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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.

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

Cutting Data Center Cooling Costs in Room & Row-Based Applications

by Mike Rinaldi on 7/26/12 3:00 PM

When selecting a precision cooling system to support high-availability (and often high-density) data center deployments, today’s data center manager faces tougher choices than ever before. Explore how modular, air-cooled precision cooling systems can help you improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption without adversely impacting the availability of your critical IT equipment.

WEBCAST: 4 PM

REGISTER HERE

This free webcast explores:

New emerging cooling design strategies
Optimizing energy efficiency
Enhancing flexibility within the data center cooling infrastructure
See inside the latest cooling technologies
Examine PUE, ROI, TCO

Topics: Emerson Network Power, data center infrastructure, Data Center, data center design, kW per rack, data center energy, robust data center, DVL, DC Power, CRV, critical air conditioning

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.

> Read the full article" target="_blank"> >> Read the full article

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

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

Twitter: Data center problems caused outage

Cutting Data Center Cooling Costs in Room & Row-Based Applications

Why Test Your Circuit Breakers? Because They Fail

Amazon Traces Cloud Outage To Faulty Breaker

Improperly configured breaker opened and brought down portion of cloud

What Functionality is Important for DCIM Solutions?

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

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