DVL Group Blog with Helpful Information on Running Your Data Center

Why Test Your Circuit Breakers? Because They Fail

by Mike Rinaldi on 6/21/12 1:53 PM

Amazon Traces Cloud Outage To Faulty Breaker

Improperly configured breaker opened and brought down portion of cloud

[Data Center Dynamics]

Amazon Web Services has released details about the root cause of the outage of one of its public-cloud’s availability zones that started in the evening on 14 June and lasted until next morning, US Pacific time.

In a note posted on the cloud’s status dashboard, the company said the outage was caused by a cable fault in the power distribution system of the electric utility that served the data center hosting the US-East-1 region of the cloud in northern Virginia.

The entire facility was switched over to back-up generator power, but one of the generators overheated and powered off because of a defective cooling fan. The virtual-machine instances and virtual-storage volumes that were powered by this generator were transferred to a secondary back-up power system, provided by a separate power-distribution circuit that has its own backup generator capacity.

But, one of the breakers on this backup circuit was configured incorrectly and opened as soon as the load was transferred to the circuit. The breaker was set up to open at too low a power threshold.

“After this circuit breaker opened … the affected instances and volumes were left without primary, back-up, or secondary back-up power,” Amazon’s note read.

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A survey by Hartford Insurance Company found that air circuit breakers represent 19.5% of electrical power system failures. Test results on circuit breakers by NETA (InterNational Electrical Testing Association) firms show over a 15% failure rate. Defective circuit breakers can allow extensive damage, personal injury, or make an outage more widespread when a fault occurs. They can also trip when they shouldn’t, causing expensive downtime.

> Request Circuit Breaker Test Information

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Topics: data center infrastructure, reduce cost, Data Center, data center design, cloud computing, data center infrastructure management, robust data center, electrical distribution, reduce downtime, data center outages, cloud strategy

How Much Energy Does the Internet Use?

by Mike Rinaldi on 6/18/12 4:11 PM

“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?

Internet Energy Usage

Click here to read the full energy usage article

Topics: Emerson Network Power, data center infrastructure, reduce cost, Data Center, data center design, kW per rack, data center infrastructure management, DVL, electrical distribution, reduce downtime, data center outages

What Functionality is Important for DCIM Solutions?

by Mike Rinaldi on 6/5/12 10:50 AM

Michael Potts | May 29, 2012

With more and more companies offering some type of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution (see Appendix 1 of the DCK Guide to DCIM for a partial list of vendors), it is difficult to narrow down a defined set of functional components. There are some critical elements found in many of the solutions, which include:

Asset, Change and Configuration Management
Real-Time Monitoring
Workflow
Analytics and Reporting
Visualization of the Physical and Virtual Infrastructure
User Interface
Capacity Planning
Integration with Other Data Center Management Solutions

What are the 4 Trends Driving the Future of Data Center Infrastructure Design and Management?

This is the third article in the Data Center Knowledge Guide to DCIM series. To download the complete DCK Guide to DCIM click here.

Click here and then click on What Functionality is Important for DCIM Solutions to read the entire article.

Topics: data center infrastructure, Data Center, Green IT, data center design, data center energy, data center infrastructure management, robust data center, Green Technology

Is There a Solution to Expand IT Capacity When You Are Out of Space?

by Mike Rinaldi on 5/30/12 3:20 PM

The SmartRow infrastructure solution solves a problem all too common to IT management: addressing IT needs without building new data center space. Think of the SmartRow approach as a data center in a row--a simple, fully integrated row-based infrastructure. The SmartRow offering combines up to 10 data center racks--with precision cooling, UPSs, power management, monitoring and control technologies, and fire suppression--all in an enclosed system.

"We did not have to build a special computer room to install the SmartRow", Todd Bayley, Technical Architect-Network Information Technology Department, Pasco County, FL

Learn more here!

Topics: data center infrastructure, reduce cost, Data Center, data center design, kW per rack, data center energy, data center infrastructure management, robust data center, DVL, reduce downtime, data center outages

Is Your Data Center Prepared For What's Next?

by Mike Rinaldi on 5/9/12 2:23 PM

DVL/Emerson Network Power provides a holistic data center solution to ensure the continuity of your business critical systems. We are proud to show you complete data center infrastructure solutions that include the Trellis real-time infrastructure optimization platform, Smart Solutions power, cooling and delivery systems and comprehensive Liebert Services for support of your entire data center life cycle. These combined solutions ensure optimal availability, capacity and efficiency for your critical environments.

Today at DVL in Bristol, PA, over 80 people took the opportunity to tour the SmartRow infrastructure solution, see the Trellis platform and discover new Liebert Services for their comprehensive data center needs.

If you did not have time to make it today, feel free to stop by tomorrow for the event!

REGISTER AT WWW.DVLNET.COM

SmartRow