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New Data Center Standard
mstansberry writes to tell us that the Telecommunications Industry Association (the people who brought you the CAT standards for unshielded twisted pair cabling) recently published a 148 page document meant to standardize the design considerations for every single aspect of a data center. The standard covers everything from site selection to rack mounting methods.
Be interesting to see if it's useful.
When you specify something like a cable, it's straightfoward to get it right, because the job the cable does and the way it's used is very well understood and doesn't vary between users.
With something complex like a data center, there's so much variance in how they're operated, exactly what they do, where they are, etc...having a standard may well *not* fit everyone's needs, either because their needs were not perceived or understood at the time or because their needs simply cannot be met by the standard.
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Toby
I wonder if they considered defences to the /. effect when writing this.
This is great news for people who host servers in colocation facilities.
If you've ever tried to find a place to host your server in the past, you've probably found that not only does the price wildly fluctuate between hosts for no apparent reason, but also it's very difficult to determine exactly what you're getting, even if you take the time and effort to actually visit the site.
I think that the disorganized fashion of colo services allows people to charge ridiculous prices
and get away with things that they wouldn't be able to do in a more stable competitive environment (like charging ridiculous amounts for bandwidth overage and support).
With some sort of standard in place, vendors will be forced to compete on more even ground, prices will be more reasonable, and users won't be afraid to leave their current colo provider because the next one could potentially be even worse.. Not that it will be perfect, of course - just somewhat better.
Does anybody have a link to the document yet, since $1.6 per page of bs is a bit too much.
Slashdot moral concept #7: If item is perceived to suck, stealing - oops sorry, forgot Slashdot moral concept #6 - infringing it is allowed.
Example: "If $band would put out better songs, maybe I'd buy their album. Until then, I will continue to use BitTorrent to get their material."
Out of the costs involved in setting up a data centre, $250 wouldn't even qualify as a rounding error.
To "detune" the coils. If the twists were equidistant (especially in the straighter parts) it would resemble a tuned antenna.
How boring ... who wants to work somewhere identical to the last place. And identical to your friends' places of work.
When designing a Data Centre, I really don't think the number one priority is to make it an artistic statement or a fun place for the IT staff to hang out in.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
I agree completely. The "industry standards" for many things are used alot, even if they dont partularly apply to your site. I would love to see people dress the cables in the back of a cabnet with uniform bending radius' and with a proper service loop. I would love to see that in every data center I work in. I wouldn't have to replace cables when a channel bank gets moved. I would love to see this fiber I have to deal with be secured properly and not cinched down hard enough to break your 1st. 6th, 18th, 32nd, and 72nd strand. That would save me a lot of work. I am not going to pay to see what they say... but I bet its just a culmination of proper install techniques and "industry standard" dressings to make the tech's and the installers times easier. Remeber "if it aint pretty, it dont work", err... that's what they told me in BICC anyways.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
From TFA, this is a "checklist" for CIO's. Last thing I need is my PHB having a list to check off and thinking they are requirements instead of suggestions. You never give a PHB this much info. They dont know what you are doing a good part of the time anyways... and a little info is more dangerous than none.
It can be a good idea if the techs get a hold of it though and stop giving my 2 inches of slack on these fiber runs and give be a proper service loop with good cable dressing instead of the rats nests I've had to fix recently.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
I can't tell if you're being serious. Assuming you're being serious...
Originality and creativity have certain places in the world. Just because you have guidelines and standards doesn't mean you can't be creative. Programming languages have standards, that doesn't mean programmers can't create original programs. If there were no coding conventions and standards, you'd almost never be able to examine someone elses code. "Wait a second, why are all the integer variables stored as strings? And I think this guy uses + signs as assignment operators..."
Standards are there to prevent entropy, not prevent innovation. Every writer, producer, actor etc. has to write a proposal, film a pilot, and go through all the same stages that everyone else has to. Joss Wheddon, Chris Carter, Jon Stewart... they all had to adhere to the same process that their predecessors did, that didn't stop them from being original and succeeding, it prevented their ideas from being ignored because the people reading the proposal didn't need to interpret it, they already knew the format it was going to be in.
Standards make sure that our ideas are understood universally. In the case of a data center, it ensures that we can all store and retrieve data in a unified way. All the people who need that data don't need to figure out some proprietary system. When you contract services from a standards-compliant center, you don't need to hear the line "That might be what you're used to but... this is OUR way of doing things."