Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Time	Event
11:30a	Data Center Jobs: Alban Cat At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Alban Cat, which is seeking an EPG Service Manager in Elkridge, Maryland. The EPG Service Manager is responsible for planning, developing and organizing an effective, efficient work force to provide service for projected sales volume, required profit, and customer satisfaction. Must manage shop and field service maintenance by monitoring and controlling labor and parts cost to meet required profit objectives, ensure productive scheduling and dispatching of all service technicians to perform service repairs through subordinate staff or directly as required, provide technical assistance for service, sales and parts departments when necessary, and effectively communicate with Service Supervisors on status of work in assigned areas. 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)
12:00p	Is Bigger Better? Why Scale Matters in Data Center Economics The DuPont Fabros ACC5 data center in Virginia has 16 huge chillers to provide cooling to the data halls, which house servers for some of the Internet’s largest companies. (Photo: DuPont Fabros) ASHBURN, Va. – Hossein Fateh has a head for numbers. When the discussion turns to the cost of building and operating a data center, he can quickly run through the cost of individual line items in the cost equation. Fateh, the President and CEO of DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), believes these numbers point to a huge shift ahead, as more companies shift their IT operations to third-party facilities built by developers that specialize in data center construction and operations. In a cost-averse world in which Internet growth is creating an explosion of demand for data center space, he believes the economics favor huge facilities operated by small teams of specialists. An example is ACC5, a data center here in Ashburn, Virginia which is more than 1,100 feet long, and has more than 36 megawatts of power – enough to power a small city. ACC5 is the largest building on a campus that houses thousands of servers for Internet giants such as Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Rackspace – but only until the even larger ACC7 comes online next year at 41.6 megawatts. Few companies can afford to built 40 megawatt IT facilities to capture those operating savings. So DuPont Fabros will build them, and pass the savings on to their tenants. ”With operating expenses, our scale is a benefit to our clients,” said Fateh. “As our size grows, we have more and more buying power.” 218 Megawatts of Server Power That power is growing steadily. DuPont Fabros operates more than 2.5 million square feet of data center space across four cities, providing 218 megawatts of electricity to power their tenants’ Internet and IT operations. It is one of a small but growing group of companies that provide “wholesale” data center space, consisting of pre-built suites of raised-floor space to house servers. This approach has won over some of the largest Internet players, companies like Apple, Facebook and Rackspace that comprise the new breed of “super wholesale” users -companies that have the capability to build their own data centers, but have opted to lease server space, swayed by the economics of buying versus building. The big question: having proven itself with large tenants, can the wholesale model win over the legions of enterprise companies that build and maintain their own data center space? The wholesale players compete vigorously with one another for major deals, but they say the largest untapped audience is the companies that operates their own facilities, often on corporate premises or in small stand-alone facilities. Culture, Compliance are Resistance Points These companies have many reasons for sticking with in-house data center operations, including the need to control digital assets tied to compliance requirements and mission-critical business operations. There are also cultural issues, including in-house IT staff perceiving third-party providers as threats to their role in the organization. These are powerful influences. But enterprises have been rethinking past assumptions in recent years, as the financial shock of 2008 and the emergence of cloud computing have prompted C-suite executives to consider a broader set of options for data center operations. That includes both “retail” colocation and wholesale data center space, as well as public cloud services. Fateh believes large wholesale data centers can offer economies of scale that few companies can achieve. DuPont Fabros builds its massive facilities for between $7 million and $8 million per megawatt, well below the $12 million to $20 million per megawatt seen in smaller enterprise projects. The area where scale really kicks in is in operating costs, particularly as multi-tenant buildings expand beyond 18 megawatts. Economics Improve as Scale Increases “Our operating costs will go down when the Phase II of the asset leases up,” said Fateh. “So we may have, for example, labor of six people handle the entire Phase I of one of our data centers. When we double the size of the building and go to Phase II, we may only increase by one additional person, meaning seven DFT staff plus security, and that labor force is spread over 36.4 megawatts. So when you look at the operating costs, when we hit the Phase II, the operating costs of the building drop. “We show that to some of our tenants, and they very much appreciate it,” he said. But will those savings convince enterprises to give up their in-house data centers are move their gear into third-party space? Thus far wholesale data center space has leased more slowly in geographic markets that are heavy on enterprise users, such as New Jersey, where DuPont Fabros has struggled to attract tenants for a large facility in Piscataway. Part of the reason for that, Fateh says, is that enterprises simply have a longer decision-making cycle. “In New Jersey, we’re dealing with maybe 15 people making a decision within that company,” Fateh said. “And instead of two or three tours, we may have 10 tours of the same tenants before they make a decision. Much of the growth in the three of our four markets is revenue-driven, if the tenant doesn’t have additional data center space, it will impact revenue. In the New Jersey market, many of the tenants’ decision-making is solely surrounded on consolidation and trying to reduce cost by consolidating. So it’s a different tenant.” But Fateh says DFT is committed to the New Jersey market. In a cost-sensitive environment, Fateh says, the math is shifting in favor of buying instead of building. (Comment on this)
12:13p	Microsoft Plans New Data Centers in Singapore, Australia Racks of servers housed inside a Microsoft data center. The company is planning new server farms in Singapore and Australia. (Photo: Microsoft). The Windows Azure Cloud is expanding its footprint in the Asia-Pacific Region. Microsoft is building a new data center in Singapore, with a facility expected online in 2014, the company has confirmed. No other details are available at this time, beyond the company confirming it is building a major project there. Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced plans for additional data centers in Australia, with new Azure sub-regions in New South Wales and Victoria. These sites will use a geo-redundant configuration, making it easier for customers to back up their data within Australia, meeting rules for “data sovereignty” in disaster recovery. Hot in Singapore Singapore is perhaps the hottest AsiaPacific data center market, with all the major providers either building or looking for projects there over the last few years. Bottom line: Singapore is the primary hub for AsiaPac cloud going forward. There’s many reasons why Microsoft would choose Singapore as a major data center hub. It allows it to extend delivery of its services to the Asia-Pacific market, where it’s currently seeing the highest growth rates. Office365 and Azure are its major plays going forward in the region. All major analyst firms expect explosive growth in the region for cloud services over the next few years, and Microsoft diligently studies where its opportunities lie. Singapore is one of the region’s leading financial and business centers, with many customers looking to deploy critical business applications there. However, there’s historically been a limited supply of enterprise data center quality supply, which has lead to most major providers looking to build and set up shop to address growing demand. Singapore also represents a location where many global customers are looking to set up shop. According to the Singapore Economic Development Board, Singapore is currently home to approximately 50 percent of South East Asia’s data center capacity. A look at projects in Singapore over the years also gives indication into the region’s data center boom. First and foremost, Amazon added AWS Singapore making its cloud available in the Asia Pacific Region. Microsoft needs Azure to compete in AsiaPac and can’t do so without a strong, local presence. Equinix is like Starbucks in that it does a ton of research into where it locates its data centers. Its continual investment and expansion in the region is one big indicator of the future of Singapore and its growing prominence as a connectivity hub. It keeps announcing a series of major projects there. Digital Realty Trust purchased a Singapore Data Center in 2010, citing the Asia-Pacific region as the logical target for its next phase of growth. It has seen strong leasing in the region, signing blue chip tenants, IBM, Adobe, and SoftLayer. In 2011, IBM opened a cloud data center in Singapore. While cloud services have been attractive in the past, concerns about the consistency of the service performance due to the potential impact of network latency and the location of the data have inhibited their uptake for anything that was a critical workload. This was the reason IBM chose a location in Singapore. This increased availability of enterprise-class cloud services will underpin the acceleration of cloud services in APEJ as cloud service shifts from the SMB sector to the large enterprise. SoftLayer leases sizeable space from Digital Realty in Singapore. The hosting giant recently gave a few reasons why Singapore was so attractive. Going even further up the stack, Salesforce.com located a data center there to accommodate strong adoption of Salesforce CRM and Force.com platform. “Asia-Pacific is our fastest growing market, and there has never been a better time for enterprise cloud computing,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Our new Singapore data center represents continued investment in our global real-time infrastructure to accelerate customer success with cloud computing worldwide.” There’s also Savvis, BT and NTT Communications, which has a strong foothold in Singapore and surrounding regions. IO announced a partnership to bring modules to Singapore last week. T5 Data Centers, which has facilities in Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles is also looking deeply at Singapore for a wholesale play. Are we forgetting someone? Most likely. There’s a ton of activity in Singapore as it turns into the premiere AsiaPac Connectivity hub. Any cloud provider that wants to win some of the market share in AsiaPac needs a presence in Singapore. (Comment on this)
2:30p	Data Center Design for a Mobile Environment This is the sixth and final article in a series on DCK Executive Guide to Data Center Designs. The trend toward the mobile user continues at an accelerating pace and trends indicate that the mobile applications and hardware (smartphones and tablets and even vehicle-based systems) will exceed the PC based information client. This transformation cuts across many divergent business types from social media and search to streaming entertainment media and even basic financial retail banking, such as using a smartphone to take a picture of a check to deposit it. While on the surface this would not appear to impact the design of the physical data center facility, long term it may well influence the some IT architecture and hardware that resides in the data center. In fact, it is foreseeable that as wireless devices and networks will require and carry more data than existing land based networks and data centers may directly or indirectly need to integrate into the wireless network infrastructure. This may change the design landscape for data centers which may be designed to primarily deliver services to mobile clients. The Bottom Line As a senior management executive it is your ultimate responsibility to look down the road and set the course for your organization’s business direction and how it will shape the IT architectural roadmap. In addition to predicting the future, you also need to see around the next corner to foresee the fork in the road or avoid the cliff at the end of a wrong turn. In the information systems world, every year (or sometime every month) seems to bring the “The Next Big Thing”. And while previously most of those trends did not really have much impact on the physical design of data center itself, over the past few years even that has no longer been a certainty. We are still at the dawn of the 21st century and one only needs to look at the technological developments that have occurred since 2000. The rate of change for information technology is accelerating, it is has become totally interwoven with nearly every aspect of daily life. What is commonplace in daily life today was barely imagined in the science fiction stories of the earlier part of last century. The IT hardware built only 5 years ago may still be operational, but in most cases is considered as functionally or technically obsolete, as are many data centers that were built only 10 years ago but were designed based on historic IT requirements. It may seem easier to simply build on last year’s data center designs and avoid looking too far down the road. Nonetheless, today’s data center needs to be designed for the future, not the past. Do not let the fear of endless “scope or feature creep” limit your consideration of being open to new design options. Yes, you will still need to draw a line somewhere, whether for budget or time constraints, but to not close your own mind or the limit the design team’s options to new ideas without first understanding their advantages (as well as potential pitfalls). Expansion and flexibility must be pre-designed in, not tacked or retrofitted on afterward as requirements change. The entire scale and scope of the demands and the delivery platforms have changed rapidly, and in some cases radical paradigm shifts in designs have occurred. The physical infrastructure still needs to be reliable and solidly built, since it is the critical underlying foundation necessary to the security and availability of the IT system it contains. However, in today’s socially conscious world, long term sustainability is no longer an option; environmental stewardship is now a requirement when planning any new project. Expect environmental sustainability issues to grow in importance in the immediate and foreseeable future. And so in closing, we hope that this Executive Series has provided you with the insight and strategies to help guide you to ask the right questions to challenge and provoke yourself, as well as your IT architects and data center designers and ultimately enable you and them to make more informed decisions about what needs to be considered in the design of your next data center. The complete Data Center Knowledge Executive Guide on Data Center Design is available in PDF complements of Digital Realty. Click here to download. (Comment on this)
2:34p	Building A Data Center Can Be A Blast: A Little TNT Can Help Chris Curtis is the co-founder and SVP of Development for Compass Datacenters. We are publishing a series of posts from Chris that will take you inside the complexity of the construction process for data centers. He will explore the ups and downs (and mud and rain) of constructing data center facilities and the creative problem-solving required for the unexpected issues that sometimes arise with every construction process. For more, see Chris’ previous columns on the planning process. CHRIS CURTIS Compass Datacenters High explosives. Who doesn’t love them? Isn’t a large part of our culture based on blowing things up? Certainly some of our leading celebrities have made whole careers out of appearing in movies that feature one massive explosion after another. Well, the world of data center development is no different. It doesn’t happen often but, every once in a while, we have to roll out the dynamite and do some serious blasting. Like most things in the development world, the need to conduct controlled explosions has some plusses and some minuses. Lessons in Geology Most of the time, the average data center can be built without the need to prepare the site using cataclysmic force, but our site resides on what geologist’s refer to as a “limestone shelf.” In the technical parlance used by we developers. this is referred to as “a bunch of rock.” Maybe not as scientific, but a lot more descriptive. I don’t mind telling you, this news made the on-site guys positively giddy with excitement. The prospect of going to work and getting to say things like “fire in the hole” just seems to bring out the best in folks. Despite the electric atmosphere that the prospect of dynamite utilization brings, this is serious stuff. You know how your mother used to say that it’s “all fun and games till someone gets hurt,” well, this a few notches above that. Being blown to smithereens has a degree of permanence that you just aren’t going to find with the average office related mishap. Just like any refined activity, there is a protocol that must be followed before you can begin demolishing large swaths of real estate. Telling the Neighbors First, you must alert the locals. This means going from house to house to advise the occupants of the homes surrounding your project site that they might just want to keep the kiddies and pets inside between the hours of 9 and 11 this coming Tuesday. Naturally folks have questions, “Will it be loud?,” “Am I at risk from flying debris?,” “Can I watch?,” to which the answers are of course, “Yes,” “No” and “Sorry, but our lawyers won’t allow that.” Second, you put up signs and mark off the area. With this type of signage I’ve found that it’s best to be simple and declarative: “Blast Site – Keep Out,” for example. Some developers prefer “High Explosive Area – Trespassers Keep Out,”, but I find this a little pretentious and wordy. Short and pithy also eliminates the possibility of your sign being liberally interpreted. No one wants to have someone’s body parts distributed though out your job site because they live in the neighborhood and decided that the word “Trespasser” didn’t apply to them. This type of thing can really hurt morale. When marking off the blast area I prefer to go conservative. Sure it costs you a little more in orange plastic fencing, but I think we can all agree that the phrase “better safe than sorry” applies here. Dress Code: Hard Hat and Ear Plugs I don’t think that I can describe the level of anticipation until the big day finally arrives. Remember waiting for that special gift at Christmas? This is better, since you now it’s actually going to happen, and you’re not going to get a sweater instead of that new bike you wanted. When blast day finally comes, everyone gets to wear a hard hat and ear plugs–this is a developer’s version of a Fourth of July celebration. I must admit that even though I’ve been to a few of these things I can barely make it until the time that the big switch is thrown. And once it’s thrown – wow. The explosions are deafening, there’s dirt and debris flying everywhere, grown men are jumping up and down and pointing – you just don’t get entertainment like this every day. Someone once said that “There is always one guy who doesn’t get the memo,” and that’s the case with blasting. Just accept the fact that no matter how thorough your canvassing, or how many signs you post, someone in the neighborhood is going to complain. This being the case, I was not surprised when I received a nasty email from a local resident complaining about the noise and, helpfully suggesting that I build my data center somewhere else. Since all it takes is one crank with a friend that works at Channel 8 to turn your project into a PR nightmare, I recommend handling these situations in a face-to-face manner. As I said, I’ve been through this drill before so I put on my sympathetic face (Note: It’s good to practice this before your visit. Sometimes a sympathetic face can look more like an “I could care less” face, or worse, the “surly punk” face, so you really need to get into character before you go) and went to visit the offended party. The Developer’s Listening Skills My first grade teacher always told me to be a good listener. This is great advice for these types of “disgruntled neighbor” situations because, really, what else can you do? After all, the blasting is already done, and there’s a big hole in the lot behind their house, so you sit and listen. Remember to nod at all the points that they use to tell you that your actions are akin to a crime against humanity and assure them that the data center you are building will not have a negative impact on the neighborhood. And this is true. Since it only takes a few folks to run a facility and the building is full of servers, traffic and noise aren’t going to be on-going issues. This is what folks really want to know. Once you’ve apologized and assured them that the worst is over, even the most disgruntled citizen tends to listen to reason. After all, doesn’t everyone really just want to have their “day in court.” As a developer, the pendulum of your activity can swing widely. One day, you’re just another swarthy guy enjoying the primal thrill of blowing things up, and the next, a mild-mannered Dr. Phil talking an irate neighbor off the ledge. In this role, you must be prepared for anything. Stay tuned for the next article in the series, titled, Maybe We Should Turn This Data Center into an Ark: How Bad Weather Can Cause Chaos with a Construction Timeline. 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)
6:58p	Should Data Centers Be Regulated as Utilities? Industry Experts Weigh In Power infrastructure in a data center (Photo by Tim Dorr via Flickr) Last week the New York Times suggested that the data center industry has become a “wildcat power utility” by reselling power to customers at a profit and ripe for regulation. So we reached out to experts who were familiar with both data centers and utilities and asked: Is the data center industry a candidate for regulation as a utility? Their answer: Although power is a key component of their offerings, data centers differ from utilities in very significant ways. Another key point is that data center clients are typically sophisticated companies that are paying premium prices, and unlikely candidates for exploitation by service providers – a key historical concern of utility regulation. But these experts also noted that some industry practices open the door to greater scrutiny, and data center operators need to be more transparent about their practices to address concerns. Times: Power A Central Component of Leases In its story last week, The New York Times took a critical look at power provisioning in data centers. “Electrical capacity is often the central element of lease agreements, and space is secondary,” the Times wrote. “A result, an examination shows, is that the industry has evolved from a purveyor of space to an energy broker — making tremendous profits by reselling access to electrical power, and in some cases raising questions of whether the industry has become a kind of wildcat power utility.” The paper added that “the capacity pricing by data centers …. appears not to have registered with utility regulators.” Regulating data centers as utilities “doesn’t seem plausible to me,” said Coy Stine, Director of Data Center Services at Bluestone Energy, which works with utilities on energy efficiency incentives. “Data centers provide the service of a highly conditioned and very reliable power source. Customers can’t get that by plugging their services into the utility power plug in the wall. Comparing a data center to a utility is similar to saying a car manufacturer is a provider of sheet metal. The automobile has metal as a component, but there’s much more to it. The data center provider is playinhg the same role.” “I think data centers are a whole different animal,” said Jon Koomey, a research fellow at Stanford University who has done several landmark studies on data center energy use. “It’s not only the cost of a kilowatt of power. They’re charging for equipment and infrastructure like backup generators. These data centers aren’t like individual households. The key difference is that these (customers) are people who know what they’re doing.” Sophisticated Customers Both Koomey and Stine said they have heard of concerns being raised about the role of data centers in energy purchasing. But they say that equating data center providers to residential or office landlords is a flawed comparison, as they offer different services and have different types of customers. “I think it stems from the old model of tenants being exploited by their landlords,” said Koomey. “The people that are renting data center space are typically pretty sophisticated folks who are paying a lot of money for these services. This idea that they’re taking advantage of these clients doesn’t make sense.” “Data center customers have teams of people to negotiate their SLAs (service level agreements) very carefully,” said Stine. “The cost for the data center operator to buy switchgear and UPS gear and generators is factored into the cost to the customer. I think the customers understand this, but the general public does not. Most of the audience of the New York Times doesn’t understand what happens in the data center.” (Comment on this)

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