Muliple Generator Failures Cause 2nd Amazon Outage

Amazon Web Services says that the repeated failure of multiple generators in a single data center caused last Friday night’s power outage, which led to downtime for Netflix, Instagram and many other popular web sites. The generators in this facility failed to operate properly during two utility outages over a short period Friday evening when the site lost utility power, depleting the emergency power in the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.

Amazon said the data center outage affected a small percentage of its operations, but was exacerbated by problems with systems that allow customers to spread workloads across multiple data centers. The company apologized for the outage and outlined the steps it will take to address the problems and prevent a recurrence.

Winning company will receive “Less Watts” Award to kick off Greenbuild 2013 in Philadelphia

DVL Group, a provider of data center power, cooling and infrastructure management solutions, has pledged to assist 12 data centers achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification and save 1,000,000 watts of electrical energy. Three companies that save the most watts will receive the Less Watts Award and DVL will donate $1,000 to the Delaware Valley Green Building Council (DVGBC) in each company’s name.

DVGBC is a chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which set the standards for LEED building. DVL will work with each company to achieve LEED Certification, administered by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). LEED Certification verifies that a building was designed and built using strategies aimed at achieving high performance in key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

Facilities and IT personnel interested in making their data centers more efficient by participating in the Less Watts competition should attend DVL’s “Are You Prepared For What’s Next?” event at their Bristol, PA facility. The free conference takes place on May 9 and 10, offering the same seminars each day. All courses will feature IACET-authorized CEUs. The virtual Less Watts Award ceremony will kick off the annual Greenbuild International Conference and Expo.

On May 3^rd, 2012, Mayor Nutter made an announcement to celebrate the annual Greenbuild Conference, which will take place in Philadelphia from November 20-22, 2013. DVGBC is the host chapter for the three-day event. The convention will feature speakers, networking opportunities, industry showcases, LEED workshops and tours of Philadelphia’s green buildings.

DVL wants to show companies that it only takes one positive, “green-friendly” action to set the tone for data center efficiency and sustainability. Its hope for the Less Watts competition is for LEED Certification to become a priority for more organizations, and for these organizations to work with DVL to achieve this goal.

To register for either day of DVL’s “What’s Next?” event, visit www.dvlnet.com/prepared-for-whats-next-/. To learn more about how DVL merges its innovative “Strategy First” technique with quality solutions to build dynamic data centers, visit www.dvlnet.com. For more information on Greenbuild 2013 in Philadelphia, head to http://dvgbc.org/greenbuild-2013.

What is your DCIM strategy?

The Data Center industry is in need of of a solution that bridges the IT and facilities systems and provides data in appropriate interfaces across IT and facilities groups.  A holistic DCIM strategy is a data center manager’s best partner in meeting the stringent business demands in a modern-day data center environment. To successfully implement a DCIM strategy, data center managers must be on the lookout for the best family of hardware, software and services that allows them to address the critical infrastructure gap.

A new perspective on managing the critical infrastructure gaps is emerging that recognizes:

• The importance of real-time data to understand the true capacity of available infrastructure
• The criticality of interdependencies between logical and physical layers
• The need for holistic management capabilities and visibility of IT and facilities infrastructures
• The need for more powerful management tools that offer a rich, visual view of the infrastructure and can guide design and change management