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Will Robots Take Over the Data Center?
1sockchuck writes "Robotics are beginning to be integrated into data center management, creating the potential for a fully automated, robot-driven data center. What might a robot-controlled 'lights-out' data center look like? The racks will be taller, as robotics systems can reach higher to manage servers. Robotic equipment would be mounted on rails that allow them to find and move hardware. Early examples of this are seen in tape libraries, but the concepts could be applied to other data center equipment. Amazon and Google are said to be among those looking at ways to create a fully automated data center. AOL says it has already built an unmanned data center. Data Center Knowledge looks at the challenges and opportunities in robot-controlled data centers, including how staff roles would evolve."
We'll just store everything in the cloud instead.
As long as we can still manage servers while sitting at our desks, I say go for it.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
AOL still exists?!?
typing this from the datacenter I work in, i can assure you robots will never replace 8rSta$O7qNO CARRIER
Good people go to bed earlier.
A data center with no operators for a service with no users.
mgt: "Well, due to automation, we only need one of you. The rest of you are being let go and I recommend that you be "retrained" in something else. What that may be, I have no idea, but that's the line we give to you peasants."
This sounds nice in theory, but what is the actual rate of change/churn in large data centers once racks are populated and what are the potential labor savings over the long haul? What is the development cost of the robotic system and how long to amortize?
Like replacing a bad cable? No? So you send in a person to do that and then the robot kills them. Then will come the classics.. "I thought you turned off the robot for sector-13"..
From: The Developers
Subject: Sorry
Body: We can replace you with a well-written shell script. Goodbye!
sudo make me a sandwich
our datacenter has lots of stairs.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
since people won't have jobs and won't be able to, you know, buy things.
This could work if the data center is static. That is the same servers same drives same everything for the life of the data center. Thing is most data centers i've gone to have different servers, different generation of servers and different drives. I'm not saying it's impossible, just harder when there are so many unknown variables. What if servers tomorrow require more power? or actually get smaller? a different rack? these are things that are being worked out but I still see a lot of variety. The racks would have to have some sort of fiber channel built in. What happens if in the future you require 2 fibers instead of one? or 4? would you be able to use your robot in the future? I think the robots would be a good idea, but i see a lot of challenges to a people free environment. we are if nothing else adaptable. Robots are still not there. unless these robots can be used like robonaut. And the admin's are controlling him remotely. Then that's just cool!
"Robotic equipment would be mounted on rails that allow them to find and move hardware."
The IT tech was upset to learn the cake was a lie.
Will robots take over [x]? Yes, eventually.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Thing is most data centers" RACKS "have different servers"
So your question presumes that a crontab job starting/stopping timed processes in a bash shell (or other suitable shell) is not a robot.
Instead of managing servers and a network, I can just manage the robots who will manage the servers and the network. :D
As a developer,
Thank you for that reply it was one of the funniest I have seen in a long while, primarily because I have seen responses like that from SysAdmins
A data center with no operators for a service with no users.
They have users. Robot users. Bot Got Mail!
maintenance of Chillers, UPS, Generators, ATS, ect. Have that be hands off with no on site can be bad and what if there is a fire that goes some small to big as no one is there and it takes time to trip a sensor.
You would have to make your racks precise to 1/100000 of an inch for your robot arm to fit snugly a server, unlike the ones out now you jam your finger trying to get the damn square nut clips in. Every server would have to be identical, or very close in size. There would need to be some sort of back plane to handle all of your connections maybe dual or quad port 10G.
You have an unmanned data center. Well done AOL!
I've been in plenty of datacenters, and I don't see where you're getting any benefit with radical redesigns. They aren't exactly designed for human comfort in the first place...
Lighting? Sure, but motion sensors mean it's only on when someone is in that area. And you'll still need lights, because humans will surely still be going in there to fix the malfunctioning robots, and hiring old coal miners seems excessive.
Temperature? No, the servers dictate the temperature the datacenter is kept at, while human comfort is completely secondary. The 15C degree air coming out of the floor vents below my KVM doesn't make for a comfortable experience, but nobody cares. Humans in the datacenter are the foreigners, who must adapt themselves, not the other way around. If Google could run their datacenters at 75C degrees, they WOULD do that now, and the humans would be sent in with ice packs strapped to their bodies.
Height? If a couple more feet of rack height were useful and cheap, I would be happy enough to keep a bit of scaffolding in my datacenter cages. As for the ridiculous heights predicted, it's not going to happen. Racks can't scale-up that easily (they'd need huge thick vertical supports to handle the weight)... and at some point, it's pretty easy to just install another "floor" for those pesky humans to walk on, install air ducts in, and also avoid the need for super-robust racks... and I can't even imagine that crazy air currents that would be happening with 100' of vertical servers pumping out crazy amounts of heat, not to mention problems like CLOUDS forming and potentially raining, INSIDE the building.
In general, the comparison needs to be made to warehouses... If Amazon/Walmart/etc. had fully-automated warehouses, I'd say automated datacenters would be just around the corner. But they don't... Humans are still very much in the loop, driving around on electrified forklifts or pallet jacks, and doing what the computer tells them to, and when. And if any business could benefit from vertical expansion, quicker response times, and less humans, it's warehousing, but it just doesn't work there, yet. That will be a lot closer to the model for future datacenters, not this pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I mean, you look at Apple's massive data centers and there are like 4 cars in the parking lot.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
you've never seen a soda can or three at the bottom of the panel-blinking pop machine at a park or event? or videotapes all over the floor as a robot off alignment tries to set the spots for a news broadcast into the tape decks?
just wait until those are two or four terabyte drives in a bound volume at a cloud host.
because groove belts do stretch and break, and it's gonna happen as soon as everybody is out of Dodge and the guy who signed the contract has left the company for the next fat check at a new opportunity.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I have no doubt a robot can rack a server, but I'd love to see one cable or (worse) uncable one.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Robotic maintenance was considered for SAGE in the 1950s. Robots were never built for that, but the SAGE racks were designed with easy-to-handle plug-in rack modules with all connections on the back.
(Vacuum tube failure wasn't a major operational problem with vacuum tube computers. For the UNIVAC I, normal procedure was to power up the machine and set it to 10% overvoltage mode for 10 minutes. This would burn out any tubes near failure. Those were replaced, and the machine would then run for the rest of the day without another tube problem. Since the machine had a dual CPU for self-checking, any problem would cause an immediate stop.)
The datacentre of the future will be run by just one man, and a dog.
The man is there to feed the dog.
The dog is there to bite the man if he touches anything.
Tape silos are already automated and robotic. I imagine that future designs would look like them.
It's not about creature comforts, it's about error rates
Humans are imperfect, they pull the wrong drive out of the wrong server, they forget to power down before pulling, they forget to power back up afterward, they forget to set the BIOS correctly, etc.
The room for improvement is in fewer errors.
"Robotics are beginning to be integrated into data center management"
Beginning? We've had an ATL attached to our mainframe for decades. It's been so long that the technology is now moving into obsolescence. We just decomissioned the mainframe ATL. We still have an ATL attached to a Unix system for an imaging system, but I'm wondering how much longer that will last.
There is a bloody jumper to reset the BIOS password.
Yes, even in this digital age, sometimes a person has to connect two pieces of metal with another piece of metal. Sure a paperclip would suffice, but we are civilized creatures.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Now what am I going to do with all these black T-Shirts?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Will robots take over [x]? Yes, eventually.
You beat me to it. Yes, in several decades/centuries/millennia, our datacentres will be run by Robots (or the D'Jingiil, an alien race well known for getting a kick out of running datacentres and playing cards in the night shift)
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die.
*insert pithy sig here*
They are so old that, they still employ dinosaurs to maintain their servers.
They are so old that, the data is written on stone tablets.
They are so old that, their next data storage upgrade will be ink and parchment.
They are so old that, when they talk about a server rack crashing they mean it fell over.
They are so old that, bugs in the system, is just that.
They are so old that...
sounds like some thing for the MythBusters to test.
1. We still haven't standardized the dimensions of a 42u rack.
2. These days it's much cheaper to hire 10 jockey's than build even 1 piece of automated equipment, much less a robot.
3. Throw away servers, like throw away desktops, only with more economic incentive.
ok that's three.
stop sending email alerts to 2,000 people every time i reboot a freakin server. Do you realize how many processing cycles are used up just by deleting all that crap that NOBODY ever reads?
You can always see where the dead weight in a company is. People that aren't doing anything play with email. Most moderately tasked people fall back to spreadsheets. If your really high up the chain you get power point
CONFIRMED:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This reminds me of the Watchman robot roaming the halls of the Thinker complex under Crazy Horse Mountain.
Make a robot friendly chassis and things get interesting fast. The whole data center could be one giant self-healing stack. You put fresh parts in one end and take dead parts out the other.
Every rule has more than one consequence.
"The real problems will start when robots get smart enough to make us do their dirty work while they leisurely play."
Our dogs have already trained me to do that over the years. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.