From our sister site's blog, http://blog.teamsilverback.com/:

"Symantec's annual report produced some intriguing and perhaps unexpected results.

Perhaps most interesting to us in the data center migration business is that cloud computing is not high on the list of priorities for the 1,780 respondents to the report's survey questions (respondents from 573 businesses in 26 countries).  Concerns like security, backup and disaster recovery, and continuous data protection are currently much more highly prioritized in data centers.

 As important to nearly everyone asked as these items are, it sounds like disaster recovery plans need some work.  Although 80% of respondents said they have confidence in their plan, a third said they haven't updated it in a year, and another third admitted that their plan is undocumented or otherwise needs work.

 Also interesting is that mid-size data centers seem to be the most happening ones out there - they're most likely to implement new technologies.  Apparently this was Symantec's first time including small and mid-sized data centers in the survey, and doing so provided some very interesting data.

 Popular objectives for 2010 included reducing costs, improving responsiveness, and improving service levels.

Check out articles at  The San Francisco Chronicle or Web Pro News for more information.

-Elizabeth English"

photo by neospire under flickr creative commons license - see www.neospire.net  

An update from our sister site... http://www.teamsilverback.com/ :

The year is drawing to a close and things are changing in the data center world.  The green revolution is taking a firmer hold by the day and the advent of cloud computing is bound to have long-lasting repercussions.  As data centers draw more and more media attention for the amount of energy they require, innovation in providing them with that power is increasing in exciting ways... but what will be next?

It's clear that the cloud is becoming more and more important and widespread.  But what does its future hold?  The prevailing opinion seems to be that it has a lot of potential, but is underdeveloped.  We'll see what new developments 2010 brings on that front.

Also exciting is what new energy-efficient cooling solutions IT professionals will develop in the coming months.  We've introduced the Green Gorilla to keep an eye out for this kind of development, as he will continue to do this coming year.  From using outside air to cool servers to hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment, data center energy efficiency is becoming more and more attainable.  We look forward to the new technology the new decade will bring.

-Elizabeth English

From our sister site's blog, http://blog.teamsilverback.com/:

Last week the experimental data center in a cave got a lot of attention, and with good reason.  Utilization of creative space like that is a really great step in the right direction, and all the natural cooling available in a limestone cave is a very sci-fi way to deal with the ever-present problem of data center cooling.  But that's not the only exciting and innovative data center story to come up lately.

 Another experimental data center has been set up in Italy to work on improving energy efficiency, using new technologies and gauging how they compare to "legacy systems."  Learn more from Data Center Dynamics' article.  One of the participants in that study is Politecnico di Milano, a university in Milan.  Unsurprisingly, universities are responsible for a lot of data center research.

It's been coming up a lot lately even though the news came out months ago: Notre Dame's idea of heating a greenhouse with the waste heat from an on-campus data center, now containerized near the greenhouse.  The historic greenhouse was in serious danger of being shut down because of all the energy required to heat it, and what with the constant struggle to deal with all the heat produced in a data center, this seems like a pretty ingenious symbiosis which Notre Dame has achieved.  The article from SearchDataCenter also talks about data centers which have been used to heat offices and swimming pools.  Also recently in the news was the data center under construction underneath a cathedral in Finland, the waste heat of which is going to be used to heat homes in the area.

At Syracuse University, they're using what IBM has described as the greenest data center constructed so far.  Although it isn't using any particularly new technologies, its trick is combining the most efficient systems around for maximum results.  Check out the details at Server Technology.

One last thing is UC Berkeley (my school!) has a one-meeting class on Green IT Project Management: Data Center Energy Efficiency through its Extension program.  It kind of goes to show how prevalent concerns about green IT are getting.

-Elizabeth English

photo I by rdesai under flickr creative commons license

From our sister site's blog:

Considering how much space is needed to devote to a data center and how limited necessary resources are, it may not be surprising that people are getting so creative with their data center design - but it is completely awesome.  The latest neat data center spot is an experimental infrastructure in a limestone cave.

 At 300 million years old, the joke is that this might be the oldest building ever to qualify for LEED certification.  Naturally porous limestone is great for circulating heat out of the data center, and an underground lake nearby provides cooling.  Pretty great setup, right?

Of course there are concerns about if this will actually be as efficient as it's touted to be, or if it's really more of a novelty.  Novelty or not, it's important to be creative where we can and make do with what we've got, and this idea is pretty spectacular.  As a claustrophobe I wouldn't want to work down there personally, but I sure know some people who would.

Check out the full article, complete with Iron Mountain's pictures.

-Elizabeth English

If you haven't checked out our sister site lately, you might not have heard about Team Silverback's cool new Data Center Reference Poster. Here's an article about it from their blog:

Obviously our speciality is data center migration, so since a successful data center move requires a lot of technical knowledge, we've been spending some time lately focusing on ways to share some of that. 

Even if data center relocation isn't what you need right now we have a wealth of information pertinent to the industry in our Data Center Knowledge Base. A recent addition to our array of reference material is our new Data Center Reference Poster.  It's totally free so go ahead and download it to get a visual reference as well as written specifications for fiber connector types, copper connector types, and fiber and copper cable types, as well as a power connector reference.

Don't forget our whitepapers while you're at it!

-Elizabeth English

From our sister site, www.teamsilverback.com:

Last article we learned a little about MMORPGs and the way they utilize data centers, now let's have a look at the way Galaxy Gaming is incorporating a data center into its casino games.

 The idea, at least in part, is to open up jackpots across many casinos and into cruise ships, so the shared jackpots can get seriously huge.  Apparently so-called "life-altering jackpots" draw a lot of players to casinos.  Galaxy Gaming wants to have the largest and fastest-growing jackpots in the world, using a data center to navigate all that information from different locations.

Presumably having virtually connected tables will also allow them to garner data and statistics for their own purposes, and they have hinted that there is more to the new system than massive jackpots.  Apparently all the components are fully functional at this point, and beta testing will begin in a couple weeks.

Check out the article at CNNMoney.com for a few more details.

-Elizabeth English

photo by lilit under flickr creative commons license 

Companies that run MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and EVE Online do, of course, use data centers like the rest of us, but there are some pretty interesting things that they run into which other types of organizations don't.

A fascinating article from www.computerworld.com came out earlier this week detailing some of these issues.  For one thing, there's the problem of gold-farming (people using software to rake in money in the game and then sell it for non-virtual currency).  Clever, but it's really damaging to several aspects of an MMORPG when that starts to happen - firstly, the game's economy is messed up by this kind of behavior.  Also, it turns out, the company which runs the game is hit with greatly decreased data center efficiency.

The creators of EVE Online, CCP Games, recently unleashed a sting operation they called Unholy Rage on these gold-farmers, banning about 2% of their users.  This tiny ban brought them 30% increased data center efficiency - pretty fantastic.

The lesson to be learned from this for other data center staff is that paying close attention to your demographics is important.  Figure out which users are using the most resources and manage them accordingly - not to say banning them is the appropriate option in other fields, but this kind of micromanaging can save a lot of resources.

 Another interesting tidbit: game companies are allowed to have downtime.  Anyone who plays a game like WoW or Starcraft or Everquest is familiar with the harsh reality of scheduled downtime, but it's interesting to think about it in the context of data centers, where downtime is usually so forbidden.

-Elizabeth English

photo by Glenn Batuyong under flickr creative commons license 

With the holiday season approaching, has anyone ever thought about the infrastructure Santa Claus needs to be able to effectively monitor everyone everywhere? Imagine the facilities that sort of task requires.  One could assume a proprietary facility on the North Pole would have excellent outside air cooling potential, however, how does he feed power?  What sort of cables do they have up North?  Who does their migrations?!

Check back for more as we work out how this yearly miracle takes place in the modern world.  Does anyone else have any insight??

-Elizabeth English

photo by Grzegorz Łobiński under flickr creative commons license

I stumbled upon this video which records how yelling at your hard drives causes latency in disk IO. So now, it doesn't matter what grade the disk got in college prep algebra...don't yell at it!!

I wonder what yelling at a fiber cable will do...can sound waves disrupt light waves? Anyone care to figure that out and send me a video?

I had a friend (who asked to remain anonymous) send me this picture. He was walking to his cabinet in a co-lo (he wouldn't tell me which one) and noticed this hanging from the ceiling. Much to his surprise, when he traced the cable it led directly to his cabinet!! This is his main line to the internet!!

In that same e-mail, he asked me to quote his migration to a new facility...

What does your cross connect to the internet look like?

Digital Realty Trust (DRT) has taken modular data centers to a whole new level!!

I watch this video and wonder why there is a lack of data center space in the bay area! If they can build a data center with 1 person in 2 minutes, why is space at a premium?!

Thought this was a fun find for a Friday, enjoy it, and take the rest of the day off...

Ken

Data center technology is moving in leaps and bounds as data center professionals become more concerned with the environmental impact of their facilities and the economic benefit of improving energy efficiency and minimizing carbon emissions.  I stumbled upon a thought-provoking article over at Smarter Technology about current trends in the data center industry, which mainly tie into the drive towards improving efficiency.
 
First of all we've got the expectation of data centers never having any downtime - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  Downtime has come to be looked at as a catastrophe in a lot of cases, and this means a lot in terms of efficiency.  The perfect balance of power has to be achieved to ensure that a facility isn't wasting energy, and this requires a lot of power management.

(photo by kyz under flickr creative commons license)

Another trend in the data center industry lately is towards adoption of new technologies.  Whereas before, data center professionals had typically been a little less willing to branch our from what they knew worked already, now with green IT catching on like it is, improved technology has a strong pull.

Data center consolidation is also becoming a big deal.  As technology improves, less space is required and consolidation is becoming a serious trend.  This is great for the environment and saves money since clearly less facilities means less energy used.

Tying into this is the value now being placed on successful IT consolidations in business mergers.  Since both companies merging are likely to have critical IT operations, it's very important that they be successfully and carefully combined.

A huge trend, of course, is that of cloud computing.  Its effect on the data center industry in the long-run remains to be seen.

(photo by mamjodh under flickr creative commons license)

Finally it looks like there's a strong trend towards setting efficiency goals and doing experimental work to meet them.  In charting these attempts, you can improve your progress each time and get the best results possible.

The article at Smarter Technology goes into more detail on a couple things, but I found these trends most compelling.  I think we can expect to see unprecedented and exciting innovations in green IT and energy usage in the months to come.

-Elizabeth English

From careful planning to hot or cold aisle containment, there are definitely things you can do to improve the efficiency of your data center cooling.  Still, the technology we've got is always open for improvement, and Lawrence Berkeley Labs has just collaborated with Intel to develop and test another exciting step towards cooling efficiency.

Lawrence Berkeley Labs - photo by Derrick Coetzee under flickr creative commons license

 -Elizabeth English