Google has engineers whose primary job is to figure out how much power and cooling they can get in a rack.
Yes. Google are unusually well-educated consumers. I imagine they're a dream for a data centre to work with.
The big issue that colo centers are not dealing with is security between customers --- one customer taking down another customer's equipment. It's much easier than you might imagine.
Oh, believe me, I can imagine. Part of my job is to help people understand that this is one of the many things that differentiates us from most data centres. I think we're on the same page.:)
I work at a co-lo facility now. The problem is probably that what people call redundant power often isn't highly available, nor is usage distributed correctly across the primary and redundant circuits. If one half of your power fails and you've mis-used or overloaded your redundant circuit then the redundant circuit is going to fail when it can't take the load that gets switched over to it. This is a result of poor planning.
Keep in mind that often people have back-up power that's not conditioned, which is what is indicated by LJ's message. If the power were redundant and both sides were through UPSes, there would be no dirty power at all. A lot of co-lo facilities go on the cheap and their back-up power is just another circuit from a different transformer or a different Hydro company. So think about it: if the grid, transformer or power switching infrastructure fails, and you only have one back-up generator that also fails, or your UPS batteries can't take the pressure, or any of two dozen other things, your power has gone bye-bye.
My prediction (which we are already seeing at my job) is that power and cooling are the Next Big Problems for co-lo. With blade servers demanding 220V, 30A 3-phase power and pulling 8kVA in 6U of space, no data centre as currently designed will be able to handle that on the scale we're going to see develop in the next year or two. People assumed power and cooling were unlimited resources. We were wrong. Oops!
BTW, if what LJ is saying is true, this has little to do with Six Apart or Danga. It's Internap's fault within that particular data centre. The sales engineers/technical consultants/whatever they're called at Internap should have thought about this and pushed for audits, but they probably didn't. I doubt Danga knew enough about the potential problem to make good decisions about it: they're just a customer and assumed that the power would work. It's an infrastructure thing, and while the customer should educate themselves, they often don't. It's why I bug my customers constantly with power audits and suggestions.
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Yes. Google are unusually well-educated consumers. I imagine they're a dream for a data centre to work with.
The big issue that colo centers are not dealing with is security between customers --- one customer taking down another customer's equipment. It's much easier than you might imagine.
Oh, believe me, I can imagine. Part of my job is to help people understand that this is one of the many things that differentiates us from most data centres. I think we're on the same page. :)
(I don't work for Internap, obviously.)
I work at a co-lo facility now. The problem is probably that what people call redundant power often isn't highly available, nor is usage distributed correctly across the primary and redundant circuits. If one half of your power fails and you've mis-used or overloaded your redundant circuit then the redundant circuit is going to fail when it can't take the load that gets switched over to it. This is a result of poor planning.
:)
Keep in mind that often people have back-up power that's not conditioned, which is what is indicated by LJ's message. If the power were redundant and both sides were through UPSes, there would be no dirty power at all. A lot of co-lo facilities go on the cheap and their back-up power is just another circuit from a different transformer or a different Hydro company. So think about it: if the grid, transformer or power switching infrastructure fails, and you only have one back-up generator that also fails, or your UPS batteries can't take the pressure, or any of two dozen other things, your power has gone bye-bye.
My prediction (which we are already seeing at my job) is that power and cooling are the Next Big Problems for co-lo. With blade servers demanding 220V, 30A 3-phase power and pulling 8kVA in 6U of space, no data centre as currently designed will be able to handle that on the scale we're going to see develop in the next year or two. People assumed power and cooling were unlimited resources. We were wrong. Oops!
BTW, if what LJ is saying is true, this has little to do with Six Apart or Danga. It's Internap's fault within that particular data centre. The sales engineers/technical consultants/whatever they're called at Internap should have thought about this and pushed for audits, but they probably didn't. I doubt Danga knew enough about the potential problem to make good decisions about it: they're just a customer and assumed that the power would work. It's an infrastructure thing, and while the customer should educate themselves, they often don't. It's why I bug my customers constantly with power audits and suggestions.
Just something to think about.