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Thursday, June 25th, 2015
- Up to 15 percent energy efficiency improvement due to reduced heat loss from conversions.
- Elimination of harmonics, phase load balancing and other issues associated with AC power.
- Lower CAPEX and maintenance costs due to the elimination of conversion equipment.
- Enhanced reliability through simplified design.
- More marketable data center space thanks to DC power’s capability to be plugged directly into equipment.
- Additional OPEX reductions through integration of renewable energy sources such as solar panels.
| Time | Event |
| 12:00p | Chinese Data Center Giant 21Vianet Expands Into Silicon Valley California-based data center provider Server Farm Realty has struck a partnership with Chinese counterpart 21Vianet to provide services to customers in the US and China. Initially, 21Vianet is using SFR’s Silicon Valley data center to host customer equipment. Demand for data center space in the Silicon Valley is currently very high, and a lot of it comes from Chinese technology companies. Alibaba’s cloud services arm Aliyun recently took data center space in the Valley. China Telecom leased 3 MW at SFR competitor CoreSite’s Santa Clara data center to provide services to a “premier customer” looking to expand its business in North America. Tencent and Baidu were both shopping for Silicon Valley data center space earlier this year, according to commercial real estate brokers Cushman & Wakefield. 21Vianet is a major player in the Chinese data center market. Last year, a group of Chinese tech giants, including the smartphone maker Xiaomi, invested $300 million in the data center provider to help it fund further growth. Microsoft has used its services to expand its cloud business in China, and so has IBM. 21Vianet is using SFR’s facility to provide services to Chinese customers, Papouchado said, but the partnership goes further than that. The two companies will provide an “easy button” for customers in one country to establish data center presence in the other. US customers will “get to host in China, which is not an easy thing,” he said. “You have to know the pool you’re swimming in, and they (21Vianet) know it.” For its part, SFR will “translate US” to 21Vianet customers to make using data center services in a foreign country as seamless as possible for them. The reference to translation is both figurative and literal, as SFR’s services to Chinese customers include Chinese-speaking remote hands in Silicon Valley. The relationship is not limited to Santa Clara. SFR has data centers in Moses Lake, Washington, and Chicago, both of which be available to 21Vianet customers. The El Segundo, California-based company is also planning to expand into Europe, Papouchado said but declined to provide any more details about those plans. SFR’s Santa Clara data center has 3 MW of power capacity. Between 21Vianet and one other tenant, whose name he did not disclose, the facility is now fully leased, Papouchado said. SFR is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Red Sea Group, a global investment company that develops real estate assets around the world, including hotels, residential developments, and data centers. Red Sea started SFR in 2010. |
| 3:00p | 380V DC Power: Shaping the Future of Data Center Energy Efficiency James Stark, P.E., is an Engineering and Construction Manager at Electronic Environments Corporation. Traditional distribution practices employed to power data centers and their IT equipment have become antiquated as new standards emerge, driven by our need for new solutions that provide a higher level of efficiency without sacrificing reliability. In March of last year, Congress passed the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2014 (H.R. 2126) and introduced the TENANT STAR certification with the goal of forging a new evolution of commercial data center energy efficiency practices. Although this Act was designed specifically to impact federally operated data centers, it is expected to affect the mission-critical facility industry as a whole, generating opportunities for energy efficiency best practices across the private and public data center sectors. In the traditional electrical distribution scheme utilized by the majority of today’s data centers, energy must go through multiple conversions from Alternating Current (AC) voltage to Direct Current (DC) voltage, from the utility power grid, through the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and Power Distribution Units (PDU), out to the servers on the data center floor. The server power supplies then convert the voltage one last time from AC to DC, because the electronics inside the servers are resident DC devices. This process results in wasted energy, rejected in the form of heat, which then must be cooled, wasting even more energy and increasing operational cost. Deploying DC power distribution in the data center instead of using the traditional AC design is one way to reduce power loss, eliminate unnecessary conversions and, ultimately, lower energy costs. In order to find a practical solution to energy loss within current power distribution systems, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) teamed with the EMerge Alliance, an industry association that is creating standards for commercial implementation of DC power distribution, to advance the adoption of the 380-volt DC UPS solution. However, while 380V DC has been installed in many data centers around the world and acceptance of the technology has gained momentum over the last decade, its path to becoming the principle power standard within the data center industry still faces the challenge of the availability of 380V DC server power supplies. By incorporating a 380V DC solution, only a single conversion from 480V grid-supplied AC to 380V DC is required to power the native DC data processing equipment. 380V DC can be distributed directly to the server power supplies, eliminating multiple conversions between AC and DC. Significant cost savings can be realized, reducing energy usage by 10 to 20 percent. 380V DC design also allows for easier integration of alternate renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and fuel cell power, since these are native DC sources. 380V DC is not only beneficial in theory; it has already been put to practical use, successfully reducing costs for data centers across the globe. In September of 2014, Quality Technology Services (QTS) debuted its latest facility, a 360,000-square-foot data center in Princeton, New Jersey, featuring 57,000 solar panels throughout a 50-acre solar farm, generating 14.1MW of direct current. Home to the 180,000-square-foot McGraw Hill data center, which requires 4MW of power to operate three of its core businesses, QTS is just one of hundreds of mission-critical facilities migrating to DC power distribution for enhanced energy efficiency. The benefits of 380V DC power don’t stop there. Additional attractive features of this innovative solution include: 380V DC power systems are the future of data center power distribution, forever changing the data center landscape as we migrate toward a cleaner, more energy efficient and sustainable industry. 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. |
| 4:47p | CloudBees Creates Jenkins Plugins for Docker Containers CloudBees announced general availability of an offering that combines CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise and CloudBees Jenkins Operations Center into a single platform and adds support for six different Docker plug-ins that serve to extend the reach of Jenkins into the realm of containers. CloudBees is best known for its Platform-as-a-Service offering, which market research firm Gartner included in its 2014 Magic Quadrant as one of the leaders. But the company has gotten out of the PaaS business, now focusing on application development lifecycle solutions, according to Gartner. There is heavy competition in this market too. Salesforce and Microsoft are leading the pack, according to Gartner, with Google, IBM, Red Hat, and SAP among companies with strong offerings in the space. As usage of Docker containers grows, IT teams need tools for managing Dockerized application builds, CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey said. Labourey credits Docker with helping to better define the demarcation line between functions that need to be managed by developers and tasks that need to be handled by IT operations teams. The two groups are still highly interdependent, but Docker containers make it simpler for IT ops teams to give developers self-service IT while increasing server utilization. Adding support for Docker containers to the CloudBees platform makes it simpler to specify Docker images within the context of a Jenkins pipeline. Jenkins is a popular open source continuous integration tool. “Having support for Docker containers is now critical,” Labourey said.” There’s a lot of momentum behind Docker.” While Docker containers have yet to be deployed widely in production, when it comes to application development and testing environments, Docker usage is already fairly widespread, according to Labourey. As a platform that has been implemented over 100,000 times, Jenkins is designed to fundamentally simplify management of application builds. Labourey noted that Docker containers are now serving to increase the rate at which those application builds are being created. Specific Docker plug-ins created by CloudBees include Docker Workflow, Build and Publish, Docker Hub Notification, Docker Traceability, Docker Custom Build Environment, and the ability to use Docker to standardize the way application builds are created within a Jenkins pipeline. To help simplify the management of that process CloudBees is now available in two forms. A Team Edition is designed to make continuous integration available to smaller groups of developers and IT operations teams, while an Enterprise Edition enables Jenkins to be deployed at scale. Naturally, not every application build in the future is going to be created in a Docker container, so IT operations teams will have to manage those builds in a heterogeneous manner for years to come. At the same time, it’s clear that Docker containers as a mechanism for delivering those builds is here to stay. |
| 4:58p | Orange Business Services Expands IaaS Offerings in Asia Pacific
This article originally appeared at The WHIR Orange Business Services has expanded its Asia Pacific presence, launching its public cloud offering called Flexible Computing Advanced in the region through data center nodes in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney. The next-generation service is aimed at companies who have data centers and network requirements across several countries, the company said. Flexible Computing Advanced allows enterprises to build a Virtual Data Center with scalable resources. The service can be managed via a self-service portal or fully managed by Orange, and customers can add physical resources as needed. “With a deep product portfolio across infrastructure, applications and managed services, Orange Business Services provides an optimized end-to-end data center and cloud infrastructure solution. Orange chose to launch Flexible Computing Advanced in Hong Kong as it serves as the regional hub for thousands of multinationals around thePearl River Delta. We believe it will help meet the growing demand for IaaS in the Asia Pacific,” senior director for Orange Cloud for Business, Asia Pacific, Derrick Loi said in a statement. Orange Business Services launched its first infrastructure as a service offering in North America and Asia in 2013 after outlining a growth plan for Asia Pacific in 2011, focused on network enhancements, cloud computing and strategic partnerships. A recent study showed that Asian companies are becoming more comfortable with the cloud, with one-fifth actively replacing most of their technology with cloud-based options. Replacing legacy technology with cloud-based services will certainly drive business for service providers like Orange. Despite a willingness to adopt cloud services, there are still concerns around security.Orange acquired IT identity and security management company Atheos last year in an effort to strengthen its cyber defense capabilities. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/o |
| 6:35p | Differentiating Critical Capabilities for DCIM Tools It’s really a different kind of data center world out there. Cloud providers, service providers, and modern organizations are all looking to the data center to deliver continuous, reliable services. As the data center market continues to grow, one of the most critical aspects to consider will be management. It’s transitioning far beyond simple single-site management solutions to options with greater capabilities. Today’s data center management tools must scale your data center, the cloud, and beyond. In order to scale effectively, you need a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution with the tools capable of creating an intelligent and scalable control architecture. This white paper provides data center managers with insight into seven DCIM tools and their support for use-cases around a variety of organizations requiring data center services. Specifically, the report examines specific capabilities around cloud providers, SMEs, and larger enterprise organizations. This is where selecting the right DCIM platform is everything. It all comes down to your use-case and what your business requires from your data center. Download this white paper today to learn about various business use-cases for DCIM and where its latest capabilities fit in the industry. Specifically, you’ll see where capabilities like power monitoring, resource controls, workflow integration, and even predictive analysis all fit into your data center and business model. |
| 7:07p | Report: Aliyun Suffers 12-Hour Data Center Outage in Hong Kong Aliyun, the cloud services arm of Chinese web giant Alibaba, saw its Hong Kong data center go down for about 12 hours earlier this week, Caixin Online reported. Details about the cause of the outage are unavailable, and an Alibaba spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The company has offered two conflicting explanations about the outage, according to the report. Data center designers go to great lengths to engineer resilient infrastructure, and data center outages are rare. They do happen, however, and data center outages that affect the most businesses are those providing colocation, hosting, or cloud services. Aliyun, whose parent company went public on Nasdaq last year, has been expanding its data center infrastructure steadily. It launched the Hong Kong data center in May 2014 in partnership with Towngas, a Hong Kong utility company. Also in 2014 the company brought online a Beijing data center – its third in mainland China. Earlier this year, Aliyun announced plans to launch a data center in Silicon Valley to expand its cloud services in the US market. Aliyun said on a Chinese social network that the extremely long period of downtime was due to a power outage. The company reportedly told its clients, however, that the reason was a broken cable between Hong Kong and mainland China. The company told Caixin it first noticed something was wrong around 9:40 am on June 23. It blamed the problem on a power outage and said power came back on around 9:20 pm the same day. Aliyun also said it would compensate customers for the damage its data center outage had caused. |
| 10:16p | Fire Causes BT Data Center Outage in Northern Ireland Fire in a network room of a telco building in Belfast, UK, caused a BT data center outage Wednesday morning, affecting numerous customers, including government agencies. The fire was reported at 6 am local time, and firefighters extinguished it quickly, but turned off power to the entire data center as soon as they arrived, one tenant in the data center, a service provider called Tibus, wrote in a blog post. The facility was re-energized sometime after 1 pm, but it took Tibus staff until Thursday morning to return their systems fully back to normal. Among other affected customers were public transportation company Translink, the Police Ombudsman’s Office, Belfast City Council, Northern Ireland Electricity, and Budget Energy, the BBC reported. When the power did come back on, it damaged some power distribution units that were feeding electricity to Tibus servers. “As feared, the return of power without notification has damaged two of our PDUs,” a Tibus representative wrote. BT has not said what had caused the fire. It also did not say how many customers were affected by the outage. In statements to the press company spokespeople said only that numerous customers had been affected and that no customer equipment had been damaged. There was at least one other major data center outage this week. Aliyun, the cloud services subsidiary of the Chinese web giant Alibaba, saw its Hong Kong data center go down for 12 hours Tuesday. Aliyun provided conflicting accounts of what had caused the outage, telling the press that there had been a power outage in the building, while informing clients that a cable connecting Hong Kong and mainland China had been damaged. |
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