UPS all the way down to the wips under the floor.  Do you take it down to the receptacle level?  Do you use tools that are robust enough to let you know when you need to be alerted?

There are a number of reasons why 2013 might be the year for Data Center Infrastructure Management. DCIM software has had a number of years to mature, addressing the need for high levels of discipline in the data center. There are various factors that have contributed to the emergence of DCIM as a priority for data center operators- even if many of them are still sorting out the best way forward.

“The economy led to a break/fix mentality in the data center at first, but we seem to be out of that now,” said Mark Harris, Nlyte Software’s vice president of marketing and strategy. “The energy crisis put a lot of adult supervision into the data center. A lot of questions were being asked, and a lot of those questions were about the physical makeup.”

DCIM provides a holistic view of the entire data center ecosystem, dynamically recognizing all the pieces and how they’re interrelated. It helps to plan ahead, both for growth and potential disasters (what happens when a piece of equipment is removed?). It is being touted as the ERP application for the data center. And as with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), it is addressing a complicated challenge. When a device is introduced, changes or fails, it changes the makeup of these complex facilities.

Click here for 10 predictions for what 2013 holds for DCIM, based on conversations with industry executives.  (Data Center Knowledge)

For many years, the standard data center design employed a raised floor, with cool air flowing under the floor and up into the server area through perforated tiles. In recent years, many new facilities have opted for a hard floor or “slab” design in which cold air enters the server area from above. In this video, Uptime Institute Executive Director Pitt Turner addresses the raised floor versus slab floor debate in the data center, explaining the consequences, costs and outcomes of different decisions. “There is no one right answer,” Pitt says. This video runs about 8 minutes.  

-Data Center Knowledge

Which solution do you prefer?

An organization that provides professional development and technical support to special education K-12 students – found its data center infrastructure to be prone to frequent outages and poor performance, which had a negative impact on the availability of student-targeted services. In addition, their environment was not designed to house a data center and did not have dedicated fire suppression.

What challenged the organization's IT manager and the rest of his team was that they would need to install any infrastructure upgrade solution quickly – between Friday evening and Monday morning – and that the IT space they had was small; only around 130 square feet.

While researching a solution to fit their needs, the organization attended an education technology conference - in search of the right offering. At the conference, the IT manager visited the Emerson Network Power booth, saw a demo of the SmartRow infrastructure, and sat in on a presentation.   

The rest is history - a New Data Center in 48 hours! 

See the SmartRow in Person

A simple, cost-effective solution designed to quickly expand IT capacity when you don't have the luxury of more data center white space.

October 29 - Harrisburg

October 30 - Philadelphia

November 1 - Penn State

November 2 - Princeton

The fallout from the Sunday September 23rd NY Times front page article entitled “Power, Pollution and the Internet” which was purported as an “investigative reporting” piece has begun to spread.   In my last blog, I jokingly remarked that “the general public would go out and tweet and post Facebook tirades on their newest iPhones”.  Well it has clearly moved beyond that.

Only a few days later on Sept 27, Ranking Committee Members of the US House of Representatives Henry A. Waxman, Member Bobby L. Rush and Anna G. Eshoo sent letters to the US Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “to request an update on efforts to improve energy efficiency in data centers across the county”.  

This was posted as an open letter to the US EPA and DOE in effect demanding an explanation of how and why they could allow the apparently flagrant energy and environmental disaster equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill happen, while these two major government agencies ignored the travesty. The letter specifically cited the NY Times article as the cause for their concerns and the motivating force behind the letter. Perhaps by triggering the open letter from members of Congress, the NY Times may feel they have brought “justice” to the ostensibly polluting, wasteful world of the Data Center Industry,  in the same vein as the Washington Post’s breaking open of the Watergate scandal.  

I agree that there are many "older" data centers that are less efficient than the newest designs.  There is no question that there is always room for improvement in almost any system or process and the data center is no exception.  However, the NY Times article did not provide both sides of the issue, perhaps because that would have made it less controversial.

Published on 8th October 2012 by Julius Neudorfer, Data Center Dynamics

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