Trends in Data Center Modularity

by Mike Rinaldi on 10/9/12 3:39 PM

Emerson Webcast:  "Outside the Box"

Trends in Data Center Modularity

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 | 4 PM Eastern

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As demand for high-availability, rapid-deployment IT infrastructure continues to increase with the proliferation of on demand I T services and mission-critical applications, modular data center solutions have emerged as a favorable option for businesses that need to add data capacity and capability quickly – offering users a turn-key solution that is not only portable but flexible and scalable.

Explore emerging market demands for modular data center solutions and how these approaches are being used to achieve cost effective just-in-time growth, serve as “satellite” data center extensions or become stand-alone solutions. Then see how modular approaches are being applied to power and cooling to extend the efficiencies a modular approach can offer.

  • Presenters
    • Ron Bednar
    • David R. Pickut, P.E., President , Pickut Technologies
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Topics: data center infrastructure, Data Center, data center design, data center energy, private cloud, data center infrastructure management, PUE

ASHRAE: Warmer Data Centers Good for Some, Not All

by Mike Rinaldi on 10/5/12 3:23 PM

Don Beaty has built some of the world’s most efficient data centers. Between 2004 and 2011,  Beaty has been resonsible for crafting recommendations on data center cooling for the leading industry group for heating and cooling professionals. Those dual roles have provided Beaty with a unique vantage point on the evolution of new strategies to cool servers – implementing cutting-edge techniques for the industry’s leading innovator as his “day job,” while working to develop standards and recommendations that can work for a broad spectrum of data center operators.

Beaty has grown accustomed to managing the heat. This week marks the release of the latest guidelines on data center cooling from ASHRAE  (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), which reflect the growing momentum for operating servers at higher levels of temperature and humidity. “Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments” is published by ASHRAE’s Technical Committee (TC) 9.9, which was co-founded by Beaty and IBM’s Roger Schmidt to provide specialized guidance on data center cooling.
Published on October 5, 2012 by Rich Miller-Data Center Knowledge
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Allowable vs. Recommended ASHRAE Guidelines - Design Your Data Center

The majority of data centers have multiple generations of technology, some type of spinning disc, some type of tape storage and maybe even some mainframe systems.  These data centers can still be extremely energy efficient, but are not going to see the extremes of the ASHRAE design guidelines.  They are the data centers that should probably stay with the ASHRAE recommended guidelines.  Below is an example of the recommended versus allowable ASHRAE Guidelines.  Please note that the recommended temperature guidelines didn’t change in 2011, only the allowable.

•       Temperature

•       2004 – 20C to 25C - Recommended

•       2008 – 18C to 27C - Recommended

•       2011 – 5C to 40C - Allowable

•       Humidity

•       2004 – 40 to 55% - Recommended

•       2008 – 35 to 60% - Recommended

•       2011 – 20 to 80% - Recommended

One thing we are seeing more and more of today is confusion over what temperature and humidity parameters data centers should be designed for.  Most of the discussion seems to assume that there is a monolithic block of data centers that can all be designed the same way.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Most of the data centers in existence today have a mixture of technologies and systems that all have varying environmental requirements.  We typically refer to these as mixed use data centers.  Unlike an E-Bay, Google, Microsoft or Apple data center, there is not rack after rack of the same equipment, all with similar operating requirements. 

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Topics: Data Center, kW per rack, data center energy, PUE, electrical distribution, reduce downtime, data center outages, 7x24 exchange

Do You Control Your Data Center or Is It Controlling You?

by Mike Rinaldi on 8/15/12 11:55 AM

Ever have one of those days which turn into weeks, where nothing seems to be going your way? Your boss is constantly nagging you to reduce the power usage in your data center in an effort to curb costs; a cable becomes loose somewhere (and it takes you hours to figure out where it is); a server goes down yet again, causing the network to crash. And just when you thought things were starting to go right – a power failure in the whole region has your data center shutting down for days. In this post, I am going to probe the concept of whether your data center is controlling you, rather than the other way around.  

HOW DO YOU CONTROL YOUR DATA CENTER?

-Pursuit of Efficiency

-Gaps in the Market

-Combining the Software with the Hardware

-Total Control of the Data Center

>> Read more here

Data Center Knowledge


The Question Remains:  Do you prefer hot aisle or cold aisle containment?

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Topics: data center infrastructure, Data Center, Green IT, data center design, kW per rack, data center energy, data center infrastructure management, Containment, reduce downtime

The Data Center Infrastructure Challenge

by Mike Rinaldi on 8/1/12 10:45 AM

[Data Center Journal]

To support the increasing demands of the enterprise, data centers have become denser and more complex. Unfortunately, data center managers often must rely on fragmented, historical data to manage this complexity. One specific consequence of the lack of real-time visibility across data center systems is significant inefficiencies in the allocation of physical resources, including power, cooling and space. With the added challenges of increasing energy costs and stricter regulatory requirements, these inefficiencies are hindering overall growth and have become an industry-wide problem.

data center

The problem is that the tools used to provide access and control of IT systems are different from those used to monitor the physical facilities infrastructure, and in the past the two sets of tools have not been able to “talk” to one another. This situation has required organizations to purchase multiple products for KVM, service processor management, power monitoring and sensor control.

What has been missing is true, real-time data center infrastructure management (DCIM).

> Read full article here

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Topics: Emerson Network Power, data center infrastructure, reduce cost, Data Center, Green IT, data center energy, data center infrastructure management, robust data center

Twitter: Data center problems caused outage

by Mike Rinaldi on 7/27/12 3:42 PM

By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD, The Associated Press   

LONDON (AP) — Twitter blamed systems failures — not a crush of traffic around the Olympic games — for an outage on Thursday that saw people around the world experience problems accessing the micro blogging site for more than an hour.

The San Francisco-based company said the outage was caused by a "noteworthy" double failure in its data centers. When one system fails, a parallel one is meant to take over, but two systems coincidentally stopped working at around the same time, Twitter said.

"I wish I could say that today's outage could be explained by the Olympics or even a cascading bug," Mazen Rawashdeh, VP of engineering, said in a statement apologizing to users. "Instead, it was due to this infrastructural double-whammy."

He apologized for giving its users "zilch" instead of the service, saying the company is "investing aggressively" in its systems to avoid a repeat situation.

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Is your data center prepared for an outage?

 

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Topics: data center infrastructure, reduce cost, Data Center, data center design, data center energy, robust data center, reduce downtime, data center outages

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