Friday, March 15th, 2013

Time	Event
12:30p	Do You Know the Hydro-Footprint Of Your Data Center? Ron Vokoun DBIA, LEED AP BD+C, leads the Mission Critical Market for JE Dunn Construction’s western region. Ron is a 25-year veteran of the construction industry with a focus on mission critical facilities and sustainability. Harold Simmons, Director of Strategy and Mission Critical Solutions for United Metal Products, co-authored this article. See more on Simmons below. RON VOKOUN JE Dunn Construction In my last column, Water Consciousness Continues in the Data Center, cooling technologies that are proven to reduce the consumption of water were discussed. I also outlined issues surrounding the availability and potential alternative sources of water for data center cooling. Clearly, there are ways to make data center water usage more sustainable. In this column, let’s discuss the complex relationship between water and energy use in the data center. WUE and PUE The Green Grid has been at the forefront of the data center energy efficiency movement and is again leading the way in monitoring the use of water in data centers. The Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) established a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metric to measure the amount of water used in a data center. Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) is a metric to evaluate water use and it is being promoted by the Green Grid. The complexity in the relationship between water and energy use can be illustrated by comparing WUE and PUE in a particular data center. If your focus is purely on reducing on-site water use, you can use air-cooled chillers and have a great WUE. However, there may be a premium paid in the form of higher energy usage compared to a technology such as evaporative cooling depending on your location, thereby elevating your PUE. An aspect of water use that is often ignored is the amount of water used in the production of the power that is used in the data center, which leads us to the discussion of hydro-footprint. Hydro-Footprint Depending on the location of your data center, the production of power can be quite water intensive. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) performed a study titled Consumptive Water Use for U.S. Power Production (PDF) that analyzed the amount of water used in the production of power in each state. Illustrating the impact of water used in the production of power, let’s continue, using the data from my last column. According to the NREL study, power produced in the state of Arizona, on average, uses 7.85 gallons of water per kilowatt-hour. The table below illustrates the annual power use for a 36,000 CFM cooling unit using four different technologies. (Assumptions for both charts: DC located in Phoenix, based on ASHRAE recommended humidity range, based on inlet supply temperature to servers at 80-degrees F, water and power consumption is for 36,000 CFM unit, data is representative and does not apply to all brands, and data provided by United Metal Products.) Click to enlarge graphic. The table below shows the amount of water used annually for cooling for the four different technologies, as well as the amount of water used in the production of the power used in their operation giving the total hydro-footprint of each unit. Click to enlarge graphic. As you can see, although the air-cooled chiller uses the least amount of water in cooling operations, it’s higher power use yields a higher overall hydro-footprint than Options 1 & 2. This exercise highlights the need to look at water use more holistically and include the water used in the production of power. The Green Grid’s WUE metric also has the ability to take this into consideration by adding the water used during the production of the power used by the cooling equipment to the annual site water usage. WUE Source calculation. Whichever metric you use, it will help you weigh the options for both power and water consumption and make an informed decision. By tracking your data centers’ efficiency in consuming water and energy, you take a huge step toward creating a more operationally sustainable data center environment. HAROLD SIMMONS United Metal Products Co-author Harold Simmons is Director of Strategy and Mission Critical Solutions for United Metal Products and Chil-Pak. 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)
1:30p	Asetek Liquid Cooling To Support EU Initiative A server tray using Asetek’s Rack CDU Liquid Cooling system. The piping system connects to a cooling distribution unit. (Source: Asetek) Previously reserved for extreme densities and supercomputers, liquid cooling continues to make strides in the data center. Asetek announced that its data center liquid cooling solutions are a part of the European Commission roadmap for moving to a low-carbon economy.  The solutions will support a new initiative by the European Commission to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030. “The new initiative to reduce EU greenhouse gasses validates Asetek’s own goals of reducing data center energy costs and emissions.  Data centers consume today 2% of global electricity.  Our liquid cooling solutions will play a key role in reaching energy goals around the globe as data centers concentrate more and more on efficiency,” said David Garcia, VP & GM of Asetek’s Data Center Business Unit. Liquid cooling has been used in U.S. government data centers that house supercomputers, and has made inroads towards enabling  rack servers and blade servers as well.  Late last year the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it will convert one of its data centers to use a liquid cooling system from Asetek. The primary product from Asetek in use is its RackCDU — a hot water, direct-to-chip, data center liquid cooling system. It removes heat from CPUs, GPUs, memory modules and other hot spots within servers and takes it all the way out of the data center using liquid, where it can be cooled for free using outside ambient air, or recycled for building heat or hot-water. Denmark-based Asetek recently filed for an Initial Public Offering on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Offering between 3.6 and 4.35 million new shares, the company hopes to raise approximately $25 million. The company’s RackCDU was also selected by Norway’s University of Tromsø for a pilot install of the liquid cooling rack in the university’s High Performance Computing facility. Asetek will reduce energy consumption of the data center and enable waste heat from servers to heat the university campus. (Comment on this)
2:00p	Schneider Electric Sharpens Focus on Service Providers Energy management conglomerate Schneider Electric this week announced two new teams, one to focus on data center service providers and another to integrate Schneider’s acquisition of Lee Technologies into a software and services offering. The Data Center Service Provider Team will focus on the specific needs of colocation, hosting and cloud businesses. Its a multi-disciplinary team that brings together solution architects, global project management and execution, supply chain and account managers. “The market is moving this way,” said Chris Buckley. “It’s a very fast-growing segment of our business. This customer segment is unique. They’re doing things other customers aren’t doing.” Industry veteran Joe Reele will serve as Vice President, Data Center Solutions Architects for the new Schneider unit. Reele has more than 10 years and one million square feet of data center experience in helping organizations analyze requirements and develop cost-effective solutions. Schneider also announced the expansion of its IT Business with the launch of the Schneider Electric Mission Critical Services & Software division,and represents the full integration of Schneider Electric’s energy management services with Lee Technologies’ data center lifecycle methodology. The division will feature more than 7,000 trained specialists to work with data center clients. Jason Schafer, who is familiar to DCK readers from his tenure as an analyst at Tier 1/451 Research, has joined Schneider as Director, Technology & Operations Management for the Mission Critical Services and Software. Schafer will be responsible for the development and coordination of facility operations consultancy services. He has 18 years of experience in the mission-critical facilities field, including service in the Naval Nuclear Power Program and as a data center commissioning specialist and construction manager for Lee Technologies, where he managed data center projects for Fortune 100 enterprises and various government entities. “The launch of Schneider Electric’s Mission Critical Services & Software division and the Data Center Service Provider Team places Schneider Electric in a strategic position as the leader in end-to-end data center energy management,” said Rob McKernan, Senior Vice President, Americas, Schneider Electric IT Business. “We provide one-of-a-kind, holistic, and fully-comprehensive solutions that are unique and currently unavailable in today’s market, with energy management capabilities from planning, building and operations to energy procurement, lifecycle management and software, all from one company. This is further complemented by our team of consultative and technical experts that provide guidance every step of the way.” (Comment on this)
2:00p	Friday Funny: What’s the Best Caption? It’s Friday! You know what that means — it’s time for our Friday Funny caption contest. Take a moment to vote for the best caption for the Pot of Gold cartoon. Data Center Knowledge features a cartoon drawn by Diane Alber, our fav data center cartoonist, and our readers suggest funny captions. Please visit Diane’s website Kip and Gary for more of her data center humor. Our contest works like this: We provide the cartoon and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion. Please vote below. Take Our Poll For the previous cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel. (Comment on this)
2:15p	SEC Outsources to IO in $17.5M Contract IO Government Services, part of IO Data Centers, landed a $17.5 million contract to provide outsourced services to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is a win for IO, and a positive move for overall government data center consolidation efforts, but it does threaten the standing of the SEC’s self-run Alexandria facility and its workers. Also, this approach is significant because of what that data center does–it runs Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) an online database of corporate filings. One might conclude that government agencies are getting more and more comfortable in outsourcing higher-level, sensitive functions. This contract makes the SEC less dependent on the General Green Way building that currently houses this infrastructure. The shift will save SEC millions, according to former SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro, who wrote in a letter to Congress that outsourcing and eliminating the Alexandria facility from its portfolio of leased space would save $18 million. More government consolidation comes as no surprise, as it’s been a major ongoing initiative. The contract is for one-year with renewal options up to nine years and it’s the second contract for the outsourcing of the SEC’s staff-operated data center at 6432 General Green Way in Alexandria. The facility is leased from Cafferty Commercial Real Estate Services. According to the Washington Business Journal, Commission officials have floated several proposals over the past few years to shift the Alexandria workers to sites in downtown DC. It’s believed that the staff at the Alexandria facility would be moved to sites in downtown DC, including the SEC’s Station Place HQ. This is causing some real estate experts to question the figures Mary Shapiro stated in her letter to Congress, as the rent is higher ($61 vs. $35 per square foot) downtown compared to the Alexandria facility. However, they fail to see that rent per square foot isn’t the true expense; it’s running the actual data center that costs a significant amount. As the outsourcing initiative continues and savings are realized, bigger and bigger self-run data centers will be outsourced. (Comment on this)
3:36p	Data Center Links: Western Digital Invests in SSD Specialist Skyera Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry: Western Digital invests in Skyera.  Skyera, which makes enterprise solid state storage systems,  announced that it has received strategic funding from Western Digital Capital as part of its recently announced Series B round of financing.  The $51 million round is an extension of the strategic relationship between the two companies that also includes joint technology development. Western Digital had previously funded Skyera as its initial outside investor. “One of our primary goals in developing strategic relationships with technology  innovators in the broader storage ecosystem is to enable customers to develop highly optimized storage solutions that meet their changing data management needs,” said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer, Western Digital. “We see companies like Skyera as offering a dramatic improvement over traditional approaches to emerging storage challenges. We will continue to support innovation by collaborating with customers and partners, and investing in companies who are addressing today’s most exciting storage opportunities.” HP selected by European Commission.  HP (HPQ) announced that it has been selected by the European Commission to supply HP Integrity servers and related offerings to support critical workloads, including database-intensive applications and other critical environments, across multiple EC countries. HP will also provide associated equipment, including software,  services and support, including maintenance and professional services. “Fuelled by trends in cloud computing, big data and mobility, mission-critical demands are evolving and increasing,” said Ric Lewis, vice president and interim general manager, Business Critical Systems, HP “HP Integrity servers with the HP-UX operating environment will allow the contracting authorities to continue to confidently deploy mission-critical solutions with high levels of reliability, performance and efficiency.” Teradata Launches Warehouse Appliance 2700.  Teradata (TDC) announced the immediate worldwide shipment of the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700. Configurable from 7 terabytes to 82 terabytes of uncompressed user data per cabinet, the new appliance is a part of the Teradata Unified Data Architecture (UDA).  It features InfiniBand interconnects, 8-core Intel processors, parallel compression engines, and data-at-rest encryption for increased data security and compliance. “There is a perception that appliances are not enterprise-ready. However the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance product line drives strategic intelligence and advanced analytics for some of the world’s largest enterprises,” said Ed White, general manager, Teradata Appliances. “The scalable Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700 extends the enterprise capabilities by enhancing workload management so organizations can easily manage multiple applications. On one Teradata appliance, organizations can meet the demanding service level agreements for many different groups.” (Comment on this)
3:37p	Aspera Powers Video Delivery for UFC’s Media Empire The UFC broadcasts its mixed martial arts programming to 800 million TV households throughout 145 countries, as well as via UFC.com and every major mobile gaming platform. The company now uses Aspera to speed its digital asset delivery backbone. (Photo: UFC) The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has built a sports empire atop massive streams of video, delivering mixed martial arts action to a global audience via live pay-per-view events, reality TV shows and an endless stream of promotional videos. The UFC has turned to Aspera, which specializes in software to move large data at maximum speed, to serve as the back-end for its video services. “We needed to push large volumes of high-quality content from locations that sometimes have poor connectivity, so we developed a solution using Aspera,” said Christy King, vice president of digital and technology research and development at UFC. “There is simply no way we could have ever distributed this much content as broadly as we can today without the ability to deliver video as quickly as Aspera does.” UFC programming is broadcast to 800 million TV households throughout 145 countries, and content is hosted on UFC.com and delivered on every major mobile gaming platform including iTunes, Hulu, Xbox, Amazon, Roku, and Sony PS3. Exclusive footage offered includes fighters in training, event week activities such as workouts, weigh-ins and press conferences, and behind-the-scenes interviews. Huge Shift from Tape to Digital Eighteen months ago, the UFC delivered 90 percent of its content on tape. It has since overhauled its operation using transport technologies from Aspera, which is now delivering around 95 percent of UFC video. The relationship has had a chain reaction, as UFC’s partners also moved to digital delivery. Aspera now has over 200 clients who push and pull assets. UFC deployed Aspera as the backbone of its digital asset management system allowing field production teams to quickly pull existing content from venues all over the world for inclusion in the live broadcasts. The same system links UFC’s Las Vegas headquarters and Los Angeles office, with video editors transferring gigabytes of file-based media on a daily basis. The UFC team has a small mobile staff that has to travel frequently, working from hotels and conference centers. “The company oftens drops a 60 foot office trailer and we do a lot of our operations on site because we have so much content that rolls into the broadcast,” said Tim O’Toole, VP Event production. “They’re pulling in content behind the scenes, editing, and pushing it out in a matter of hours. Production wise, on a given week, we can be creating 4-5 post-produced shows, along with promo videos for upcoming fights,” said Mike Saindon, Production Engineer with UFC. Over the last year, it has completely changed its workflow over to Aspera. Aspera enables a small team of people to create massive amounts of content and distribute it out over a wide variety of partners. Aspera is also at the heart of UFC’s content delivery to over 150 international partners. “We are thrilled to support UFC in their exponential growth by allowing them to scale and accelerate their content delivery workflow,” said Richard Heitmann, vice president of marketing at Aspera. “With Aspera software deployed on-premise and in the cloud, UFC can confidently rely on its technology investments to meet the growing worldwide demand for mixed martial arts content.” Here’s a behind the scenes look at the UFC’s operation: The UFC has an entire mobile video production operation housed in a 60-foot truck that travels to event venues for its mixed martial arts cards. (Photo: Aspera) The UFC deploys an array of on-site IT to handle video ingest – the capture, storage and transport of MMA video. The cases are used to repack the gear for transport to the next venue. (Photo: Aspera) (Comment on this)
5:30p	Federal Data Centers: 2013 and Beyond FedInsider News is hosting a complimentary briefing on the federal data center consolidation and cloud computing efforts. Participants will hear the perspectives of Commerce, NRC, DHS, among other government entities. The event will be held March 20 from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Registration is available at http://www.fedinsider.com/datacenter. SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Scott Lewis, Former Publisher of Washington Technology; President of PS Partnerships Kirit Amin, Deputy CIO and CTO, Department of Commerce Jim Flanagan, Director, Office of Information Services, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Edward Rhyne, Program Manager, Cyber Security Division, Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate. Venue: immixGroup Education Center 8444 Westpark Drive, Suite 200 McLean, VA  22102 (Westpark Corporate Center at the corner of Route 7 & Westpark Drive) Convenient parking lot under the building. Validation for parking provided. For more information, visit www.fedinsider.com/datacenter  or by Phone 202-237-0300. For more events, return to the Data Center Knowledge Events Calendar. (Comment on this)
6:38p	Report: IBM, EMC Among Suitors for SoftLayer A look at the racks inside a SoftLayer Technologies data center in Dallas (Photo: SoftLayer Technologies) Are we on the brink of another intense flurry of cloud hosting acquisitions? Reuters is reporting that tech titans IBM and EMC are bidding to acquire SoftLayer Technologies, one of the world’s largest hosting and cloud service providers. The news service doesn’t name its sources, but projects that a sale could fetch more than $2 billion. According to Reuters, SoftLayer has hired Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse to run the sale process, which reportedly was kicked off with an offer from AT&T. SoftLayer has often been mentioned as one of the industry players positioning for either a sale or an IPO. The company is owned by private equity firm GI Partners, which combined it with The Planet in a 2010 merger that vaulted it into the top tier of global players in the hosting business. The company provides dedicated servers and cloud hosting to more than 25,000 customers. That huge customer base makes SoftLayer an attractive acquisition target for companies hoping to quickly boost their presence in retail hosting and cloud services. SoftLayer has a huge global infrastructure platform, managing more than 100,000 servers in 13 data centers  Dallas, Houston, San Jose, Seattle, northern Virginia, Singapore and Amsterdam. It also has a built-in revenue ramp up within its customer base, which includes a mix of tech-savvy startups and traditional dedicated server customers. The company has capitalized on that opportunity to build momentum for hybrid cloud installations featuring Flex Images, a service which allows customers to copy and store an image of a cloud or dedicated server, and then redeploy the image on either type of computing environment. It remains to be seen whether a deal materializes. But if  the Reuters report is accurate, it suggests that three of the world’s largest technology companies feel the need to accelerate their cloud businesses with a major acquisition. Should one manage to close a deal for SoftLayer, the other contenders may feel even greater pressure to line up a deal. That was the pattern in early 2011, when we saw three deals in short order – Verizon bought Terremark for $.14 billion, after which Navisite was acquired by Time Warner Cable, and CenturyLink snapped up Savvis for $2.5 billion. (Comment on this)
8:09p	Data Center Forum on Financing, Investing and Real Estate Development IMN’s Spring Data Center Forum on Financing, Investing and Real Estate Development is scheduled for May 30-31 at the Conrad Hotel in New York. Agenda topics  include: The Macroeconomy & Data Centers The President/CEO Panel Mergers, Private Equity & IPOs The President/CEO Panel: Colo Players Scale vs. Scalability vs. Rightsizing Connectivity-Creating & Tapping into New Revenue Streams Evaluating & Standardizing Data Center Standards & Performance Metrics Should you Own the Underlying Data Center Real Estate? Closing the Lease: Top Negotiation Points Venue Conrad Hotel 102 North End Avenue New York, New York, 10282, USA P: 212.945.0100 F: 212.945.3755 For more events, return to the Data Center Knowledge Events Calendar. (Comment on this)

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