Archive for the ‘Data Center’ Category
Are power and cooling limiting your data center?
I just read a great whitepaper by Eaton, the power products manufacturer, called “Is power your weakest link in data center flexibility?” The whitepaper talks about how higher densities and larger power footprints are causing companies to outgrow their data center power. Power is a limiting factor in data center growth.
Cooling is close behind, because for every 1 kW of power required to run IT equipment, about 1 kW of cooling is required to remove the heat.
Eaton’s modular power is a sensible approach to building an incremental power infrastructure in-house.
Colocation is a sensible alternative to eliminate the power and cooling problems. But all wholesale colocation providers are not created equal. The provider will need to allow room for growth, and provide usage based power billing. This approach providers for more granular, incremental growth in the costs of operating data center floor space, power and cooling.
Homeland Security News Wire – Indianapolis emergency response center opens days before Super Bowl
2012
With only a few days left until Super Bowl XLVI, which will be held in Indianapolis this year, security officials there unveiled a new emergency coordination center on Wednesday
With only a few days left until Super Bowl XLVI, which will be held in Indianapolis this year, security officials there unveiled a new emergency coordination center on Wednesday.
“We are very proud of this new facility and hope that it serves as a national model of partnership between local, state and federal authorities,” said Mayor Ballard at the Regional Operations Center’s (ROC) grand opening. “The creation and opening of the ROC is an integral part of our ongoing, proactive plan to ensure the safety of the public.”
More of the Homeland Security News Wire post
Lifeline Data Centers featured in Indy Star article on the Indianapolis Emergency Operations Center
2012
The Indy Star published this article yesterday about the new Indianapolis Emergency Operations Center on the Lifeline Data Centers campus.
Keeping an eye on crime just got a little easier in Indianapolis.
At least that’s the contention of city officials, who said a new 76,000-square-foot Regional Operations Center that opened Wednesday gives them faster and more accurate information about where crimes are being committed.
“The creation and opening of the (center) is an integral part of our ongoing, proactive plan to ensure the safety of the public,” Mayor Greg Ballard said in a prepared statement.
The center, at the old Eastgate Consumer Mall on Shadeland Avenue near Washington Street, dwarfs the old 1,100-square-foot Marion County Emergency Operations Center at 47 N. State Ave.
More of the Indy Star article from John Tuohy
Takeaway: Thoran Rodrigues does a thorough comparison of 11 IaaS cloud providers based on the same group of criteria. See how the major players fared in his scoring comparison.
Cloud computing is a term that encompasses a lot of different things. From servers and infrastructure to office software, a lot of IT is now sold on a cloud-based, service model. This means that any comparison of cloud providers can not only be very complex, but can also end up measuring companies that don’t even compete with each other. To avoid this situation, different types of cloud services should be looked at separately. Today, we are going to focus on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).
IaaS providers are companies that provide the most basic IT needs – servers, networking, and storage – on a usage-based payment model. They typically make heavy investments in data centers and other infrastructure, and then rent it out, allowing consumers to avoid investments of their own. Even these providers, however, are not all pursuing the same business model. While the largest and most well-known are focused on the general public, with fully on-line automated set-ups, there are also some niche players that cater only to the enterprise market, as well as smaller companies that resell infrastructure from larger ones, usually with some added services.
Comparing companies
For the sake of this comparison, we are going to focus on IaaS providers whose services can be purchased directly on-line, without requiring contact with salespeople of any kind. They were selected based both on my knowledge of companies in this space and based on the availability of information about them on the web. I ended up with 11 companies, ranging from the large and well known to smaller, newer ones.
More of the TechRepublic article from Thoran Rodrigues
The illusion of data center uptime
Most of the mid-size companies that visit our Midwest colocation facility already have a data center. It’s the one in their home office. These companies have built a data center inside the four walls to take advantage of real estate that is already leased, along with cheap, fast network access for all of the employees in the building.
Redundant generators protect against data center downtime
Some companies value data center uptime more than others. These companies are in markets where their computer downtime can cost them sales, profits and clients. These companies often have in-house data centers with more sophisticated equipment to keep the computer systems up and running in the event of a power outage. These companies invest tens of thousands of capital dollars in battery backup, power conditioning and generators to protect from downtime. A few even spend thousands more in capital dollars to makes the air conditioning more reliable.
But do all these data center capital costs improve uptime? The answer is yes, but in many cases, not enough. Many of us mistakenly look at the last five years of actual downtime to judge whether our data center is highly reliable. This is a mistake. Your data center may not be reliable, even though you’ve been lucky for the last five years.
What does it take to keep your downtime to less that an hour per year? It takes data center with two of everything that is critical for operation: power, cooling, and communications systems. This two of everything model is also called N+N data center redundancy. Without it, companies should expect hours or days of downtime per year.
Uptime Institute uses a structured system to classify data centers. Tier IV data centers are built with N+N redundancy (two of everything) to maximize reliability. These Tier IV data centers are designed to deliver 99.995% uptime, which is 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. But building a Tier IV data center is expensive. A second power feed into a building can cost a quarter of a million dollars. CFOs routinely reject the idea a second generator because of the exorbitant capital costs. Without N+N data center redundancy, the uptime numbers just don’t add up.
What’s the answer to high uptime and manageable costs? Many companies use affordable wholesale colocation facilities. Some of these outsource data centers offer 99.995% uptime in exchange for monthly operating expenses rather than exorbitant capital costs. Many IT staffers use colocation to reduce their workload, get out of the power and cooling business, and focusing their data center management on their critical computer systems.
Colocation is not for every company. Applications, users, geography and other factors play into whether colocation or cloud computing might improve the reliability of your data center. The bottom line is the cost of downtime to your company. If you need 99.995% uptime, don’t fall prey to the illusion of data center uptime. Consider wholesale colocation to solve the uptime problem and manage data center costs.
Google invested nearly a billion dollars in its Internet infrastructure in the last quarter of 2011, recording capital expenditures (CapEx) of $951 million. Google’s CapEx spending was about $271 million more than in the third quarter of 2011, when it invested $680 million in its infrastructure.
More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller
In a nutshell: The ever-increasing popularity of mobile devices has changed the way many enterprise users deploy technology, with an ever-increasing body of employees now bringing their own devices into work with them. The enterprise, meanwhile, focuses on ensuring its data is available securely to these devices. So, how prevalent is this trend really?
I’ll skip the potential cost savings; relative to the extent of your enterprise, a move to mobile devices in replacement of PCs will indeed save a little cash, but this will quickly be eaten up by the IT departments need to make data available and secure.
A global Forrester Consulting study, announced in September last year, confirmed BYOD is part of today’s discussions, noting that of 546 organizations looked at, two-thirds had seen end-user interest in BYOD policies (PDF).
Also interesting: 20-22% of businesses already support employee-owned laptops, tablets and smartphones. An additional 16-21% of enterprises intend enabling such support across the next two years. In this they’re driven by an interest in helping employees become more autonomous in providing their own tech support. Some are chasing that holy grail of cost-saving, but I’m not convinced they’ve fully thought through the process.
Take desktop virtualization; 21% of the survey group are prioritizing desktop and application virtualization above any moves to upgrade their Windows installs. The impact here should be to make an enterprise completely platform- and device-neutral. This should be a good thing. Another 29% of firms are standardizing around Windows 7 and desktop virtualization.
More of the CIO.com article from Jonny Evans
Why do hardened data center facilities matter? Hardened data centers reduce the risk of a prolonged outage due to natural and man-made disasters.
On the west coast, data centers are hardened by a number of different technologies to withstand the frequent shaking of earthquakes. In the Midwest, hardened data center facilities protect against natural disasters such as tornadoes. F5 tornado resistant data centers protect your mission critical facilities and equipment from natural disasters.
Although the risk of a natural disaster is low, the risk of a prolonged outage in a natural disaster is very high.
Is your enterprise data center protected by a hardened data center building?
Colocation or cloud computing? Which one is right for your critical computer systems?
In simple terms, colocation (also known as outsourced data center or wholesale colocation) is high-tech real estate. Companies use colocation to solve the problems of hardened data center buildings, power, cooling, telecommunications and security. Companies use colocation to solve these problems without losing any control of their IT infrastructure and systems. Colocation is about control of IT without the worry of building facilities.
Cloud computing comes in many forms. Companies use cloud computing to access applications and resources without owning hardware or maintaining an IT staff . Cloud computing is about applications and solutions without the worry of IT staff, IT infrastructure, and building facilities.
When comparing cloud computing providers, make sure you understand the incremental costs. Simpler pricing models are usually better. Understand the built-in backup systems and redundancies and how you can build in higher reliability if you need to.
When shopping amongst colocation providers, make sure you understand the incremental costs. Simpler data center pricing models are usually better. Keep costs low by choosing a provider with low power costs. Midwest colocation providers tend to have lower data center power costs than other areas of the United States. Affordable colocation is available in many regions of the country. Most companies today look for a minimum 99.995% uptime carrier neutral data centers with no cross connect fees.
Use colocation to maintain control of your applications and infrastructure without the worries of building facilities. Use cloud computing when you’re looking to solve application problems with a minimum of IT overhead.
In this era of cheap-and-reliable rent-a-data centers, does it make sense for a company to build a new data center on its own anymore?
Amazon’s data center guru James Hamilton is pretty clear that he sees no reason for most companies to keep constructing new data centers from scratch, but if they have a huge compute load and really have to, they should build way more capacity than they need and sell off the excess a la Amazon itself.
While Hamilton has a vested interest in people moving their compute loads to Amazon’s infrastructure, his build big or don’t build at all mantra resonates with several other IT experts. The consensus: It makes sense for most companies to trust their data center needs to the real experts in data centers — the companies that build and run data centers as a business. More companies will start moving more of their new compute loads — maybe not necessarily all the mission critical stuff — to the big cloud operators. That roster includes the aforementioned players as well as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and others that are building out more of their own data center capacity for use by customers.
More of the GigaOM post from Barb Darrow
