Thursday, November 14th, 2013

Time	Event
1:02p	Ubiquity Will Convert Sears Auto Centers into Data Centers Ubiquity Critical Environments is partnering with Schneider Electric to build a national chain of data centers in second-tier markets. This illustration depicts how an existing Sears Auto Center can be converted into a data center. (Image: Ubiquity) One of America’s retail pioneers now hopes to build a new brand for the new economy, housing servers where it once changed your oil. Ubiquity Critical Environments, the data center unit of Sears Holdings, plans to build a national chain of IT facilities by converting dozens of Sears Auto Center stores into data centers. It is partnering with Schneider Electric, a leading provider of data center equipment and services, to build and operate a fleet of mission-critical facilities in at least 23 markets around the country. “We really want to be the McDonald’s or Starbucks of data centers,” said Sean Farney, the chief operating officer of Ubiquity. “No one’s ever done a national chain of data centers with a consistent design and brand. We’re going big on this one.” The announcement marks an evolution of Ubiquity’s mission to repurpose Sears’ real estate holdings to capitalize on demand for data centers. Ubiquity was created by Sears to convert the retail icons of the 20th century into Internet infrastructure to power the 21st century digital economy. Farney initially explored converting old Sears and Kmart retail stores and warehouses into huge data centers. But it turned out that many of the most promising facilities were located near existing data center hubs, where Ubiquity would compete with existing providers. Smaller Footprints, Secondary Markets Instead, Ubiquity has shifted its focus to smaller footprints in secondary markets. Farney says the Sears Auto Centers are ideal for this strategy, especially the dozens of stand-alone centers. “We have a unique asset, which is a lot of real estate that’s permitted and zoned so we can move quickly,” said Farney. “We’ve got this fleet of 700 of these auto center buildings, set out at the outer ring of the mall.” The data center initiative also provides Sears with a strategy for its fleet of Sears Auto Centers. On Oct. 29, Sears said it would evaluate “strategic alternatives” for the auto centers, saying they offer “a unique national footprint that can be leveraged to create significant value.” This was widely assumed to mean a sale or spinoff of the auto center business. A Showcase for Schneider Ubiquity’s plan also presents a huge opportunity for Schneider Electric, which in recent years has been expanding its portfolio of services to address virtually every aspect of the data center business. Schneider will design, build, maintain and operate the data centers, which will be co-branded and jointly marketed by Ubiquity and Schneider. Each Ubiquity data center’s branding will feature the motto “Efficient Data Centers: Powered and Operated by Schneider Electric.” “We’re bringing together many pieces to create a broader solution,” said Mike Hagan, vice president of Schneider’s Data Center Service Provider division. “We provided a fast way for Ubiquity to find all the resources they needed in a single partner. We can enter any space Ubiquity is targeting and add data center capacity in a modular fashion. This is not anything that’s new to us. We’re capable of engineering to any unique requirements.” Those capabilities were recently on display in a project in Seattle in which Schneider converted office space at Fisher Plaza into an 11,000 square foot data center for Tierpoint, including a seismic isolation system. Why Auto Centers? Farney believes the Sears Auto Centers provide a winning template for a national chain of data centers. While some auto centers are attached to mall-based retail stores, about 50 of them are stand-alone facilities, often located on the perimeter of shopping malls. These sites are typically concrete buildings of between 25,000 and 50,000 square feet, with ceiling heights of at least 16 feet. Ubiquity plans to convert a number of these sites into data centers offering between 1.2 megawatts and 2.4 megawatts of IT capacity on a 10,000 square foot raised floor environment. The facilities will be engineered for at least 150 watts per square foot, supporting cabinets using 3kW to 10kW of power. Ubiquity and Schneider expect to build the data centers to meet Tier III standards and operate with high levels of energy efficiency, targeting a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.3. (Comment on this)
1:30p	Facing BYOD Head On Tom Roberts is President of AFCOM, the leading association supporting the educational and professional development needs of data center professionals around the globe. TOM ROBERTS AFCOM I can understand why so many people like using a tablet or smartphone at work instead of a rigid desktop computer. The portability of both makes it easier to perform tasks from anywhere—the lunchroom, a co-worker’s desk, at home, even in the car (But not while driving,  please.) Plus, it’s way more convenient to be able to access work and personal emails, files and apps on one device. We love our toys, but mixing business with pleasure presents Excedrin-sized headaches for data center managers responsible for keeping company data secure and knowing who has what apps, why and where. The Opportunities and Benefits of BYOD The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is flourishing.  By the end of this year, the number of mobile devices (mostly mobile phones) in the workplace is expected to reach 350 million globally. Plus, 57 percent of full-time employees are already using mobile devices for work-related tasks—half of which is unmonitored, unmanaged BYOD activity. Workers who innocently hook up devices to company networks, download applications, access email and connect to private Wi-Fi can cause major disruptions. According to the Ponemon Institute, 6 out of 10 security breaches were traced back to mobile devices. Apple and Google are constantly removing mobile malware from their app stores. Attackers will always go for the low hanging fruit first. As a data center manager, you must have policies and security measures in place to protect your company’s data. In 2009, the US Government enacted the Health Information Technology for Clinical Health Act (HITECH) that requires healthcare companies to notify patients if they have had their health records compromised. Similar acts were also put in place in the financial industry. Regardless of the industry you’re in, there’s simply no turning back when it comes to BYOD. Smartphones, tablets and whatever else bursts onto the smart scene in the next few years are here to stay. Setting Up a Mobile Device Management Policy The only way to do deal with it is by adopting a Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy. It’s a market expected to reach $181.39 billion by 2017. A recent survey conducted by MDM provider Citrix among 1,900 senior IT staff across 19 countries showed that IT professionals are embracing this trend and solutions for it. 83 percent of those polled said they were happy to use a BYOD policy in order to manage the trend toward mobility. 55 percent said they now actively accommodate and encourage the use of personal devices for work purposes. The big benefits of BYOD are more flexibility (65 percent), increased productivity (62 percent), less commuting time (61 percent) and greater work/life balance (55 percent). Three-quarters (76 percent) of respondents were happy to reimburse employees – either partly or fully – for their device. Four out of five enterprises who have BYOD in place have experienced cost benefits. According to a new market research report, a quarter of all organizations worldwide have already embraced BYOD, and 83 percent will do so within two years. Are you prepared? 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)
2:00p	Dimension Data Adds Four New Cloud Locations Including Sao Paulo Brought to you by The WHIR. Dimension Data announced this week that it has added four new data centers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and South America in order to address growing demand of its Managed Cloud Platform. Dimension Data’s MCP new locations are Ashburn, Virginia, Melbourne, Australia, London, UK, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. All of the new locations will be live by January 2014. With the new locations, Dimension Data has a total of 11 sites for its managed cloud platform. Existing MCP locations include San Jose, Calif. and Ashburn, Va., as well as Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Sydney, Australia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Toyko, Japan, which it added in June,and Hong Kong, China. Having such a range of locations allows for Dimension Data’s cloud to meet country-specific data requirements, which can vary considerably depending on which region of the world it is in. “The addition of these four key MCP locations adds capacity to the United States, Australia and Europe, where our client base is growing rapidly and requires multiple cloud data centers to support business continuity, backup and replication within the region,” Steve Nola, CEO of Dimension Data’s cloud business unit said. “Sao Paulo, as Dimension Data’s first MCP in South America, will create availability for global enterprises to locate data in this region.” Dimension Data offers private and public cloud solutions at each of its locations, with SLAs, and multiple layers of security. Earlier this year, Dimension Data launched Cloud Backup, an optional backup and recovery service available as an add-on to its cloud service. Original article published at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/dimension-data-adds-four-cloud-locations-including-sao-paulo (Comment on this)
3:21p	LANL Selects DataDirect Networks to Support Petascale Collaboration DataDirect Networks (DDN) announced that it has been selected by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to deliver high-performance storage to support its institutional computing program, which encompasses a broad range of unclassified, collaborative scientific efforts, including the study of biology, earth science, physics, oceans and cosmology. “In supporting LANL’s broad range of scientific computing projects, it’s imperative that our scientists, researchers and colleagues have instant access to the data they need to analyze results and improve scientific outcomes,” said Bob Tomlinson, institutional computing program manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory. ”With DDN’s high-performance storage and site-wide file system approach, LANL will be equipped to support our compute-intensive demands both now and in the future.” The collaborative effort brings the power of nearly 70,000 computing cores and more than a petaflop of processing power to every LANL scientist and engineer as well as research colleagues around the world. LANL selected DDN Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA) high-performance storage and DDN’s EXAScaler Lustre file system appliance to meet the compute-intensive demands of 11 separate computing clusters by delivering 4.3 PBs of storage capacity and up to 40 GB/second I/O performance via the Lustre file system. The storage will allow users to store, access and share massive amounts of data among its diverse and distributed community of scientists and researchers while having the flexibility to connect to different HPC platforms across its common environment. SC13 Sneak Peak DDN also gave a sneak peak into new technology that it will be announcing next week at Supercomputing 2013 in Denver, Colorado. At the event, DDN will introduce a proprietary new technology designed to significantly accelerate file systems, extract the best performance efficiency across the I/O hierarchy and drive down storage costs. The “burst forward” approach of this new technology looks to bring HPC customers within reach of the exascale “Holy Grail.” (Comment on this)
6:56p	Amazon Enters Desktop Virtualization Market With WorkSpaces Amazon Web Services has entered the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market with Amazon WorkSpaces. Amazon Web Services rolled out a flurry of new services at its AWS re:Invent user conference this week in Las Vegas. AWS launched a new managed desktop computing service called WorkSpaces, the AppStream service for mobile developers, and an API tracking service called CloudTrail. The event conversation can be followed on Twitter hashtag #reinvent. Here’s a recap of Wednesday’s announcements: WorkSpaces Available as a limited preview, Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed desktop computing service in the cloud. It provides easily provisioned cloud-based desktops that allow end-users to access the documents, applications and resources they need with the device of their choice, including laptops, iPad, Kindle Fire, or Android tablets. With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, a high-quality desktop experience for any number of users can be deployed. Amazon WorkSpaces eliminates both the up-front investment and the ongoing management of on-premise infrastructure while still offering all the security and efficiency of a centralized model.  For a low monthly fee, Amazon WorkSpaces provides a complete cloud-based desktop computing service including compute, persistent storage, and software applications. In this blog post Amazon covers a complete total cost of ownership model comparison for on-premises VDI versus Amazon WorkSpaces. “Over the past couple years, the new service customers have requested most frequently is a virtual cloud desktop service,” said Gene Farrell, General Manager of Amazon WorkSpaces.  “They’ve been frustrated by the available options – traditional desktops that are hard to manage and keep secure, or virtual desktops that are expensive and deliver inconsistent performance.  Amazon WorkSpaces aims to address these issues by offering secure, easy-to-manage, high-performance desktops in the cloud at a fraction of the price of traditional VDI.” Amazon’s entrance in the VDI market appears most relevant for the small business market, at least at present. Major players in this market include Citrix, VMware and Microsoft. AppStream Amazon announced  AppStream, a low-latency service for streaming resource intensive applications and games from the cloud. It deploys and renders your application on AWS infrastructure and streams the output to mass-market devices, such as personal computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Amazon AppStream includes a SDK that currently supports streaming applications from Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 to devices running FireOS, Android, iOS, and Microsoft Windows. It allows developers to use compute power without CPU and GPU constraints, and the ability to write applications once and stream to multiple device platforms. The application can make use of  native Windows APIs. It can also use AWS resources – relational and NoSQL databases, persistent object storage, caching, message queues, publish and subscribe messaging, email delivery, and more. “Developers have told us that it is frustrating to build and deliver high-end applications for mass-market devices given their hardware constraints. They want to provide spectacular graphics, and responsive, fluid experiences to the largest possible audience regardless of the device a person chooses to use,” said Mike Frazzini, General Manager of Amazon Games. “Amazon AppStream frees developers from these limitations by allowing them to stream their applications to low-end devices as if these consumers were using high-end devices.” CloudTrail Amazon announced AWS CloudTrail, a web service that records API calls made on your account and delivers log files to your Amazon S3 bucket. Giving the ability to track changes that were made to AWS resources, CloudTrail makes it easier for customers to demonstrate compliance with internal policies or regulatory standards. Additionally, CloudTrail allows the use the API call history produced to perform security analysis and troubleshoot operational issues. CloudTrail is free with S3 and Amazon SNS, and can be turned on within the AWS Management Console. (Comment on this)
7:35p	Network Vendor Rolls Out Enhancements for AWS Amazon Web Services’ SVP Andy Jassy, framed by a backdrop of an Amazon data center, was one of the keynote speakers at the re:Invent conference. (Photo: Amazon) At the Amazon re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week, vendors Riverbed, Panzura, and F5 made announcements supporting Amazon Web Services. Riverbed Stingray available on AWS GovCloud Riverbed (RVBD) announced the availability of Riverbed Stingray 9.5 traffic manager software on Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud. With this new availability U.S. federal agencies can optimize, scale, secure and improve the performance of their mission-critical applications in the cloud. Stingray is a virtual and software-based Layer 7 application delivery controller (ADC) with integrated web content optimization (WCO) capability. Optimized to work in cloud environments, it is easily integrated into an application stack. By implementing Stingray on AWS GovCloud, U.S. federal, state and local agencies gain agility and cost savings and at the same time significantly improve the performance and scale of their critical application workloads and services. “As a cloud provider to government agencies, we are aware of the concerns that our federal customers have regarding application scalability, security and availability when moving sensitive and mission-critical workloads to the cloud,” said David McLaughlin, chief executive officer of Blue River Information Technology, a Riverbed and AWS APN partner. “Riverbed Stingray on AWS GovCloud addresses these issues and is a key offering in our cloud solutions portfolio.” Panzura Cloud Controllers on Amazon Machine Images Panzura announced the availability of the Panzura Cloud Controllers as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) which is also being offered for purchase through the AWS Marketplace. With these solutions, Panzura customers can use AMI to create virtual instances of the Panzura Global Cloud Storage System within the Amazon EC2 cloud. This enables applications such as full disaster recovery in the cloud, cloud bursting for legacy applications, computing in the cloud, and shared analytical data in the cloud. The solutions allow for access to S3 data in EC2 or on-premises through CIFS and NFS. “AMI opens up third party applications for direct use of the Amazon storage cloud,” said Ashish Nadkarni, Research Director of Storage, IDC. “Panzura’s support of AMI unifies cloud storage with cloud compute resources to create a powerful physical and virtual compute environment.” F5 adds Pay-per-use for AWS F5 Networks (FFIV) announced an hourly billing model for its BIG-IP Virtual Editions, and availability of its BIG-IQ Cloud orchestration product in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. With the flexible payment options F5 provides customers with the ability to spin up (or down) application delivery infrastructure and services as needed. Organizations can quickly and seamlessly enable application-focused capabilities—such as cloud bursting, cloud-based app development and testing, and moving entire application workloads to the cloud. “Our vision is simple—if your applications are in the cloud, F5 helps make sure they are fast, secure, and reliable,” said Alex Rublowsky, Sr. Director of Platforms and Licensing at F5. ”We deliver an extensive portfolio of Software Defined Application Services, built on a high-performance fabric of physical and virtual solutions. With today’s announcement, we’re enabling more types of customers to efficiently manage and improve application deployments in all types of AWS cloud environments.” (Comment on this)
8:05p	Analytics Firms Unveil Integrations for AWS CloudTrail A number of technology companies announced news this week in conjunction with the Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference. (Photo: Amazon) At the Amazon re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week  software vendors Splunk, Sumo Logic and Alert Logic made announcements, supporting the new CloudTrail service from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Splunk for AWS Machine Images: Splunk (SPLK) announced the availability of new Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for Splunk Enterprise 6 and Hunk: Splunk Analytics for Hadoop. The new AMIs further accelerate the speed at which organizations can deploy Splunk software and gain critical visibility into their cloud-based applications and data. Splunk also released the new version of the Splunk App for Amazon Web Services, which leverages the newly announced AWS CloudTrail, a new service that logs all AWS API calls, to enable organizations to improve monitoring, security and compliance across all applications and infrastructure running in AWS. ”Splunk Cloud, Splunk Storm and the new AMIs demonstrate our continued commitment to cloud computing and our innovative work with AWS,” said Leena Joshi, senior director of solutions marketing, Splunk. “Organizations are rapidly moving their applications to the cloud, and AWS is the leader in cloud computing. The release of AMIs for Splunk Enterprise and Hunk makes it easy for customers to use Splunk products in AWS so machine data is accessible, usable and valuable to everyone across the organization. The new version of the Splunk App for AWS will help organizations increase visibility into their cloud deployments by combining AWS access, usage and billing data to provide security intelligence along with operational and business insights.” Sumo Logic integrates CloudTrail: Machine data analytics company Sumo Logic announced its integration with and support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) CloudTrail – a new service that records API calls made to AWS. The visualization capabilities of Sumo Logic can be used to create actionable security and operations forensics for AWS customers. The Sumo Logic integration with AWS CloudTrail enables companies to identify patterns and uncover anomalies related to user activity, network and configuration changes and resource usage. With no software installation necessary users can turn on AWS CloudTrail in the AWS Management console and then activate the Sumo Logic application for AWS CloudTrail. “Companies are in desperate need to not only aggregate all machine data but obtain deep insights from that data in order to identify and fix operational issues and quickly verify compliance with internal security policies,” said Vance Loiselle, president and CEO of Sumo Logic. “Our integration with AWS CloudTrail significantly improves the security visibility customers get across their AWS infrastructure as they expand their use of cloud computing.” Alert Logic integrates CloudTrail: Alert Logic announced the availability using its Log Manager to proactively collect and manage account API activity using AWS CloudTrail. With the new capabilities to track account activity on AWS, customers now have a unified approach to both proactively address their security responsibilities in their cloud infrastructures as well as meet compliance standards like Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA. Log Manager with support for AWS Trail provides the ability to expose new trends or customer configuration deficiencies that need to be proactively addressed.  “User activity and privileged access reporting is a particularly important part of addressing security in the enterprise,” said Dave Colesante, Alert Logic Senior Vice President of Product Development and CTO. “We are pleased to keep pace with AWS innovation in addressing that need within AWS today. Our expanded functionality now enables customers to quickly address auditor questions and requests for evidence – essential components to any security-as-a-service offering.” (Comment on this)

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