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Domain: datacenterknowledge.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to datacenterknowledge.com.
Stories · 284
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Seagoing Servers Hit the Rocks
1sockchuck writes "A plan to build data centers on ships is now defunct. Startup IDS, whose ambitions to convert cargo ships into server farms prompted debate on Slashdot in 2008 and 2010, is in bankruptcy. Google filed a patent for a water-based data center, but it's not clear that the company ever took the concept seriously, and has even spoofed the idea." -
More Uptime Problems For Amazon Cloud
1sockchuck writes "An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia lost power Friday night during an electrical storm, causing downtime for numerous customers — including Netflix, which uses an architecture designed to route around problems at a single availability zone. The same data center suffered a power outage two weeks ago and had connectivity problems earlier on Friday." -
More Uptime Problems For Amazon Cloud
1sockchuck writes "An Amazon Web Services data center in northern Virginia lost power Friday night during an electrical storm, causing downtime for numerous customers — including Netflix, which uses an architecture designed to route around problems at a single availability zone. The same data center suffered a power outage two weeks ago and had connectivity problems earlier on Friday." -
A Turing Machine Built With Lego, And a Place To Put It
New submitter Otis_INF writes "To honor Alan Turing, two researchers at the CWI built a simple LEGO Turing Machine, to show everyone how simple a computer actually is. Primary goals were to make every operation as visible as possible and to make it using just a single LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set." And if a simple Turing machine gets old, Reader miller60 adds a link to this Lego data center "that recreates all the major features of an IT facility, assembled from 5,772 pieces, 28 figures, and 1 meter of fiber optic cable. The builder, Tanaka, has uploaded details to the Lego Digital Designer Gallery so others can build and adapt their own." -
Hawking Is First User of "Big Brain" Supercomputer
miller60 writes "Calling your product the 'Big Brain Computer' is a heady claim. It helps if you have Dr. Stephen Hawking say that the product can help unlock the secrets of the universe. SGI says its UV2 can scale to 4,096 cores and 64 terabytes of memory, with a peak I/O rate of four terabytes per second and runs off-the-shelf Linux software. Hawking says the UV2 'will ensure that UK researchers remain at the forefront of fundamental and observational cosmology.'" -
Netflix Launches Its Own Content Delivery Network
1sockchuck writes "Netflix has launched its own content delivery network to manage data delivery for its streaming video service. ISPs can choose to host caching appliances in their data centers, or peer with Netflix at Internet Exchanges. 'Netflix will provide either form of access at no cost to the ISP,' it said. As part of Open Connect, Netflix is sharing its hardware appliance design and the open source software components of the server. Does this mean Armageddon for the CDNs currently serving Akamai? Not really, according to analysts, citing the leverage Netflix had in dealing with providers." -
Is a "Net Zero" Data Center Possible?
miller60 writes "HP Labs is developing a concept for a 'net zero' data center — a facility that combines on-site solar power, fresh air cooling and advanced workload scheduling to operate with no net energy from the utility grid. HP is testing its ideas in a small data center in Palo Alto with a 134kW solar array and four ProLiant servers. The proof-of-concept confronts challenges often seen in solar implementations, including the array's modest capacity and a limited window of generation hours – namely, when the sun shines. HP's approach focuses on boosting server utilization, juggling critical and non-critical loads, and making the most of every hour of solar generation. Can this concept work at scale?" -
Why Open Compute Is a Win For Rackspace
1sockchuck writes "Cloud provider Rackspace is looking to the emerging open source hardware ecosystem to transform its data centers. The cloud provider spends $200 million a year on servers and storage, and sees the Open Compute Project as the key to reducing its costs on hardware design and operations. Rackspace is keen on the potential of the new Open Rack program, and its buying power is motivating HP and Dell to develop for the new standard — partly because Rackspace has also been talking with original design manufacturers like Quantra and Wistron. It's an early look at how open source hardware could have a virtuous impact on the server economy. 'I think the OEMs were not very interested (in Open Compute) initially,' said Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk. 'But in the last six months they have become really focused.'" -
Open Compute Developing Wider Rack Standard
1sockchuck writes "Are you ready for wider servers? The Open Compute Project today shared details on Open Rack, a new standard for hyperscale data centers, which will feature 21-inch server slots, rather than the traditional 19 inches. "We are ditching the 19-inch rack standard," said Facebook's Frank Frankovsky, who said the wider design offered better heat removal and a unified approach to power, including a 12 volt busbar. The Open Compute Project, developed by Facebook to advance open source hardware design, believes an open approach can avoid the mistakes of blade server chassis design." -
Apple's North Carolina Data Center Will Feature Biogas Generators
1sockchuck writes "Apple's North Carolina data center will tap landfills for biogas, which will then be converted into electricity using fuel cells from Bloom Energy. The 24 'Bloom boxes' will have a capacity of 4.8 megawatts of power, and along with a large solar array, will provide Apple with a significant on-site generation of sustainable energy. Microsoft is also developing biogas-powered data plants where modular data centers will be housed near water treatment plants and landfills. GigaOm has a useful primer on biogas in data centers, as well as video of the new higher capacity Bloom boxes that will support Apple's server farm." -
Apple's North Carolina Data Center Will Feature Biogas Generators
1sockchuck writes "Apple's North Carolina data center will tap landfills for biogas, which will then be converted into electricity using fuel cells from Bloom Energy. The 24 'Bloom boxes' will have a capacity of 4.8 megawatts of power, and along with a large solar array, will provide Apple with a significant on-site generation of sustainable energy. Microsoft is also developing biogas-powered data plants where modular data centers will be housed near water treatment plants and landfills. GigaOm has a useful primer on biogas in data centers, as well as video of the new higher capacity Bloom boxes that will support Apple's server farm." -
Apple: Greenpeace's Cloud Critique Driven By Bogus Numbers
miller60 writes "Apple says Greenpeace has wildly overestimated the amount of power it uses in its data center in North Carolina, and used that bad math to give the company a low grade on sustainability. Apple says it uses 20 megawatts of power at its iDataCenter, a fraction of Greenpeace's estimate of 100 megawatts in a new report on energy use by cloud computing providers. Apple says that its huge solar array and biogas-powered fuel cell will supply 60 percent of the facility's power, not the 10 percent claimed by Greenpeace." -
Data Center Staff Will Sleep Among the Racks For London Olympics
1sockchuck writes "Staff at Interxion's London data center are ready to hunker down during the Olympic Games this summer, nestled in snug sleeping pods adjacent to the racks. The arrangement will ensure that the facility will be fully-staffed if London's transit system is taxed by the huge crowds expected for the Games. While staff in many industries might object to a plan that expects them to sleep in their office, data center firms have a primary calling of keeping their facilities operational at all times. Is this too much readiness, or just enough?" -
The Pirate Bay Plans Servers In the Sky
1sockchuck writes "The Pirate Bay says it plans to deploy servers on airborne drones several kilometers above international waters. The site said it was experimenting with servers using Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized Linux computer. April Fools come early? Torrent Freak says the plan is real. It's apparently a literal approach to cloud computing." -
Report: Amazon Cloud Backed By 450,000 Servers
1sockchuck writes "How many servers does it take to power Amazon's huge cloud computing operation? A researcher estimates that Amazon Web Services is using at least 454,400 servers in seven data center hubs around the globe. The analysis suggests up to 70 percent of those servers may be in Virginia." -
George Takei Helps Facebook Troubleshoot MySQL
miller60 writes "Actor George Takei recently helped the Facebook infrastructure team troubleshoot issues with its MySQL databases. Takei, a veteran of the original Star Trek series, now has more than 1.2 million fans on Facebook. Takei recently noticed that some status updates were missing or appearing inconsistently. That led to a dialogue with the Facebook Engineering team, which gave Takei a shout-out on its latest blog post, which also included some technical discussion of Facebook's challenges in scaling MySQL (a topic of previous discussion here at Slashdot)." -
Harris Exits Cloud Hosting, Citing Fed Server Hugging
miller60 writes "Despite the publicity around the U.S. Government's 'Cloud First' approach to IT, many agencies are reluctant to shift mission critical assets to third-party facilities. That's the analysis from Harris Corp., which has decided to get out of the cloud hosting business and sell a data center in Virginia, just two years after it spent $200 million to build and equip it. 'It's becoming clear that customers, both government and commercial, currently have a preference for on-premise versus off-premise solutions,' said Harris' CEO." -
Google Seeks To Plant Antenna Farm In Iowa
1sockchuck writes "Google is seeking permission to place satellite antennas on land near its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The 4.5 meter antennas could be used to receive content feeds from broadcast networks that could be bundled with a high-speed fiber service. The FCC filings were made by Google Fiber, which is currently laying fiber for a high-speed network in Kansas City that will provide Internet connectivity 'at speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.'" -
Facebook's Oregon Data Center Uses As Much Power As Entire County
1sockchuck writes "The first phase of the Facebook data center in Oregon uses 28 megawatts of utility power, local officials said this week. That's not extraordinary for a facility of that size in most data center hubs. But it stands out in Crook County, Oregon where all the homes and business other than Facebook use 30 megawatts of power. The economics of Facebook's presence in Oregon are outlined in a new study, which asserts that the Prineville facility has brought tens of millions of dollars into the local economy. The second phase of the Facebook project is now underway, and the local utility grid is being expanded to add capacity." The study claiming economic benefits was commissioned by Facebook (reader beware). -
A Data Center That Looks Like a Mansion
1sockchuck writes "A luxury homebuilder in Minnesota wants to build a data center that looks like a mansion, allowing the commercial building to fit into a residential neighborhood. The 'community-based data center' designed for FiberPop features a stone facade and sloped roof with dormers, along with an underground data hall." -
Do Data Center Audits Mean Anything?
1sockchuck writes "Data center service providers often tout certifications such as SAS 70, SSAE 16 and SOC 2 as evidence that they meet lofty operational standards. But some of these certifications are based on self-defined standards, and the entire situation is confusing and frustrating to customers, according to one critic, who says data center shoppers are poorly served by the jumble of acronyms and standards. Do these certifications matter when users are seeking data center space? Should they?" -
Feds Now Plans To Close 1,200 Data Centers
1sockchuck writes "The U.S. government now expects to shutter at least 1,200 data centers by the end of 2015 in its data center consolidation project. That's about 40 percent of the IT facilities identified in the latest update from federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. The number of government data centers has grown steadily — jumping from 1,100 to 2,094 and now to 3,133 — as the Obama administration has identified more facilities than expected, and expanded the initiative to target telecom closets. The CIO's office says it is on track to close 525 facilities by the end of this year, and has published a list of data centers targeted for closure." -
The Fjord-Cooled Data Center
1sockchuck writes "A new data center project in Norway plans to use a fjord-powered cooling system, drawing cold water from an adjacent fjord to cool data halls. The fjord provides a ready supply of water at 8 degrees C (46 degrees F), eliminating the need for an energy-hungry chiller. The Green Mountain Data Center joins a small but growing number of data centers are slashing their cooling costs by using the environment as their chiller, tapping nearby lakes, wells and even the Baltic Sea." -
The Fjord-Cooled Data Center
1sockchuck writes "A new data center project in Norway plans to use a fjord-powered cooling system, drawing cold water from an adjacent fjord to cool data halls. The fjord provides a ready supply of water at 8 degrees C (46 degrees F), eliminating the need for an energy-hungry chiller. The Green Mountain Data Center joins a small but growing number of data centers are slashing their cooling costs by using the environment as their chiller, tapping nearby lakes, wells and even the Baltic Sea." -
Apple May Build Oregon Data Center Next To Facebook's
1sockchuck writes "Apple may build a huge new data center next door to the Facebook server farm in rural Prineville, Oregon. Slashdot has previously noted the potential that Prineville could become a data center mecca due to its climate, which is ideal for using fresh air to cool servers. The scenario could mirror the trend in rural North Carolina, where both Apple and Facebook have built data centers. It's always been likely that Apple will need at least one other large data center complex to provide backup capabilities for the facility in North Carolina." -
Apple May Build Oregon Data Center Next To Facebook's
1sockchuck writes "Apple may build a huge new data center next door to the Facebook server farm in rural Prineville, Oregon. Slashdot has previously noted the potential that Prineville could become a data center mecca due to its climate, which is ideal for using fresh air to cool servers. The scenario could mirror the trend in rural North Carolina, where both Apple and Facebook have built data centers. It's always been likely that Apple will need at least one other large data center complex to provide backup capabilities for the facility in North Carolina." -
Are Data Centers Finally Ready For DC Power?
1sockchuck writes "It's been five years since a landmark study outlined the potential benefits of DC power distribution in data centers. But adoption of DC in data centers remains limited, even as the industry aggressively pursues a wide array of other energy savings strategies. Advocates of DC distribution are hoping a new study will jump start the conversation about DC distribution, which can save energy by eliminating several wasteful AC-to-DC conversions within a data center. Meanwhile, an industry association for DC power adoption, the EMerge Alliance, has formed a new technical standards committee for data centers, and is advancing a 380-volt DC power standard. Will DC distribution ever gain momentum in data centers?" -
Can Maintenance Make Data Centers Less Reliable?
miller60 writes "Is preventive maintenance on data center equipment not really that preventive after all? With human error cited as a leading cause of downtime, a vigorous maintenance schedule can actually make a data center less reliable, according to some industry experts.'The most common threat to reliability is excessive maintenance,' said Steve Fairfax of 'science risk' consultant MTechnology. 'We get the perception that lots of testing improves component reliability. It does not.' In some cases, poorly documented maintenance can lead to conflicts with automated systems, he warned. Other speakers at the recent 7x24 Exchange conference urged data center operators to focus on understanding their own facilities, and then evaluating which maintenance programs are essential, including offerings from equipment vendors." -
The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated
1sockchuck writes "The twice-a-year list of the Top 500 supercomputers documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here's a visual guide to the top finishers in the latest Top 500 list, which was released this week at the SC11 conference." -
Can Open Hardware Transform the Data Center?
1sockchuck writes "Is the data center industry on the verge of a revolution in which open source hardware designs transform the process of designing and building these facilities? This week the Open Compute Project gained momentum and structure, forming a foundation as it touted participation from IT heavyweights Intel, Dell, Amazon, Facebook, Red Hat and Rackspace. That turnout is not an isolated event, but reflects a growing focus on collaborative projects to reduce cost, timelines and inefficiency in data center construction and operation. The Open Compute project is just one of a handful of initiatives to bring standards and repeatable designs to IT infrastructure." -
AOL Creates Fully Automated Data Center
miller60 writes with an except from a Data Center Knowledge article: "AOL has begun operations at a new data center that will be completely unmanned, with all monitoring and management being handled remotely. The new 'lights out' facility is part of a broader updating of AOL infrastructure that leverages virtualization and modular design to quickly deploy and manage server capacity. 'These changes have not been easy,' AOL's Mike Manos writes in a blog post about the new facility. 'It's always culturally tough being open to fundamentally changing business as usual.'" Mike Manos's weblog post provides a look into AOL's internal infrastructure. It's easy to forget that AOL had to tackle scaling to tens of thousands of servers over a decade before the term Cloud was even coined. -
Lightning Strike KOs Amazon, Microsoft EuroClouds
1sockchuck writes "A lightning strike has caused power outages at the major cloud computing data hubs for Amazon and Microsoft in Dublin, Ireland. The incident has caused downtime for many sites using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform and Microsoft's BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite)." -
Google Running 900,000 Servers
1sockchuck writes "How many servers is Google using? The company won't say, but a new report places the number at about 900,000. The estimate is based on data Google shared with researcher Jonathan Koomey, for a new report on data center power use. The data updates a 2007 report to Congress, and includes a surprise: data centers are using less energy than projected, largely due to the impact of the recession (buying fewer servers) and virtualization." -
Texas and Taxes: Is a Server a Business Presence?
1sockchuck writes "Does having a server in a data center give you an official business presence in the state where the data center is located – invoking the requirement to collect state taxes? Not in Texas anymore, thanks to a new bill, which clarified a ruling that would have required hosting companies leasing servers in Texas to collect state sales tax from their customers. That's a big deal, since Texas is home to many of the industry's largest hosting companies — including Rackspace and SoftLayer, who have comments on the issue." -
'Digital Universe' To Add 1.8 Zettabyte In 2011
1sockchuck writes "More than 1.8 zettabytes of information will be created and stored in 2011, according to the fifth IDC Digital Universe study. A key challenge is managing this data deluge (typified by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which generates 1 petabyte of data per second)." -
Wildfire Threatens Los Alamos Labs
1sockchuck writes "A fast-moving wildfire has closed the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a Department of Energy facility responsible for weapons design and a vast array of research, as well as two of the world's top supercomputers. Lab officials said all radioactive and hazardous material had been accounted for and protected." Adds an anonymous reader: "I live near LANL and apparently they have begun to evacuate the whole town. Here is some information I've received through an email chain: 'Our main concern is that the Las Conchas fire is about 3 1/2 miles from Area G, the dumpsite that has been in operation since the late 1950s/early 1960s. There are 20,000 to 30,000 55-gallons drums of plutonium contaminated waste (containing solvents, chemicals and toxic materials) sitting in fabric tents above ground. These drums are destined for WIPP. ... We understand that LANL has been working since late last night to build a fire line in Water Canyon, between the fire and Area G. ... Over the last 26 hours the fire has grown from 0 acres to about 45,000 acres – about the size of the Cerro Grande fire in 2000." -
Inside Amazon's Data Centers
1sockchuck writes "Amazon Web Services usually doesn't say much about the data centers powering its cloud computing platform. But last week the company held a technology open house to discuss the company's infrastructure, sharing cost data and a glimpse of a modular data center design. The key point: AWS is growing like crazy. 'Every day Amazon Web Services adds enough new capacity to support all of Amazon.com's global infrastructure through the company's first 5 years, when it was a $2.76 billion annual revenue enterprise,' said AWS Engineer James Hamilton, whose presentation (PDF) is available online." -
Tornado Risk Seen For Social Security Data Center
1sockchuck writes "Despite the recent outbreak of powerful tornadoes, the Social Security Administration has decided to engineer its new data center to withstand winds of just 90 miles per hour. Data center experts say mission-critical facilities should be built to withstand winds of 120 to 180 miles per hour to protect against tornado and hurricane risks. It's the latest in a series of challenges for the $800 million project, which will replace a creaky 30-year old facility." -
Facebook May Make Tiny Town a Data Center Mecca
miller60 writes "Just weeks after the opening of a Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon, local officials say two more companies may build server farms in the small town. Facebook has touted Prineville as an ideal environment for using fresh air to cool servers. The news positions Prineville (pop. 10,000, unemployment rate 17 percent) to emerge as a data center hub similar to Quincy, Washington, a small farm town that now hosts five huge server farms." -
Facebook May Make Tiny Town a Data Center Mecca
miller60 writes "Just weeks after the opening of a Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon, local officials say two more companies may build server farms in the small town. Facebook has touted Prineville as an ideal environment for using fresh air to cool servers. The news positions Prineville (pop. 10,000, unemployment rate 17 percent) to emerge as a data center hub similar to Quincy, Washington, a small farm town that now hosts five huge server farms." -
More Data Centers Using On-Site Solar Power
1sockchuck writes "Solar power hasn't been widely used in data centers because it takes a very large installation of photovoltaic solar panels to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities. But the month of April has seen the debut of four new data centers featuring on-site solar arrays." -
US Gov't To Close 137 Data Centers In 2011, More By 2015
1sockchuck writes "The US government has closed 39 data centers this year, and expects to shut down 98 more by the end of 2011, federal CIO Vivek Kundra said Wednesday. The 137 closures are a step towards the long-term goal of consolidating 800 of the government's 2,094 data centers by 2015. Government agencies have identified 100 email systems and 950,000 mailboxes to migrate to a cloud computing model as part of Kundra's 'Cloud First' initiative." -
A Glimpse Inside Google's South Carolina Data Center
miller60 writes "Google today released a video showcasing the security and data protection practices in its data centers. Filmed at the company's South Carolina data center, it provides a look at Google's wiping of data and (literal) shredding of hard drives." -
Facebook's Server Room, Penthouse Cooling Caught On Video
1sockchuck writes "We've seen specifications and photos of Facebook's new data center in Oregon. Data Center Knowledge now has video tours of Facebook's server room and cooling system. The tours, conducted by Facebook Director of Datacenter Engineering Jay Park, showcase the Open Compute Project designs for servers, UPS units and two-tier 'penthouse' cooling system design." -
Facebook's Server Room, Penthouse Cooling Caught On Video
1sockchuck writes "We've seen specifications and photos of Facebook's new data center in Oregon. Data Center Knowledge now has video tours of Facebook's server room and cooling system. The tours, conducted by Facebook Director of Datacenter Engineering Jay Park, showcase the Open Compute Project designs for servers, UPS units and two-tier 'penthouse' cooling system design." -
A Closer Look At Immersion Cooling For the Data Center
1sockchuck writes "Want to save money on data center cooling? Tip your racks on their side, fill them with mineral oil, and submerge your servers. Austin startup Green Revoluton Cooling first profiled here) has a video demo of its immersion cooling solution, which it says can handle racks using up to 100kW of power. A photo gallery on the company web site shows some early installations." -
It's World Backup Day
1sockchuck writes "Today is World Backup Day, an occasion to back up your personal data and financial information and check your restores. For those needing motivation — a group that apparently includes 15 percent of data centers — the Slashdot archives bear witness to date disasters at providers small (Ma.gnolia) and large (Microsoft). The World Backup Day initiative grew out of a thread at Reddit, and invites online backup services to observe the occasion by offering discounts." -
Town Expands To Boost Cooling For NSA Data Center
1sockchuck writes "A substantial water supply is critical for most large data centers. A case in point: Officials in Bluffdale, Utah have agreed to annex land housing a new $1.2 billion data center for the National Security Agency. The move makes the NSA a higher priority customer for Bluffdale's water utility, which prevents its water supply from a potential cutoff in the event of a water shortage — which would be a problem, since water will be used extensively in the data center's cooling system. Many large data centers have been working to reduce their water use to make them more sustainable and reliable." -
Making Data Centers More People-Friendly
1sockchuck writes "Data centers are designed to house servers, not people. This has often meant trade-offs for data center staffers, who brave 100-degree hot aisles and perform their work at laptop carts. But some data center developers are rethinking this approach and designing people-friendly data centers with Class-A offices and amenities for staff and visitors. Is this the future of data center design?" -
Amazon, Rackspace Add New Cloud Capabilities
miller60 writes "Amazon Web Services has rolled out Elastic Beanstalk, a free feature which automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring. AWS execs tell GigaOm that Beanstalk represents a move up to Platform-as-a-Service and is designed 'to address the idea of vendor lock-in and inflexibility that commonly afflicts other platforms for application development.' Meanwhile, Amazon rival Rackspace Hosting has extended its cloud platform to its European data centers, opening the service to customers bound by data protection regulations, and says it now has more than 100,000 cloud customers."