[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.

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).

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NEW YORK, Jul 11, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Uptime Institute, a division of The 451 Group, today announced the complete results of its second annual data center industry survey. The survey was developed to collect data on an annual basis around Digital Infrastructure deployment trends, procurement plans, measurement and standards practices, and other topics that impact the mission-critical data center industry.

"Among many interesting upward trends, we continue to see an increase in data center budgets, which is a pleasant surprise as many budgets in the IT sector are on the decline," said Matt Stansberry, Uptime Institute Director of Content and Publications. "Our survey, which has already piqued industry recognition in its early stages, is a true picture of where the industry is headed as our sample base represents many of the top data center owners and operators across the globe."

Click here to view the key findings of the survey

The 2012 survey represents responses from more than 2,000 owners, operators, vendors, consultants and users from around the world. The survey report focuses on the 1,100 owners and operators from this pool. Respondents were largely represented by the financial industry, technology service providers, manufacturing and government agencies. Over 75% manage more than one data center, with North America being the best-represented region.

Uptime Institute’s complete survey report drills down on many of the data points, carving out segments by company size, geography and vertical industry. It includes Uptime Institute’s expert analysis on Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) adoption, equipment manufacturer market share, energy saving strategies for data center operators, and much more. Complimentary access to the full report is available for download with registration: http://uptimeinstitute.com/2012-survey-results.

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.

“No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.” It’s a funny email signature, but how many inconvenienced electrons does it take to power the internet?

In 2011, the digital universe, or the amount of information created and replicated, reached 1.8 trillion gigabytes, and this digital universe is doubling in size every two years. Much of that digital information is housed in data centers around the world, and running these data centers requires a huge amount of electrical energy.

A 10-megawatt (MW) data center can use the energy of a small town at a cost of around $300,000 a month. Couple that with the fact that there are over 500,000 data centers in the world, according to Emerson Network Power, and we’re talking about 2% of all electrical energy used globally. So, running the internet uses upwards of 406 terawatts per year, assuming 20.3 petawatt-hours as the world’s annual electrical energy consumption.

The odd thing is that in traditional data centers, only half of the energy consumed is useful for running the digital universe: powering the servers that hold our emails, social networking profiles, and the like. The other half of the energy goes into cooling those servers, or it’s lost as heat when electricity is changed between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC).

What are the 4 trends driving the future of Data Center infrastructure design and management?

Click here to read the full energy usage article