This is becoming an annual event for Heiliger, who also complained about server vendors at GigaOm's Structure 08 conference last year. Facebook used to buy a lot of cloud-optimized gear from Rackable/SGI, but no longer appears on the list of their largest customers. Makes you wonder if they're not going to follow Google's lead and build their own servers.
Data Center Knowledge has a roundup that looks at some of the problems with this approach, including security issues related to running a server on a desktop app and bandwidth consumption. If your browser-hosted site gets busy, you think your ISP won't notice?
All fair criticisms, but it's a first step. The EPA plans to address many of the shortcomings of the current Energy Star for Servers program in an expanded Tier 2 spec that is scheduled to arrive in the fall of 2010. The update is intended to expand the program to include blade servers and servers with more than four processors.
IBM's water-cooling rear-door heat exchanger (known as "Cool Blue") was judged the most energy-efficient entry in a "chill-off" between cooling vendors last year. The contest was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Leaders Group and conducted in the data center on Sun's Santa Clara HQ campus. The same unit is also sold by Vette Corp., which offered a video demo at Data Center World.
This is a project they should get right. Social Security's data centers maintain earning and benefits information for nearly every American worker, processing 75 million transactions per day. "All of our plans depend upon a strong, 21st century data center," the agency said in a recent document describing its needs. See Data Center Knowledge for more on this. Regarding the location, the agency says the new facility would need to be within 40 miles of its current location due to "data linkages" - presumably a reference to the ability to perform real-time active-active backup, where distance limitations of storage networking protocols come into play.
The Scottish tidal power project actually involves two huge data center projects. Atlantis is working with Morgan Stanley on a large data center near its planned tidal power generation site in the Pentland Firth. Internet Villages is planning a large data center campus near Dumfries that could eventually include 3 million SF of data center facilities. The alliance will split the responsibiltiies, with Atlantis handling power generation at its own site and a second location nearer the Dumfires project, while IVI will handles the marketing and be responsible for finding customers for both facilities.
The summary misses a key point: Sprint has restored its connection to Cogent, meaning the two companies can pursue their lawsuit and grievances without using customers as bargaining chips.
Could the Google data barges survive a Hurricane? They don't look like they could outrun one, but Google's application says some of the Pelamis units could be submerged enough to ride out a major storm.
Confirmed: Google DOES Have Containers
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The Google Navy
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· Score: 1
The patent application confirms that Google has data center containers. The company patented the concept several years ago, but some developers of the Google container have said they abandoned the project. But the filing describes containers being lifted on and off ships by cranes.
The Data Center Decade
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Google Turns 10
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· Score: 3, Funny
All the really good evil is coded and compiled deep inside the top-secret Google data centers, surrounded by moats filled with sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads.
Conspiracy theories aside, the data centers are a major innovation, and an area where Google has set standards for its competitors to chase. Google's massively scalable infrastructure is a big part of what has set it apart.
This is a huge topic, since so many different strategies are being brought to bear. For data center operators, energy efficiency is a business imperative since the power bills are soaring. Here are some sources offering ongoing reading about Green Data Centers:
This year the top 500 also tracks how much power is used by each system. Systems under development at Oak Ridge National Lab will reportedly have annual power bills of more than $30 million when they debut in 2012. See ComputerWorld and Data Center Knowledge for more.
There's more info on Switch Communications and its Vegas supercenter at The Register, Data Center Knowledge and the Silverback Migration blog. These stories talk about their cooling system, which handles 1,500 watts per SF with air cooling. Gotta love that video on the Switch web site.
Re:I got a bad feeling about this . . .
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Pimp My Datacenter
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Too late. They're already putting data centers in caves. They'll soon be filled with nerds.
Data Center Knowledge has a story on the downtime at The Planet, summarizing the information from the now Slashdotted forums. Only one of the company's six data centers was affected. The Planet has more than 50,000 servers in its network, meaning that one on five customers are offline.
The containers in the Chicago data center will be used to support Office Live. Since they're buying 220 of them, they must figure Office Live is gonna get some use.
The Virtual Earth team is an early adopter of the Microsoft containers, and has posted pictures of what they look like on the inside. Note that they're using customized Forest containers from Verari Systems rather than Rackable or Sun (at least at this point).
Prominent search expert Danny Sullivan outlined the reasons Google should divest Performics in a post last month at Search Engine Land. He also notes that Microsoft has a similar conflict since it owns Aquantive, whose Avenue A/Razorfish unit offers search engine optimization.
The Invest in Iceland folks have had booths at many of the data center trade shows. They've been marketing themselves as a data center destination for about 18 months now, using geothermal power and free cooling as the focal points of their pitch. Thus far they've had site visits by Microsoft and Cisco, but no takers. The only major project announcement - a $300 million data center near Keflavík International Airport - was by a development firm based in Iceland.
Meanwhile, there have been a bunch of major project announcements in Dublin, including major data centers for Eircom and Digital Realty Trust. Dublin has an existing data center workforce, which may be the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
This is becoming an annual event for Heiliger, who also complained about server vendors at GigaOm's Structure 08 conference last year. Facebook used to buy a lot of cloud-optimized gear from Rackable/SGI, but no longer appears on the list of their largest customers. Makes you wonder if they're not going to follow Google's lead and build their own servers.
Data Center Knowledge has a roundup that looks at some of the problems with this approach, including security issues related to running a server on a desktop app and bandwidth consumption. If your browser-hosted site gets busy, you think your ISP won't notice?
All fair criticisms, but it's a first step. The EPA plans to address many of the shortcomings of the current Energy Star for Servers program in an expanded Tier 2 spec that is scheduled to arrive in the fall of 2010. The update is intended to expand the program to include blade servers and servers with more than four processors.
IBM's water-cooling rear-door heat exchanger (known as "Cool Blue") was judged the most energy-efficient entry in a "chill-off" between cooling vendors last year. The contest was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Leaders Group and conducted in the data center on Sun's Santa Clara HQ campus. The same unit is also sold by Vette Corp., which offered a video demo at Data Center World.
Nemertes' research pops up often in discussions of net neutrality. See the Save The Internet blog for another perspective on their data.
This is a project they should get right. Social Security's data centers maintain earning and benefits information for nearly every American worker, processing 75 million transactions per day. "All of our plans depend upon a strong, 21st century data center," the agency said in a recent document describing its needs. See Data Center Knowledge for more on this. Regarding the location, the agency says the new facility would need to be within 40 miles of its current location due to "data linkages" - presumably a reference to the ability to perform real-time active-active backup, where distance limitations of storage networking protocols come into play.
Date Center Knowledge has videos of the secret server and a tour of one of the container data centers.
Actually, some folks are already considering the possibility.
The Scottish tidal power project actually involves two huge data center projects. Atlantis is working with Morgan Stanley on a large data center near its planned tidal power generation site in the Pentland Firth. Internet Villages is planning a large data center campus near Dumfries that could eventually include 3 million SF of data center facilities. The alliance will split the responsibiltiies, with Atlantis handling power generation at its own site and a second location nearer the Dumfires project, while IVI will handles the marketing and be responsible for finding customers for both facilities.
The summary misses a key point: Sprint has restored its connection to Cogent, meaning the two companies can pursue their lawsuit and grievances without using customers as bargaining chips.
Data Center Knowledge has a video in which the Intel engineers who conducted the study talk in detail about the setup and the results.
Could the Google data barges survive a Hurricane? They don't look like they could outrun one, but Google's application says some of the Pelamis units could be submerged enough to ride out a major storm.
The patent application confirms that Google has data center containers. The company patented the concept several years ago, but some developers of the Google container have said they abandoned the project. But the filing describes containers being lifted on and off ships by cranes.
All the really good evil is coded and compiled deep inside the top-secret Google data centers, surrounded by moats filled with sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads.
Conspiracy theories aside, the data centers are a major innovation, and an area where Google has set standards for its competitors to chase. Google's massively scalable infrastructure is a big part of what has set it apart.
Looking at the cooling issue more broadly, here are a couple of resources that provide good information on techniques to optimize cooling on a budget:
The Hot Aisle: Great blog from Steve O'Donnell with practical ways to implement hot-aisle or cold-aisle containment and economizers.
Data Center Knowledge: Recent articles look at "roll your own" thermal monitoring solutions and using excess heat in swimming pools and greenhouses.
This is a huge topic, since so many different strategies are being brought to bear. For data center operators, energy efficiency is a business imperative since the power bills are soaring. Here are some sources offering ongoing reading about Green Data Centers:
The Green Data Center Blog
Data Center Knowledge
Groves Green IT
The Big List of Green Technology Blogs
This year the top 500 also tracks how much power is used by each system. Systems under development at Oak Ridge National Lab will reportedly have annual power bills of more than $30 million when they debut in 2012. See ComputerWorld and Data Center Knowledge for more.
There's more info on Switch Communications and its Vegas supercenter at The Register, Data Center Knowledge and the Silverback Migration blog. These stories talk about their cooling system, which handles 1,500 watts per SF with air cooling. Gotta love that video on the Switch web site.
Too late. They're already putting data centers in caves. They'll soon be filled with nerds.
It's not just data center designers that are in demand. There are a ton of listings for data center managers at the Data Center Jobs site.
Data Center Knowledge has a story on the downtime at The Planet, summarizing the information from the now Slashdotted forums. Only one of the company's six data centers was affected. The Planet has more than 50,000 servers in its network, meaning that one on five customers are offline.
The containers in the Chicago data center will be used to support Office Live. Since they're buying 220 of them, they must figure Office Live is gonna get some use.
The Virtual Earth team is an early adopter of the Microsoft containers, and has posted pictures of what they look like on the inside. Note that they're using customized Forest containers from Verari Systems rather than Rackable or Sun (at least at this point).
Prominent search expert Danny Sullivan outlined the reasons Google should divest Performics in a post last month at Search Engine Land. He also notes that Microsoft has a similar conflict since it owns Aquantive, whose Avenue A/Razorfish unit offers search engine optimization.
Meanwhile, there have been a bunch of major project announcements in Dublin, including major data centers for Eircom and Digital Realty Trust. Dublin has an existing data center workforce, which may be the difference.