Monday, January 28th, 2013

Time	Event
12:29p	Data Center Jobs: QTS At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from QTS (Quality Technology Services), which is seeking a Data Center Operations Technician in Sacramento, California. The Data Center Operations Technician is responsible for assisting customers on the Data Center floor both in person and via the telephone, performing customer equipment installs, managing tickets within the define ticketing system, performing base device configuration and troubleshooting. In order to resolve unique network and system related challenges and to promote growth in individual employee skill sets, other duties and responsibilities will be assigned by management as needed. To view full details and apply, see job listing details. Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our jobs RSS feed. (Comment on this)
12:50p	Cisco, NetApp Expand FlexPod Partnership Networking giant Cisco (CSCO) and storage specialist NetApp (NTAP) announced an expanded partnership to deliver new converged infrastructure under the FlexPod architecture. Cisco and NetApp are looking to present a shared vision of the unified data center, connecting enterprise clouds to service providers, enterprises to branch offices and clouds to clouds. The expanded partnership will provide deeper integration for the more than 2,100 FlexPod customers. FlexPod is a Cisco and NetApp validated data center platform for hosting business applications on virtualized or bare-metal servers. The set of solutions will bring together NetApp Clustered ONTAP and NetApp FAS storage systems with Cisco UCS servers and Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches to create dynamically provisioned pools of server, storage and network resources that can be scaled up and scaled down by service providers depending on application requirements. To enhance architecture integration, FlexPod will provide the ability to manage up to 10,000 servers, allowing organizations to aggregate several FlexPod racks and enable multihop Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCOE).  Support is also being added for Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (Cisco IAC) to allow cloud management solutions for FlexPod customers. To accelerate momentum in the service provider market Cisco and NetApp are developing flexible, massively scalable FlexPod solutions capable of handling multi-data-center service provider architectures. ExpressPod, with support for VMware vSphere, will also soon include support for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, and will be extended to meet the compute, network and storage needs of branch offices. Cisco and NetApp are expanding solution coverage to add more mission-critical applications and private cloud solutions for the datacenter. Mission critical solutions include Oracle Database and applications, SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence and the SAP HANA platform, and private cloud offerings include Microsoft private cloud and Citrix CloudPlatform. “The past 10 years of partnering with NetApp have proven to be successful in bringing a Cisco validated, FlexPod architecture to our customers,” said Padmasree Warrior, chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco. Building on that success, we’re now expanding our partnership to deliver deeper technology integration and broader solution development across the unified data center for an open, scalable, multicloud infrastructure. Together we can help our customers use their current data center investment to address the challenges of a mobile-cloud era.” “NetApp and Cisco share a common vision for the future of the data center and will continue to collaborate on innovations that connect organizations under a holistic cloud architecture,” said Manish Goel, executive vice president, Product Operations at NetApp. Our development, sales, and channel teams will work even closer to deliver new solutions that broaden the market opportunities for both companies and our partners, and help customers gain a competitive advantage from their flexible and efficient agile data center infrastructure.” (Comment on this)
2:14p	Modular Data Center Park Planned for Barcelona The ALBA Synchotron, a scientific research facility in Parc De l’Alba, where AST Modular is helping develop a modular park called the Barcelona Data Center Cluster. An entire campus for modular data centers? That’s the concept for a new project coming together in Barcelona, where the government of Catalonia is teaming with AST Modular on the Barcelona Data Center Cluster, a 320,000 square foot development dedicated to modular deployments. The campus will allow companies to lease lots on which they can gradually deploy data center capacity in phases by adding additional modules, which can either be housed on a slab or inside a “container colo” structure, based on customer preferences. The initiative is one of the first proposals to develop a large-scale campus around modular data centers, pre-fabricated structures built in factories that require less on-site infrastructure than a traditional data center. A number of colocation and wholesale data center specialists have offered space for container modules, most notable i/o Data Centers, which operates huge modular facilities in Phoenix and New Jersey. The project will be located within Parc de l’Alba in Cerdanyola des Valles, a business park focused on attracting leading technology companies. The park is anchored by the ALBA Synchotron, a cluster of research laboratories built around a synchotron - a huge circular-shaped machine that uses arrays of magnets to generate bright beams of synchrotron light. The ALBA Synchotron opened last year. “The BCN Data Center Cluster is an initiative part of the ongoing commitment of Government of Catalonia towards the promotion of Parc de l’Alba as one of Europe’s most advanced technology parks,” said Pere Solà, Parc de l’Alba’s General Director. The data center project will commence this week with a launch event this week. The campus will feature 30 megawatts of power with dual A and B feeds, a natural gas ring which feeds the cluster, district cooling produced by co-generation power plants and access to the widest range of connectivity provider. The space devoted to data centers has been divided into modular lots for customers. AST Modular is based in Barcelona and specializes in providing modular data centers to global customers including IBM and Opera. It has deployed modules that support IT gear in environments ranging from the cool climates of Iceland and the summer heat of the Iraqi desert. AST Modular will act as Barcelona Data Center Cluster’s technology advisor. “In today’s Capex constrained environment, the BCN Data Center Cluster offer enterprise businesses in Europe the answer to their raising data center needs,” said Henry Daunert, CEO at AST Modular. “It is according to such speficic market conditions that we are suggesting for BCN DC Cluster a data center ‘build as you need’ model which is very agile and intends to align IT to business and reduce data center energy consumption. We are indeed thrilled to be driving the initiative from a technology standpoint.” (Comment on this)
2:25p	The Taxonomy of Exascalar Winston Saunders has worked at Intel for nearly two decades and currently leads server and data center efficiency initiatives. Winston is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Washington. You can find him online at “Winston on Energy” on Twitter. WINSTON SAUNDERS Intel This is the third post in a series on Exascalar. See Part II. The Exascalar plot of the recent Green500 data shows a triangular shape (as shown in Part I) reproduced below with a triangle added for emphasis. The shape is so persistent I decided to spend a little time thinking about what the shape means and thought I’d share some insights. Of course, this being social media, comments and corrections are always welcome. Click to enlarge graphic. Examining the Elements To describe something, it’s best to give it a name. So I decided to give each element of the triangle a name. The upper vertex of the triangle, for instance, has the highest performance and very high (perhaps even the highest) efficiency. This corner represents “Super Computing Leadership.” The vertex at the lower right, we have seen previously, is where new architectures with higher efficiency tend to appear. This was the case with the BlueGene Architecture in June 2011, as is the case with the Xeon Phi architecture in November 2012. This corner is appropriately named the “Technology Doorway.” The corner to the left I call the “Corner of Inefficiency.” Why? As I noted in my previous blog post my previous blog post, the systems here produce no more work output that systems in the “Technology Doorway” but at this time may consume up to one hundred times more energy, representing a huge opportunity for cost-of-ownership optimization. Click to enlarge graphic. Each leg of the triangle can also be associated with a specific attribute. The base of the triangle is the lower performance cut-off of the Top500 list and is governed by performance and the population of supercomputers. The hypotenuse is constrained by system power. The associated economics push against a “Wall of Power.” We expect this edge of the triangle to be largely immobile. The right leg of the triangle is by far the most interesting as systems along this edge represent are pushing forefront of technology and efficiency innovation. This leg will push to the right as time advances. An encouraging evolution would be to see the triangle, which indicates systems are primarily retired for performance reasons, turn into more of a trapezoidal shape, where there is an equally pronounced cut-off at the “corner of inefficiency.” Given large energy budgets required for multi-MegaWatt systems. This seems like an opportunity. Future releases of Exascalar will either validate this viewpoint or provide greater insight into the development of computing technology. Until that time, as always, comments are encouraged and appreciated. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)
3:00p	Data Center News: Ciena, Akamai, Level 3 Here’s some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry: Ciena selected to upgrade Tata submarine cable to 100G.  Ciena (CIEN) announced that Tata Communications is launching 100 gigabits per second-enabled services on its TGN-Atlantic (TGN-A) subsea cable system, from New York to London. Based on the Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical Platform the GeoMesh networking solution is being used by Tata to upgrade its TGN-A submarine cable to 100G – the first on its global submarine network. The upgrade will be instrumental in increasing carrier network performance through consolidation of transport traffic. The TGN IP Transit Network (AS6453) makes up 20 percent of the world’s Internet routes and carries 4,200 Petabits of traffic per month on its Internet backbone. Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent receiver technology enables unobtrusive 40G/100G upgrades to existing submarine networks with only the addition of new terminal equipment, significantly extending the life of existing cable plants and further lengthening their lifespans into the future. “The move to 100G coherent technology on our TGN-Atlantic cable system demonstrates our leadership in global network infrastructure,” says Genius Wong, Senior Vice President of Global Network Services at Tata Communications. “Based on Ciena’s GeoMesh, this major deployment will bring maximum bandwidth, lower latencies, higher uptimes and seamless scalability for carriers and enterprises, today and in the future.” MediaMath acquires Akamai’s ADS Data Cooperative Solutions.  Digital media-buying platform company MediaMath and Akamai (AKAM) announced MediaMath’s acquisition of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions (ADS) data cooperative which will augment MediaMath’s industry-leading Data Management Platform (DMP). MediaMath will acquire substantially all of the assets associated with Akamai’s ADS business, and will integrate the Akamai ADS team into its workforce. The two companies have also signed a multi-year relationship whereby MediaMath will have exclusive rights to leverage Akamai’s pixel-free technology for use within digital advertising and marketing applications. ”We’re excited to partner with MediaMath,” said Mike Afergan, Akamai’s Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Web Experience Division. “Together, we’ll be able to provide our joint customers with an even more effective set of tools to manage their data, understand their audience, and help enhance the quality of online marketing campaigns.” TMG Health selects Level 3.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that TMG Health is depending on Level 3′s secure, redundant network solutions to better serve the needs of its clients and to improve the communications across its offices and data centers. In particular, Level 3 extended its network to the customer’s new National Operations Center in Jessup, Pennsylvania, to support a recent business expansion.  ”Level 3′s network solution makes us an attractive provider for our clients, and enables us to prove to existing and prospective clients that they can entrust us with their sensitive healthcare information,” said Chris Haran, chief information officer of TMG Health. “In addition, the fact that Level 3 owns and operates the entire network supporting our headquarters in Jessup — and protects it with a multi-layered security portfolio — allows us to reassure our customers that their sensitive data is secure. We couldn’t have expanded our operations center there without Level 3′s support.” (Comment on this)
3:36p	Lyatiss Brings Application Defined Networking to the Cloud Lyatiss believes the cloud needs to evolve to Application Defined Networking. The company took its first step toward that vision with the beta release of CloudWeaver, a tool that brings compute and network together, and allows a customer to orchestrate it all from one tool. CloudWeaver works atop of Amazon Web Services with support for additional services to come down the line. So what is CloudWeaver, and what is Application Defined Networking, for that matter? Lyatiss feels it has found something lacking in the market: cloud orchestration and visibility that reaches deep into the network. The network is often hidden to cloud infrastructure, particularly with public cloud, and latency issues are becoming critical for cloud customers. As developers build increasingly sophisticated and constantly changing applications, monitoring and troubleshooting an infrastructure based on a “black box network” becomes a challenge. Application Defined Networking looks to connect the network to the cloud, through an intuitive orchestration of cloud networking. Addressing the Limitations of SDN Software Defined Networking (SDN) defines a new architecture for the “network machine” and is the first step in trying to address these issues. But Lyatiss feels that SDN solutions only partially fulfill the need for agile networking and don’t solve the problems that application administrators experience in the cloud. SDN is not sufficient to address the predictability and performance issues encountered in current cloud applications, nor can it meet the need for infrastructure differentiation and software control in this scenario. Instead, Lyatiss asserts, the cloud industry will have to evolve to Application Defined Networking (ADN) that orchestrates application flows. ADN accelerates and streamlines the movement of data throughout the entire virtual infrastructure of each application. ADN gives the application the ability to adapt its networking environment using APIs, so that application delivery and performance across public and private cloud networks are optimized, without compromising on application portability or security. “It’s a top down approach, and the goal is to serve the application,” said Pascale Vicat-Blanc, CEO of Lyatiss. “In the cloud, there are immediate needs that have to be covered. ADN answers these needs – this gives customers greater visibility of the network. This is related to SLAs in the cloud.” Focus on Infrastructure, Not the Application An application developer can’t see the latency constraints in the cloud, said Vicat-Blanc. With Lyatiss, “you can build the communication graph of the application. You also get the knowledge of how, the application performance management.” The difference between Application Performance Management and Application Defined Networking is that you’re not instrumenting the application, you’re instrumenting the infrastructure. CloudWeaver shares the communication patterns and correlates them. The company started in France, and has a history of helping high demanding applications get the best of networks. Headquarted in Silicon Valley, the team consists of more than 20 people and is expected to double this year. How Cloudweaver Works First the Cloudweaver application runs a discovery. A customer provides his or her Amazon credentials, and in a few minutes, a network topology map is created.  ”This is the first time a customer has seen a visual representation of what their AWS infrastructure looks like,” said Ankit Agarwal, VP of product at Lyatiss. A flow map is created, which is a heat map showing the network path and points of latency. For public cloud, this is deep insight into the network. CloudWeaver analyzes the data, the latency and throughput information, usage analysis, and has bottleneck detection. It shows usage statistics, allows the setting of user defined thresholds, and orchestrates it all – moving, changing and cloning nodes as needed. It has built in network services for integration, reconfiguring network resources. “It’s a very tight coupling of the network and the instances,” said Agarwal. “I need to be able to perform solo actions and network actions. I need to perform  network actions like creating a load balancer. :ater, you’ll be able to secure other network services for security, VPN.” A CloudWeaver customer can see the region and availability zones. If the customer clicks on a node, information comes up, for more information, a customer can SSH into the node. CloudWeaver can helps fix the following: Unpredictable latencies and uneven user experiences.  Potentially disastrous cascading effects from bottlenecks, failures and cloud outages. Poor performance and lack of isolation from a large number of users. Wasted capacity resulting from over-provisioned infrastructure. Increased networking complexity, making it almost unmanageable. Spiraling costs from lack of visibility in resource interactions. Several use cases were provided. The first is in staging, allowing customers to anticipate high loads. Customers are using CloudWeaver to test with specific configurations and  topologies to identify weakest point of infrastructure and remediate. “It’s difficult to plan in advance without seeing and imitating these situations,” said Agarwal. The other use is for planning and programming. The company gave a customer example of a social gaming company using CloudWeaver. The company provides a platform for games, and can need to scale from 500,000 to 2 million users for a few hours. It’s critical for the company to anticipate activity and get the right metrics of trends in real time. They use them for accessing the capacity they need, and like the graphical user interface. CloudWeaver can also be used as a staging environment to demonstrate potential scenarios to management. This helps save time and money, because the user doesn’t have to oversize the infrastructure. CloudWeaver is delivered in a SaaS model, and has an intuitive GUI. It has a RESTful API and SDN-SDK for easy integration. “This is a very cohesive orchestration that brings compute and network together, and you do it all from one tool,” said Agarwal. “Customers need awareness and intelligence of application flow,” said Vicat-Blanc (Comment on this)
4:30p	The ‘Symphony of Cables’ at Equinix This photo of the Equinix SV5 data center shows the colorful overhead trays housing the miles of cabling for interconnections. (Photo: Equinix Inc.) The social media team at Equinix recently posted some cool photos of the company’s SV1 and SV5 data centers in San Jose. “Do you love the symphony of cables like we do?” asked Equinix’s Phil Schwarzmann. It’s the latest example of data center companies showcasing the visual interest of their mission-critical facilities. Check out 10 Beautiful Photos of Equinix Data Centers on the Interconnections blog. For more “data centers as art,” see The Top 10 Data Center Images of 2012. (Comment on this)

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