Thursday, August 29th, 2013

Time	Event
1:59p	ABB Releases Latest Version of DCIM Solution Decathlon ABB Decathlon Version 3 has been rolled out. This version of ABB’s data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system provides the ability to integrate third-party solutions and manage data completely on-premise or in a secure cloud. Decathlon is designed and built for highly secure, mission critical environments. The big thing in DCIM right now is attempting to eliminate the barriers between the facility and IT departments, and Version 3 does this by making it possible to work from a single data set and single operational environment. With this version, both sides of the data center–facilities and IT professionals–can use their preferred tools while it enables deeper collaboration. ABB is taking the “home base” approach, allowing customers to add the best of breed where it needs to. For example, Decathlon integrates asset management by Nlyte Software, which optimizes space, power and cooling capacity through intelligent placement of IT assets. “Our customers are free to add preferred applications, such as Computerized Maintenance Management Systems or work-order ticketing systems, from ABB or a third party,” said Eric Olson, ABB Decathlon product manager. “Different roles and disciplines require different views of the data center. With Decathlon, a single data set and a single operational environment reveal its true state.” IT Managers and Facility Managers Gain Visibility IT managers will have visibility of IT systems, including instant insight into a server’s status and system performance by measuring CPU utilization, power draw and temperatures. They can see status and system performance and other details for a particular server, rack or zone. Facility managers can view, at a glance, the power availability at each component in the critical power path to determine the status of all breakers, including switchgear and distribution, UPS, transformers and PDUs, and at multiple sites. With a click of the mouse, power quality events can be analyzed to determine if harmonic distortion can disrupt power distribution. This visibility helps users understand which equipment is being affected by the distortion and decide whether further action is required. Key features in Version 3: User-configurable dashboards Standard and custom reports Unified alarm management Condition-based monitors to identify diagnostic, predictive or inferred faults Fault report submittal to user-specified Computerized Maintenance Management System Integrated web views of the Decathlon Web Portal and Decathlon asset management tools “ABB has diverse expertise with power delivery, utilities, energy management, building management, DCIM and automation,” said Olson. “All of this know-how with mission critical infrastructure is reflected in how Decathlon is designed and built.” (Comment on this)
2:06p	Storage Partners Support VMware at VMworld 2013 VMware storage partners are out in force at VMworld 2013 this week in San Francisco. EMC, NetApp, Nimble Storage and Kingston Digital all have announcements in support of VMware software and solutions. EMC invests in software-defined storage.  EMC and VMware announced a major investment and commitment focused on rapid advancement of software-defined storage architectures and emerging models for the way applications consume storage in virtualized environments. With a focus on tight integration of VMware Virtual SAN with VMware vCenter Server, the efforts will focus on joint research and development projects, the creation of joint EMC and VMware proven solutions, and joint test and validation labs. Targeting a range of use cases for software-defined storage in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), each case will e optimized for deployment on VMware Virtual SAN infrastructure, supported by storage policy-based management and featuring significantly reduced TCO through the use of low-cost server-side storage. “EMC and VMware together are defining a new class of highly integrated storage infrastructure to reduce cost and complexity in VMware environments for SMBs and SMEs. A best-of-breed offering based on the combination of VMware Virtual SAN with EMC’s market leading storage hardware and software portfolio will help expand the market opportunity for both companies,” said Jeremy Burton, Executive Vice President, of Product Operations and Marketing at EMC Corporation. NetApp announces new VMware integrations. NetApp (NTAP) announced new integrations with VMware solutions and NetApp clustered Data ONTAP software to enable nondisruptive migration of data for hundreds of virtual machines at a time. NetApp announced the Virtual Storage Console 5.0 (VSC 5.0), a new release of its end-to-end storage management software for VMware environments that includes support of and integration with VMware vCenter Server 5.5, and Flash Accel 1.2 server cache for integration with vSphere 5.0 and 5.1 for management of server-level cache. “The cloud is enabling this new era of IT service delivery to help businesses be more flexible, responsive, and competitive,” said Brendon Howe, Vice President, Product & Solutions Marketing at NetApp . ”One movement—software-defined storage—is part of this transformation in IT that helps break down technology barriers, driving increased agility, simplicity, and efficiency. NetApp and VMware will continue to align our development efforts to help organizations and CIOs realize the agility of the cloud and the power of clustered Data ONTAP and its integration to VMware vCloud Suite to focus on IT server delivery versus hardware limits.” Nimble Storage launches SmartStack.  Nimble Storage announced a new converged infrastructure reference architecture leveraging Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and VMware vSphere. At the core is VMware vSphere 5.1, flash-optimized Nimble Storage CS-Series arrays, and Cisco UCS B-Series blade servers. Together, these components allow IT organizations to scale as needed to respond faster to changing business needs, while lowering project risks and capital expenses. Nimble launched a series of SmartStack pre-validated reference architectures that minimize the challenges associated with deploying application, server, hypervisor, networking and storage components as an integrated solution. The reference architecture has been validated to support department scale deployment of 500 users for Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL server. “When managing business-critical applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL server and SharePoint, to drive business operations, organizations are burdened with constant increases in cost and complexity,” said Radhika Krishnan, vice president of product marketing and alliances at Nimble Storage. ”SmartStack for Business-Critical Applications provides a truly modular approach, simplifying the management and deployment process of virtualized business applications. With this pre-validated architecture, organizations are better equipped to respond to changing business needs with the ability to scale as needs grow.” Kingston launches SSD.  Kingston Digital, the Flash Memory affiliate of Kingston Technology announced the SSDNow E50, the company’s latest enterprise-class solid-state drive (SSD). SSDNow E50 enables performance-focused organizations that do not have heavy endurance needs to obtain the same enterprise-level performance as Kingston’s SSDNow E100 but at a more cost-effective price point. With greater IOPS and higher bandwidth the SSDNow E50 helps alleviate I/O latencies and server bottlenecks. It also features DuraWrite technology that extends the life of the SSD by effectively and efficiently reducing the number of Flash writes via an intelligent compression engine without sacrificing data integrity. “We found that there was a demand within our customer base and partner community for an SSD that offers enterprise-strength reliability and superior features but with lower endurance capabilities and associated costs,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. (Comment on this)
3:20p	QTS Expands Already Massive Atlanta Metro Facility The exterior of the QTS Metro Atlanta data center. The QTS Atlanta Metro facility keeps getting bigger. The company recently completed and commissioned 70,000 square feet of raised floor in its Atlanta Metro facility, in support of the expansion of existing customers and data center demand in the Atlanta market.  The construction project took five months “This build is an example of our ‘just-in-time’ build methodology,” said Jim Reinhard, COO development and operations at QTS. “The scale of our mega data center facilities allows us to build out space in a controlled, well-planned way to meet customers’ schedules.” IPO Part of Major Expansion Ambitions The construction also resulted in the addition of 5.4 megawatts of UPS power. QTS is the leading provider in the Atlanta market, and this isn’t just platitudes. The 970,000 square-foot QTS Atlanta Metro Data Center is among the largest data centers in the world. The Metro facility now supports more than 200 customers and has 120 megawatts of utility power.  QTS’ two largest properties in terms of annualized rent, Atlanta Metro and Suwanee, collectively accounted for approximately 64 percent of its annualized rent as of June 30, 2013. In the company’s recently filed S-11, the company disclosed that the Atlanta Metro facility was 84.9 percent leased.  The facility features an on-site Georgia Power substation and rich connectivity access to a wide variety of carrier alternatives. QTS provides a broad spectrum of data center services, including wholesale retail space, retail colo, and managed hosting. The company’s IPO file detailed an overall massive expansion plan. In its SEC filing, the company said it plans to expand seven of its data centers across the county, investing up to $277 million to add more than 312,000 square feet of customer space in key markets over the next two years. The majority of that growth is projected for Dallas ($88 million investment), Richmond ($78 million) and Atlanta Metro ($54 million) , but QTS also plans to add more space at existing sites in Jersey City, Sacramento, Santa Clara and Suwanee, Georgia. QTS is part of the Quality Group of Companies, founded in 1962 by James Williams and is now headed by his son, Chad Williams. In 2009, it announced a $150 million investment from private equity firm General Atlantic. Earlier this year the company boosted its credit line to $575 million, and acquired a massive facility in Dallas as well as the former Herakles data center in Sacramento. (Comment on this)
3:30p	Arista Introduces Network Applications with VMware and Microsoft At VMworld 2013 this week in San Francisco Arista Networks announced three new network applications that integrate with Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS) and bring a new level of awareness to critical applications in the data center: OpenWorkload, Smart System Upgrade and Network Telemetry. “Businesses are increasingly deploying network virtualization to simplify IT and improve the speed of business,” said Milin Desai, director, product management, VMware. “VMware and Arista are partnering to integrate Arista EOS-based and VMware NSX™ to enable the same operational model to be used for both virtual and physical workloads, resulting in increased efficiency and agility for the data center operator.” Arista’s Software Defined Cloud Networking (SDCN) combines automation and linear scaling with software-defined networking to deliver network virtualization, custom programmability and simplified architectures. With support for flow monitoring, auto-initialization of zero-touch deployment of large numbers of switches (ZTP/ZTR), early notification of application caused network congestion (LANZ) and advanced event triggers (AEM), Arista switches running EOS are an ideal choice for SDN controlled cloud networks. The new OpenWorkload application enables a distributed system of network switches to support mobile workloads. Arista and VMware collaborated to enable Arista EOS switches to seamlessly integrate with VMware NSX to provide hardware-based gateway services for non-virtualized servers and existing VLANs. The Smart System Upgrade application provides features that tightly couple with data center infrastructure partners,such as Microsoft, F5 and Palo Alto Networks. The Network Telemetry application provides  a new model for faster troubleshooting from fault detection to fault isolation. It streams data about network state, including both underlay and overlay network statistics, to applications from Splunk, ExtraHop, Corvil and Riverbed. With critical infrastructure information exposed to the application layer, issues can be proactively avoided. “The architecture of Arista EOS, coupled with best-in-class hardware and partnerships with the other best-of-breed companies in each category creates network capabilities unachievable by monolithic providers,” said Anshul Sadana, Senior Vice President, Customer Engineering at Arista Networks. “The integration and demonstration of VMware NSX with EOS at VMworld is a clear example of this best in class partnership.” (Comment on this)
8:36p	Huge Leasing Wins for DFT in Santa Clara and NJ An aerial view of the DuPont Fabros NJ1 data center in Piscataway, New Jersey. A Fortune 25 tenant has leased space in NJ1. (Photo: DuPont Fabros Technology.) DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) has leased more than 11.7 megawatts of data center space across its portfolio, the company said today. Based on its leasing success, the data center developer has boosted its revenue guidance for Wall Street, and purchased land for a major expansion in suburban Chicago. The latest deals bring good news in Silicon Valley and New Jersey, several markets where DFT has experienced slower leasing and more competition than expected. The company also leased space in a recently renovated facility in Reston, Virginia. DuPont Fabros said it has leased 6.83 megawatts of space in its Santa Clara, Calif. data center to an “existing super wholesale Fortune 50 customer.” This tenant leased 2.28 MW of load in Phase I of the Santa Clara facility, known as SC1. The lease means that phase 1 of SC1 is now completely leased. In addition, the customer pre-leased 4.55 MW of critical load in the next phase of SC1, providing an anchor tenant. This has allowed DuPont Fabros to commence construction on the second phase of the data center, which features 9.1 megawatts of power and will be known as Phase IIA. The Santa Clara facility will eventually include another 4.55 megawatts of space, apparently to be Phase IIB. The new space in Santa Clara is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2014. Major Tenant in New Jersey DuPont Fabros also signed a major new customer for its facility in Piscataway, New Jersey where the pace of leasing had been a concern to Wall Street analysts following the company. A Fortune 25 company has leased 2.28 megawatts of space at the Piscataway facility, known as NJ1. The new tenant also has an option on the remaining space in phase 1 of NJ1, which totals about 4.5 megawatts of critical load. That requirement can be shifted into a second phase of NJ1 if another tenant comes along and wants to lease space in Phase I – an arrangement that provides expansion capacity for the Fortune 25 tenant, while allowing DFT to continue leasing efforts in New Jersey. DuPont Fabros had not included revenue from any new leases at NJ1 in its revenue projections for 2013. As a result of the NJ lease, and the new leasing in Santa Clara, DFT has boosted its revenue guidance for Wall Street, increasing its guidance on Funds from Operations from the prior range of $1.82 to $1.92 per share to $1.88 to $1.92 per share. One new lease in Reston, Virginia  for 2.60 megawatts of critical load with a lease term of 5.1 years. The Reston facility is now 71 percent leased and commenced, up from 51 percent. DuPont Fabros recently renovated the lobby of the building to better support its data center customers. “We have remained consistently focused on leasing our available inventory and are pleased to announce this significant execution towards our goal,” said Hossein Fateh, President and CEO of DuPont Fabros. “Our overall operating portfolio is now 94 percent leased and 93 percent commenced.  The newly acquired land in Chicago enables us to capture future demand in one of our best markets and expand upon our campus environment.” DuPont Fabros said it has acquired 15 acres of vacant land in Elk Grove Village, Illinois to develop a second data center facility. The company’s CH1 data center in Elk Grove Village is a 450,000 square foot, 36 megawatt facility that is now fully leased. (Comment on this)

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