Tuesday, September 9th, 2014

Time	Event
12:00p	Facebook’s Open Compute Servers Still Tough Sell for Corporate IT Shops Facebook’s Open Compute Project has been one of the most talked about developments in the world of data center hardware over the past couple of years, and interest in the first ever open source hardware design community and its output has only grown. Facebook has publicly said it saved more than $1 billion as a result of using Open Compute gear in its data centers, and companies like Rackspace and IO have built cloud infrastructure services using Open Compute server designs. Earlier this year Microsoft said it had adopted OCP specs for the infrastructure that supports its entire portfolio of online services, including Azure. While there are some individual success stories, however, there has been little public information about how OCP is doing in the traditional data center space. Are banks and corporate IT shops using Open Compute servers? The most likely answer is not really or very little. As Jon Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University who does a lot of research in IT and data center efficiency, said, few customers in the enterprise space are in the position to make the leap. “If the customer is on the ball and is really driving down cost per compute, they should be receptive to what Open Compute offers,” Koomey wrote in an email. “But this only happens in places where there is one owner of the data center and one budget, which is a minority of the enterprises.” Come see a Data Center Knowledge panel on Open Compute at the Data Center World Orlando conference in October But the amount of servers OCP hardware vendors can sell to Facebook, Microsoft and a handful of smaller players is quite finite, and the vendors have been making efforts to expand their market reach beyond their currently limited customer base. Easier isn’t the same as cheaper Hyve Solutions, a Fremont, California-based subsidiary of Synnex Corp. that was the first official Open Compute Project solution provider, specializes in custom data center hardware and is one of the primary suppliers of OCP gear to web-scale customers, including Facebook. Hyve president Steve Ichinaga said the majority of the company’s revenue comes from the large web-scale customers, but it has been doing a lot to expand its business with smaller-scale data centers. “We want to be able to service both, but we certainly can see there continues to be a lot of business in the large-scale data center space,” he said. “It is still the largest piece of our market today, and I expect it will continue to be so.” To address the non-web-scale market, Hyve has created “OCP-inspired” hardware designs that fit in standard 19-inch racks (the Open Rack is 21 inches wide) and work with standard power supplies. The company has contributed those designs to the open source project. Hyve has put in this effort because there is interest in the traditional enterprise market in getting the benefits of OCP. “There seems to be a lot of interest in the enterprise space,” Ichinaga said. Today, sticking with OEM gear is a “path of least resistance” for an enterprise IT shop, Ichinaga said. They’re used to relying on proprietary management software as part of the package they get from an OEM, and they’re used to buying servers and storage arrays and setting them up as separate environments. The OCP model is different. Compute and storage are “collapsed,” and management tools draw a lot on the open source code base. The transition can be somewhat disruptive, but at the end of the day, easier doesn’t necessarily equal cheaper, Ichinaga said. The OCP path may be more cost effective in the long run. (Comment on this)
12:30p	Compass to Build Data Center for American Electric Power Compass Datacenters has scored another customer it will build a data center for. The customer is Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power, one of the largest electrical utilities in the U.S., which serves power to customers in 11 states. Compass did not disclose where it will build AEP’s new data center or how much capacity it was contracted to build out. A standard Compass package is a 1.2 megawatt pod with all the necessary infrastructure. The Dallas-based data center developer and provider has been around since 2011. The company’s business model has been focused on using its standard design to deploy data center capacity for customers in underserved second-tier markets. Its clients include Iron Mountain, CenturyLink and Windstream. It also owns property near Columbus, where AEP is headquartered. Chris Crosby, Compass founder and CEO, told us in an interview earlier this year that developing the Ohio property was a primary focus. In May, Compass closed a $100 million funding round it said would fund its next stage of growth. “This new facility will provide AEP with enhanced control and the ability to do smart IT capacity planning, and that enhanced level of control allows the company to monitor and manage their facilities in a way that ensures the satisfaction of their customers,” Crosby said in a prepared statement. (Comment on this)
12:47p	Cloud Computing: Where Expectation Should Always Match Reality Scott Azzolina, VP of Marketing at Connectria Hosting, has more than 30 years of experience in technology with established Fortune 100 companies. When it comes to cloud computing, hosting providers should always serve as a partner and true extension of your IT organization. The core of your relationship hinges upon trust – trust that the provider will host cloud-based technologies in a way that is secure and reliable for the customer. Holding providers accountable The four key pillars that data center managers and IT experts should expect from their hosting providers are unmatched reliability, security, flexibility and integrity. Reliability In the midst of growing IT infrastructure demands and ever-changing compliance requirements, more companies are choosing to partner with outsourcing alternatives. It should be expected for a hosting provider to tout a clean record when it comes to data center outages. They should guarantee their services, such as 100 percent network uptime and 99 percent server/cloud uptime guarantees, and should architect the right solutions upfront to avoid future problems. Hosting providers should also offer extensive backups, working with each customer to ensure they’re functioning properly. If you’re not experiencing all of these components, you should look elsewhere. Security With headlines continuously reporting massive data breaches or hacks, companies should demand that their hosting provider embrace security as their hallmark, and protect their customer data as if it were their own. A quality hosting provider should, at a minimum, always address the following security components: offer 100 percent secure guarantees, provide extensive, proactive security protection, operate “clean networks,” and perform background checks before allowing customers to host. Flexibility Virtualization, cloud computing, storage, legacy systems and new applications all add complexity to an organization. Hosting providers should be able to understand and make sense of this complexity by delivering hosting solutions that closely meet your requirements, are deployed to your timeline and track to your budget. A flexible hosting provider should be technology agnostic, boasting a wide range of technologies using dedicated servers, cloud and hybrid solutions, as well as offer flexible contracts, policies and procedures to fit your business needs. Integrity When it comes to entrusting sensitive data outside your network, whichever hosting provider you select should have a proven track record of selling solutions that work as promised. Furthermore, they should only make realistic promises, always over deliver and use post-sales engineers during the sales process to ensure proposed solutions always go through implementation as planned. A quality hosting provider will offer “one neck in the noose” support, that solves complex problems at no extra cost, and who will place customers, vendors and partners above all else. A workplace environment that ensures a hosting experience customers expect and deserve doesn’t hurt either. Embracing a new mentality No two clouds are alike. Just like the businesses they belong to, every cloud is highly tailored to the customer’s specific needs, which is why data center managers and IT experts should expect a higher level of service from hosting providers. While this may seem like a fairly obvious statement, the fact remains that many cloud customers are unaware of the expectations and returns they should be getting from their hosting providers. So let’s stop with the “expectation vs. reality” mentality, and start embracing a cloud hosting environment where expectation meets reality. 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	Safely Avoid Overcooling Your Data Center Your data center is powering some of the most complex workloads and systems out there, and your business and users rely on these services to function and perform critical duties. Your data center has more users, more applications and more infrastructure to control than ever before. Worldwide demand for new and more powerful IT-based applications, combined with the economic benefits of consolidation of physical assets, has led to an unprecedented increase in data center density. Data center professionals are being asked to be more efficient with their resources including energy and cooling. In this eBook from Raritan, learn how to improve your efficiency without sacrificing uptime. One of the first steps to identifying cooling requirements comes from your data center management tools. Specifically, DCIM. Precise sensor technology, when integrated with your DCIM platform, can create a powerful strategy to safely avoid overcooling your data center. Most of all, you’ll start to see money savings as well. Some things to look for when working with sensor and DCIM technologies: Continuous monitoring of temperature and humidity Look for sensors that poll external temperature and humidity sensor often, example every few seconds Measure, test and report temperatures across a large range, for example -13oF to 149oF Support customized thresholds – critical, lower warning, normal, above normal, and critical thresholds for sensors – which can be customer set Ensure sensors meet MIL specifications for MTBF of >500,000 hours Precise sensors are key to providing accuracy Accurate measurement of temperature and humidity is essential to ensure proper monitoring Ensure sensors work across large distances from the PDU or environmental monitoring appliance, for example 100 feet Humidity sensors tend to drift about 5 percent per year. Replaceable heads will enable humidity sensors to remain accurate. Ensure sensor placement Place sensors as per ASHRAE recommended sensor placement – top, middle, and bottom of the rack inlets Place sensors on the rear exhaust to understand ΔT’s or containment temperatures. Download this eBook today to learn how DCIM technologies can directly help your data center avoid overcooling and help save money. Most of all, gain better visibility into all core resource functions of your data center environment. (Comment on this)
5:11p	Dell Intros 13-Gen Server Line Powered by Latest Xeon Taking cues from customer requests for workload-optimized systems, Dell launched its 13th-generation server portfolio this week, added a hybrid flash and SATA drive storage server to the portfolio as well as a Near Field Communication (NFC) server management solution. The vendor said its customers were looking to accelerate application performance on Dell servers and simplify systems management without adding complexity to their environments. To take on the diverse set of workload requirements, Dell introduced five form factors across blade, rack and tower servers. New R730xd, R730 and R630 rack servers, the M630 blade server and the T630 tower servers all feature the latest Intel E5-2600 v3 product family. Dell claims a 50-percent application performance improvement by moving storage closer to compute and putting software-defined storage into practice. Answering specific storage needs, Dell said that the PowerEdge R630 will feature 1.8 inch SATA flash drives and the R730xd will have up to 100 TB of storage. New in-server storage technology features NVMe Express Flash storage deployment of Fluid Cache for SAN, which was launched last spring at the Dell Enterprise Forum. SanDisk announced that its DAS Cache software will be offered by Dell for use in its next generation Dell PowerEdge servers with direct-attached storage (DAS). SanDisk says its software integrates with a range of solid state storage devices attached via SATA, SAS and PCIe interfaces and helps to make the most actively used data accessible in faster responding media for applications. “SanDisk’s support for solid state technology in our new PowerEdge servers will further differentiate our offerings in the marketplace, as well as address our customers’ needs for high-performing, efficient, low-maintenance storage solutions,” said Ravi Pendekanti, vice president of product marketing and management, Dell PowerEdge Servers. “Dell and SanDisk worked closely together to make SanDisk DAS Cache work seamlessly with Dell PowerEdge servers for an incredible combination of price, performance and enterprise features.” On the systems management side the iDRAC Quick sync was introduced, using Near Field Communication, which Dell calls an industry first. Dell says that for customers managing at the box, this new capability transmits server health information and basic server setup via a hand-held smart device running OpenManage Mobile, simply by tapping it on the server. OpenManage Mobile also enables administrators to monitor and manage their environments anytime, anywhere with their mobile device. (Comment on this)
9:15p	Wearables, Internet of Things Dominate Intel CEO’s IDF Keynote Intel CEO Brian Krzanich spent his entire opening keynote at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco Tuesday morning talking about wearable high-tech accessories and the Internet of Things. It is clear that Intel considers both categories high-growth areas of strategic importance. The company has managed to be inside the majority of the world’s servers and personal computers but has struggled in competing for share of the smartphone market and is now taking the wearables and IoT bulls by the horns. The trends have big implications for data centers, a market where Intel reigns supreme. As Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group, put it in a short presentation during Krzanich’s keynote, “These devices are nothing without the data center.” Bryant offered some interesting statistics. The average number of applications on a smart phone today is 26, and the average number of transactions a mobile app does with a data center per day is 20, she said. This sums up to about 1 trillion transactions per day, and “smartphone transactions will soon be surpassed by wearables,” Bryant said. On the data center front, Bryant and her colleagues announced the latest generation of Intel Xeon processors for servers, storage and networking hardware at a press conference in San Francisco Monday. Heart-monitoring headphones, tiny $50 Atom SoCs Krzanich showed off two wearable devices Intel announced at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: the SMS Audio BioSport headphones, which monitor the user’s heart rate and use power from the device they’re plugged into, and Edison, a tiny $50 dual-core 22-nanometer Atom System-on-Chip, which includes memory and network connectivity and can be connected to expansion boards and upgraded with USB capabilities. Edison is the next-generation relative of a similar SoC called Galileo, and Krzanich expects to have an “explosion of innovation around this.” Like Galileo, it is open and aimed at hardware and software developers that want to make tiny smart devices. Fashionista smart watches Intel CEO spent a good part of his keynote talking about MICA, or “My Intelligent Communication Accessory.” Unveiled last week at the kick-off of New York’s 2015 spring/summer fashion week, MICA is essentially a smart watch in the form of a designer bracelet for women powered by an Intel chip. “This is something you want to wear independent of the technology that’s inside,” Krzanich said about MICA. “This is a platform that I believe developers can now build upon both at the hardware level and the software level.” Fossil’s bid for smart watch market Speaking of smart watches, Greg McKelvey, chief strategy and marketing officer with Fossil, a company that sells high-end watches and other accessories, joined Krzanich on stage to talk about a partnership the two companies have recently entered into. The partnership, naturally, revolves around wearables. While Fossil has an 80-percent market share in $100-$500 watches, its brand is on one out of every five watches sold in the world overall, McKelvey said. This is because of all the cheaper watches that are sold, and Fossil considers intelligent accessories an opportunity to expand its market reach. “Wearables leverage what we already do well,” he said. ‘Wearables for machines’ In the Internet of Things space, Intel’s strategy has two general fronts: enabling IoT developers and pushing for standards. “Internet of Things for the industry is almost like wearables for machines,” Krzanich said. “We can grow this business within our own organization to something north of 20 percent per year, now through 2020.” One of the goals is to enable developers to build intelligent edge devices that are able to connect to a central data center. One of Intel’s partners Daikin, for example, has created a board it is going to attach to all home air conditioning units to monitor them remotely to reduce the amount of unnecessarily field service calls its technicians respond to. Intel has sponsored creation of two consortia to develop and promote standards and drive interoperability for the Internet of Things. The Open Interconnect Consortium focuses on home devices and Industrial Internet Consortium focuses on standards for industrial products. The idea is to build a standard framework so all devices can communicate using a standard set of protocols, regardless of who makes them. (Comment on this)
10:49p	Ohio Town May Offer Free Land for Amazon Data Center Municipalities usually go to great lengths in competing to attract large data center construction projects, but officials in one Ohio town are considering a move at the drastic end of the range. Economic development officials in Dublin, Ohio (a Columbus suburb) have proposed that the city give $6.8 million worth of city-owned land to Amazon-owned Vadata to build an Amazon data center. At a Dublin City Council meeting Monday, economic development staff made a recommendation that the council votes to approve the incentive package on second reading “by emergency,” according to an official memo. Vadata, a wholly-owned Amazon subsidiary, is interested in the nearly 70-acre parcel of land in Dublin, but the city is competing with other municipalities for the 750,000-square-foot construction project. It will include office, data center and “related facilities.” The land transfer would be tied to a commitment to build. Amazon will have to start paying for the land if it doesn’t start site preparations within the first year after the deal closes or does not build at least 750,000 square feet before the end of 2024, according to the memo. An Amazon Web Services spokesperson abstained from commenting on specifics, saying only that the company is always on the hunt for good places to build data centers. “At AWS, we’re constantly looking for opportunities to expand our geographic coverage in order to provide lower latencies, higher operational efficiencies and additional choice to customers in terms of where they operate their applications and store their data,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Today there are 10 AWS Regions around the world, four of which are in the U.S., and we are constantly evaluating a long list of additional target countries and U.S. locations.” Dublin has been trying to attract high-tech construction projects very aggressively, its efforts met with success. Just yesterday, colocation and managed services company Expedient announced it had broken ground on a 60,000-square-foot data center construction project in town. In a statement, Director of Development Dana McDaniel pointed out that the town has also succeeded in attracting and growing a healthcare facilities cluster and other major construction projects. The Vadata data center would help grow the town’s image as an IT industry hub, she said. “Staff is proposing an Economic Development and Real Estate Purchase Agreement for Council’s consideration as a means to induce Vadata Inc. to invest in, establish and potentially expand operations within the city, providing significant value to the city’s emerging information technology cluster and serving as an additional anchor to the city’s West Innovation District,” McDaniel said. In addition to the land incentive, the package in front of the Council includes extension of public water infrastructure and sanitary sewer to the site and a 10 percent of tax withholdings for every employee working at the data center, up to $500,000 total over a period of 10 years. If the council heeds staff’s advice, it will vote on the incentives on September 22. (Comment on this)

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