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.

Comments

Re:What

[billcopc]

How often does shit hit the fan in that sort of environment ?

As a hybrid techie who does a lot of hardware work, I would much rather go in once a month, fix a batch of issues in one visit, collect my fat cheque and go back to the pub, than spend 40+ hours a week playing Bejeweled, waiting for stuff to break.

I would expect AOL's strategy to greatly reduce costs, because that $15/hr rack monkey costs a lot more than $15/hr in the end. They have benefits, you have to "manage" them, they need human comforts like bathrooms, cleaning, seating, heating/air, lunch room. From an efficiency standpoint, the contractor route is more efficient in both money and time.

Re:So it will take ages for a fix

[Martin Blank]

One of the major backbone providers has a lights-out data center not far from my work. I know a guy who has a hosting business there, and he's shown me around to the limits of his access. There is no one on-site from the company or its contractors--not even a security guard. They have biometrics plus PINs for access; it's laced with low-light/IR cameras (it wouldn't surprise me to learn they have microphones); it has motion detectors in case the cameras miss something; and the redundancy is incredible. They maintain contracts with local electricians, plumbers, and a few technical companies should a blade burn out. They manage the entire thing from a few states over, and as of a couple of years ago almost all of their data centers had been converted to run this way. Savings were good, something like a million dollars per DC per year even as unanticipated downtime decreased.

I looked at it and saw the future of IT. I wasn't sure if I was more impressed or scared.