and multiple telecom providers on a single campus
•Lifeline’s reputation and experience in building and maintaining mission critical data centers
Lifeline Data Centers purchased the 41 acre Eastgate retail shopping mall in 2008 and opened the first data center building in 2009. Currently, Lifeline operates 30,000 square feet of production data center floor space at the Eastgate campus. An additional 30,000 feet is available in the existing data center with ample space for new data center building construction.
The Department of Public Safety (DPS) protects the 850,000 citizens of Indianapolis. The DPS Regional Operations Center is part of an $18 million City of Indianapolis project to consolidate control and response into a single command center. This approach has been successful in Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, and other cities. With the US Department of Homeland Security regional office also housed in the same space, the operations center will extend reach to protect most of central Indiana.
Lifeline Data Centers is a “high tech landlord” that provides wholesale colocation (outsourced data center buildings) to companies that require highly reliable computer rooms. Lifeline’s clients include Fortune 1000 companies, health care networks, software companies, universities, city, and state governments.
Computerworld — About a third to half of all data centers will be physically expanding or leasing new space in the next two years, according to recent surveys.
These surveys are providing a picture of strains facing the facilities that cradle the digital economy, as well as the pressure data center and IT managers are under to keep up with demand.
The Uptime Institute, for the first time, recently surveyed 525 data center operators and owners, 71% of whom are in North America. Of respondents, 36% said they will run out of power, cooling and space through 2012.
To meet the need, 40% of the respondents plan to build a new a new data center, and 29% said they would lease additional space in a colocation center. Another 20% said they would move IT workloads to cloud providers.
More of the CIO.com article from Patrick Thibodeau
Your business is moving. Are you taking your data center with you? Are you going to spend the money on generators, UPS systems, and air conditioning in order to build a new computer room at your new location?
It’s an expensive proposition. You might want to investigate your options, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS) , and outsource data center facilities, also known as colocation.
IaaS give you the ability to get out of the computer hardware business. You can move your server images to a shared, virtualized environment and run your servers from the cloud. This is very attractive to many businesses, because of low capital costs and low internal employee requirements.
Colocation, also known as outsource data center, provides hardened data center buildings, reliable power, cooling and access to telecommunications. Many companies move their primary data centers to colocation facilities. These companies reap many benefits from colocation:
99.995% uptime, if the facility meets Tier IV data center uptime standards
Fully redundant data center power and cooling for minimal downtime
Data center security including multiple factor authentication, background checks and physical access control
Access to multiple telecommunications providers
A few outsource data centers offer additional benefits:
Private cages for workspace and growth
Pay-as-you-grow pricing
Carrier neutral data centers with many telecom providers and competitive pricing
No monthly cross connect fees, so telecom pricing is reduced even further
Private office space for business continuity or primary offices
Moving your data center to an affordable colocation facility can be the last data center move you need to make. For many businesses, it makes financial sense to de-couple the data center location from the location of the business headquarters.
Want to learn more? Call Midwest data center facilities provider Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.
In a survey conducted by the Association for Computer Operations Management (AFCOM), a data center managers group, 37% of the respondents said that they reduced their data center staffs over the past three years and 29% said that they kept their staffing levels the same. The balance, nearly 35%, increased staff.
But over that same period, nearly 74% of the data centers increased their physical server count, according to the AFCOM poll of 360 IT managers and other senior IT executives.
The upshot is that 66% the data centers covered in the AFCOM survey are managing more systems with the same number of people or fewer.
Data centers
* IT workloads up as tech added sans staff
* Is EMC ripe for the picking?
* Despite green diet, data centers still gobble power
* Energy Star for data centers coming in June
* IBM will inch up heat in new data center
* Why data center temperatures have moderated
* Data center density hits the wall
* Data center plays supporting role in Avatar
* Helsinki Taps Data Center to Heat Houses
* Reducing data center energy consumption
More in Data Centers
A separate study by Metrics Based Assessments LLC explains what’s happening.
More of the ComputerWorld article from Patrick Thibodeau
Selecting the right hardware for a server refresh is critical to running smooth IT operations. Having the right hardware directly affects the health and success of the overall business. New hardware is never selected arbitrarily; it’s a long process that maps the future technological needs of a business against new server vendor products. You must also weigh how the refresh will affect budgets, service and maintenance, facilities investments and even disposal or reallocation of the old equipment. Careful consideration of these details up front will help ensure the best server is selected.
This first segment focuses on server hardware issues. There is a wealth of information centered on new server form factors, particularly blade servers, which can concentrate a lot of computing into a relatively small area. Blade servers are an important form factor, but they also place serious demands on data center facilities. Server specifications and computing capabilities also profoundly affect which new server is chosen. With Intel and AMD battling to produce more powerful CPUs, having a perspective on their current offerings (and future directions) can boost your server buying confidence.
Sticking with a set server refresh cycle isn’t always possible. Tough economic times often put a crimp in the capex budget or slow down new business projects. Funding issues might require stalling a server refresh and wringing more life from existing hardware. Disposing of displaced hardware can save, and businesses can often reallocate older servers to secondary tasks, such as backup, disaster recovery, testing and development or other creative uses that allow used equipment to render more value once its production lifecycle is finished.
More of the SearchDataCenter article
