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Friday, July 24th, 2015
- Cormant advances Cormant-CS DCIM release. Cormant announced the latest release of Cormant-CS, with what-if scenarios and time-saving advancements in the way moves, adds, and changes can be planned and executed inside the data center and other IT environments. The new release also uses an algorithm to rank rack suitability for device installation location based on weighted scores of power, rack unit, and service environment capacity.
- Nlyte integrates DCIM software with three ITSM platforms. Nlyte Software announced it has developed a framework meant to make integrations with ITSM systems quicker and easier. New Nlyte DCSM (Data Center Service Management) offerings include Nlyte BMC ITSM, Nlyte for HP ITSM and Nlyte for ServiceNow ITSM.
- RiT Updates DCIM software for end-to-end network management. RiT Technologies announced an upgrade to its CenterMind software, enhanced to provide end-to-end connectivity management for complex and dynamic networks. The new capabilities comply with the latest AIM (Automated Infrastructure Management) standard.
- FieldView recognized by CRN as Emerging Vendor. FieldView Solutions announced that it has been named to the Channel Company’s 2015 CRN Emerging Vendors List. The FieldView 2015 DCIM solution impressed the CRN panel, and the company was cites as a vendor who produces innovative, new technologies that create high-margin opportunities for channel partners in North America.
- Device42 enables JIRA integration. Device42 announced a new add-on to enable JIRA users to integrate Configuration Items data provided by Device42 with JIRA service workflow items. The Device42 JIRA Connector is available at no cost to JIRA users in the Atlassian’s add-on marketplace.
| Time | Event |
| 12:00p | DCIM Meets ITSM to Close the Gap Between IT and Facilities Facilities and IT are converging, driven by the desire for a more holistic picture that shows how IT and the data center facility are interrelated, and at the core of it all is the desire to understand what it costs to deliver a service. To this end, two well-known acronyms in the data center industry are converging: DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) and ITSM (IT Service Management). “Modern data centers are beginning to integrate data from DCIM and ITSM systems for end-to-end visibility and management,” said Rhonda Ascierto, a research director for data center technologies at 451 Research. “Ultimately, these and other integrations with DCIM data will enable greater automation — the ‘software-driven data center.’” Adding DCIM data to ITSM can improve performance and availability across the data center and yield new granular information about the true cost of running an IT service, she said. ITSM Integration Helps Sutter Health See DCIM ValueDCIM software vendor Nlyte’s recent integration with three ITSM platforms is one of many recent examples of DCIM providers capturing this evolution. Nlyte customer Sutter Health epitomizes the reasons this convergence is occurring. Sutter Health is a not-for-profit healthcare system in Northern California that works a lot on patient experience. Prior to DCIM, its data center team “lived and died by the spreadsheet,” said Brian Desberg, director of enterprise data center operations at Sutter Health. He joined the company two years ago. “There was a lot of tracking assets on spreadsheets and a number of different systems; and various people tracked various things,” said Desberg. “This posed a problem because there was also a lot of reliance on legacy knowledge.” One of the first questions asked, said Desberg, was how many servers there were in the data center. Sutter had six data centers managed with spreadsheets and tribal knowledge. When asking how many servers they had, the number given was “pretty close with around an 80-percent confidence level.” But “pretty close” only counts in horseshoe and hand grenade throwing of course. Sutter was a good candidate for DCIM, but it needed to be sold to the executive team. And ITSM integration was how Desberg’s team was ultimately able to justify the cost. Both facilities and IT are important, so convincing adoption of just a facilities monitoring tool is hard. “In ITSM by itself without DCIM data companies are making guesses or simply not factoring in the cost of the physical data center layer — the critical equipment, space, power, and so on — that IT services run on,” Ascierto said. Converging the two helps position DCIM as a hub for the entire picture, making for easier cost justification. Sutter is a BMC Software shop. The tools were not integrated, and the organization didn’t have the ability to predict how a change may affect the infrastructure as a whole. Desberg said Nlyte initially stood out because of its ability to integrate with the BMC tool suite through a connector. The recent Nlyte ITSM announcement was of a deeper integration. “To integrate with BMC and orchestrate through a process workflow will be tremendous,” said Desberg. “We struggled mightily in regards to change management and adoption of ITSM. We’re doing both now and going full speed ahead. “ Desberg said that the integration is key in determining ‘what if?’ scenarios: what if something goes online? Who are the business owners? The next generation, said Desberg, allows Sutter to do full orchestration of all ITSM, including lifecycle configuration and change management. “We recently did an all-hands meeting and the focus was on eliminating all of the errors that come out of change management,” said Desberg. “One of the problems was we didn’t have a full picture of the environment.” ROI Story Fuzzy, But Benefits are ClearMuch of the DCIM software industry messaging is spearheaded with the potential Return On Investment of DCIM. “Less than a full year into it, I haven’t seen the full savings yet outside the labor costs,” said Desberg. “However, we do things much faster now. We can run reports instantly, see what tools do, who owns them. The potential save in the event of unplanned downtime would be a huge save in itself in terms of our ability to recover.” Desberg also dispelled the common notion that DCIM is hard to set up initially. Implementation took 90 days, the team consisting of staff from both Nlyte and BMC walking through installation with Sutter’s administration. Ten employees at Sutter then went through DCIM training. In terms of expanding DCIM usage, the company just added Nlyte’s audit tool into the mix. Nlyte is currently licensed in two of Sutter’s six data centers, as Sutter, like many enterprises, is looking to consolidate legacy infrastructure. Desberg said Nlyte will help with this consolidation, particularly in terms of capacity management. Subset of ITSM?The initial wave was connectors, but now a fuller, deeper DCIM and ITSM convergence and integration is occurring. Raritan, another DCIM software vendor, even called DCIM a subset of ITSM when it announced a ServiceNow integration. CommScope and HP recently partnered to blend DCIM and ITSM. “It’s not just about the data center, it’s about the relationship between data center and the business,” said CommScope’s director strategic solutions and marketing William Bloomstein. ServiceNow is in the middle of an IT sandwich, also integrating with cloud management provider RightScale, making for ITSM that can leverage cloud infrastructure in delivering services. The RightScale integration speaks to an extension of DCIM and ITSM integration to cloud management – three very different worlds. “Having insight into the physical layer from DCIM is helping managers decide where an IT service should run; in which data center, room or rack; when to run it based on business requirements; and, critically, whether it should run on-premises or in a third-party facility,” said Ascierto. “While DCIM today is sometimes still considered nonessential, the proliferation of low-cost, high-availability public cloud services is changing that view. For a growing number of companies, data from DCIM is required to support best execution venue strategies. As more businesses focus on best execution, we believe more IT and even financial departments will drive new DCIM deployments over time. Ultimately, combining DCIM data with other systems will enable automation.“ The convergence of DCIM and ITSM is essentially an integration of integrations — DCIM itself is already an integration platform. 451 coined the term “Data Service Optimization,” or DSO, for the new breed of DCIM and ITSM. “In order to get this visibility, it is necessary to integrate – that is, build real-time, usually bi-directional, links between DCIM and other systems,” said Ascierto. Will ITSM and DCIM become one? The two systems may eventually merge into a single offering, according to Ascierto. “DCIM features are likely to remain distinct components (in a combined offering) because the complexity of managing data center power and cooling resources lends itself to a dedicated system,” she said. |
| 3:00p | Friday Funny: Data Center White Boarding Sometimes white boarding can become a little crazy…. Here’s how it works: Diane Alber, the Arizona artist who created Kip and Gary, creates a cartoon, and we challenge our readers to submit the funniest, most clever caption they think will be a fit. Then we ask our readers to vote for the best submission and the winner receives a signed print of the cartoon. Congratulations to Dan, whose caption for the “Birthday” edition of Kip and Gary won the last contest with: “Gary, it’s about time we remember Diane’s birthday!” Several submissions came in for last week’s “Bright Aisle” edition – now all we need is a winner. Help us out by submitting your vote below! Take Our PollFor previous cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel. And for more of Diane’s work, visit Kip and Gary’s website! |
| 4:28p | Weekly DCIM News Roundup: July 24 New edition of Cormant-CS DCIM software out; Nlyte integrates DCIM with three (more) ITSM platforms; RiT’s DCIM software now has end-to-end network management; FieldView named 2015 CRN Emerging Vendor; Device42 adds a JIRA connector for its DCIM software. |
| 4:49p | Dell Rolls Out Low-Cost Data Center SSDs Getting closer to making data center SSD deployment commonplace, Dell announced this week new Mainstream Read-Intensive SSD (solid state drive) solutions, priced as low as $1.66 per gigabyte. Claiming to be the first data center storage array provider to feature the latest technology in enterprise flash drives, Dell said the new SSDs offer up to 24 times performance improvement over 15,000-RPM hard drives for the same price. Cost has been the largest impediment to data center SSD adoption, and combining the low price of this solution with a doubling of density in storage capacity make it an alluring option. The Dell Storage SC Arrays will combine its virtualized storage array architecture with Samsung’s Triple Level Cell (TLC) 3D NAND technology in both flash-optimized arrays and all-flash and hybrid flash configurations. Samsung also announced new data center SSDs based on its 3-bit V-NAND tech this week. “Dell’s unique intelligent data placement strategy allows different types of flash storage—SLC, MLC, and TLC—to be efficiently deployed in multiple-tier architectures that can be more cost-effective than single-tier flash-based arrays,” Eric Burgener, research director for storage systems at IDC, said in a statement. “Dell’s announcement of flash drives built on TLC 3D NAND technology puts them in the storage density lead at 45TB per rack unit for flash-based arrays and drops the dollar per gigabyte cost of enterprise flash storage to roughly the same cost as 15K RPM HDDs—with significantly higher performance.” Using the Dell approach to multiple-tier architectures in its arrays the read-intensive TLC flash is protected from heavy writes and can thus last longer than drives in other tiers. With a Dell support plan, the company said it will guarantee all SSD formats for life. Individual drives are available up to 3.8TB. Storage SC8000, SC4020, and SCv2000 series will scale up to 90TB in 2U of rack space. Dell noted that its SC8000 arrays can support 62 percent more flash for a total of up to 3 petabytes of raw flash capacity in a single array. |
| 6:16p | Equinix Buys Land to Expand in Tight Silicon Valley Data Center Market In most markets, cost of land is a minor consideration for data center construction. It’s things like proximity to customers, cost of power, fiber infrastructure, and availability of tax incentives that really drive the decision making. But in Silicon Valley, with its skyrocketing real estate prices, land is a much bigger factor. And that’s why Equinix, the global data center services giant based in the Valley, recently made a sizable land acquisition in south San Jose. The company needed to make sure it had land to expand on to keep up with high demand for data center space in one of its most important markets. “It helps us secure runway for future development in a market that can be challenging to acquire green-field sites in,” Stuart Thompson, Equinix director of real estate for the Americas region, said. “It’s one of our best markets.” After a period of oversupply about one year ago, Silicon Valley today is a landlord’s data center market. Demand is significantly outpacing supply, and rents have been inching up, according to the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. Equinix has seven Silicon Valley data centers with “pretty strong fill rates,” Thompson said. The company plans to start construction on the new land late next year. It paid $38 million for 34 acres to prior owner Xilinx, a semiconductor company credited with having invented field programmable gate arrays that are all the rage in the cloud server space today. The land is close to an existing Equinix campus in San Jose, which is what made it desirable. Because of the strong emphasis on growing an ecosystem of interconnected companies within its campuses, proximity to that ecosystem makes a data center attractive to new and existing customers, Thompson explained. A lot of the demand in the Silicon Valley data center market is driven by cloud service providers, but it’s not limited to them. “It’s really about that campus effect and dynamic pull-through,” Thompson said. Already the world’s largest data center provider, Equinix continues expanding at a breakneck pace. After having launched additional data centers in London, New York, Singapore, Toronto, and Melbourne in the first quarter, it now has 105 data centers across 33 markets, company executives said on its most recent earnings call. It is in the process of expanding two existing data centers in Ashburn, Virginia, and expects in the near future to start new construction on a 44-acre plot of land in Ashburn it bought in 2012. But the biggest expansion of this year is yet to come: closure of Equinix’s acquisition of TelecityGroup, one of Europe’s largest data center providers. Once closed, the deal, announced in May, will add 39 data centers in 10 European cities to the global Equinix portfolio, making it the largest data center provider in Europe. |
| 6:40p | Comcast Connects Businesses to Underground Data Center Storage Imagine the confidence of storing sensitive data in an off-site maximum-security vault carved into a solid granite mountain. Now, add a private, high-performance fiber network that allows you to send digital back-up, disaster recovery and archival data — up to 10 Gbps — and you just might think you’ve died and gone to secure-storage heaven. This isn’t some data center manager’s pipe dream. It’s the real deal made possible by Comcast‘s Ethernet service and Perpetual Storage, provider of a new DataVaulting service specializing in commercial protection of off-site digital and microform data. Combining virtual data security with the underground data center’s physically secure location — it is inside of a granite mountain in Salt Lake City — the new service will help enable customers to access their stored records and data more efficiently over a dedicated connection. “Perpetual Storage was founded with the intention of providing our customers with data storage and protection services that cannot be matched by any competitor,” Aubrey Murray, senior managing director of business development for Perpetual Storage, said in a statement. “Access to Comcast’s high-performance fiber network enabled us to help create our new DataVaulting service that is a natural extension of our core business and an offering that lets our customers choose a mix of service options that best meet their distinctive needs.” The underground data center will provide multiple layers of security for digital assets of financial and insurance services, government, manufacturing, technology, and other customers. With a long history in physical storage, PSI had been looking to leverage the unique properties of its mountain facility – high-security, climate-controlled, and protected from natural disasters – to expand into digital storage services based on customer demand. The trend of buiding data centers in old mine shafts, underground, and beneath the sea is firmly in place as security becomes more and more of an issue for IT professionals. In fact, one Finnish-Israeli startup just announced that it would be renting a cave in Finland for that very purpose. To offer the service, Comcast extended its fiber network directly into the Perpetual Storage facility, enabling its customers to access their stored resources quickly and reliably. Customers also have better access to PSI’s managed services and consulting services for customized data center solutions built around their unique business needs. “Investing to extend our fiber network to Perpetual Storage Inc.’s mountain vault not only enabled them to expand their market opportunity, but it also gives our customers high-performance access to a very unique on-net data center facility,” Paul Merritt, director for Comcast Business, said in a statement. “As digital storage increasingly becomes the only sound option for companies of all sizes’ disaster recovery processes, access to dependable, easily scalable Ethernet connectivity will become more necessity than luxury.” Comcast Business, the cable company’s enterprise services division, has more than 350 data centers on its network across the US. Its 145,000 route miles of fiber span 39 states and the District of Columbia. |
| 6:51p | French Surveillance Law Implicates Internet Service Providers, Web Hosts
This article originally appeared at The WHIR Internet service providers in France will have to install black boxes that analyze users’ metadata and alert authorities of possible terrorist activity under the country’s sweeping surveillance bill, which the Constitutional Council approved on Thursday night. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the law overhauls the entire legal framework for France’s surveillance operations for the first time since the 1990s. The overhaul was driven largely by the terrorist attacks in France earlier this year that killed 17 people. Web hosts and telecoms in France have strongly opposed the bill, threatening to move their infrastructure out of the country if the bill is passed. In a statement in April, French web hosts said the French government is not equipped to handle the technical aspects of the black boxes and could open up the country to security risks. “Last night’s decision clears the last hurdle for a law that will deal a major blow to human rights in France. The surveillance measures authorized by this law are wildly out of proportion. Large swathes of France’s population could soon find themselves under surveillance on obscure grounds and without prior judicial approval,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia said in a statement. “The US and UK security agencies’ mass surveillance was denounced globally, yet French authorities appear to want to mimic their American and British counterparts in allowing the authorities to intercept and access people’s communications at will.” In the UK, the High Court ruled recently that sections of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act violate articles of the European Convention on Human Rightsand personal data protection afforded to British citizens. The Constitutional Council approved most of the provisions of the law, save three provisions, including one that would allow emergency surveillance without the approval of the prime minister or another minister in the government, calling it “a disproportionate violation of the right to respect for private life and the confidentiality of communication.” Under the law intelligence services will be able to work with telecommunications companies to gain real-time access to Internet connection data of suspected terrorists. Beyond complying with the surveillance law, French ISPs also have to participate in a “three strikes” anti-piracy program. This week that program passed the five million warning mark after five years. This first ran at https://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/f |
| 7:06p | Putting Teeth in Data Center Lease Agreements The data center lease agreement that defines how IT organizations can make use of a facility is probably the least-understood and underappreciated of legal documents an IT organization is likely to sign. “The leasing agreement is the main legal document that governs the relationship,” David Orwick, a partner with the law firm Thompson Coburn, said. “IT organizations need to make sure there are real remedies attached to the document.” Orwick will speak about strategies for negogiating data center lease agreements at the Data Center World conference in National Harbor, Maryland, this September. His plan is to explain why it’s critical that IT organizations not only spell out specifically what happens when service levels are not met, but also, just as importantly, what occurs when the IT organization needs to exit the lease. Unfortunately, there is not much consistency in how these agreements are typically constructed, he said. It’s usually the owner of the data center that is driving the negotiation. Given that no two data center facilities are alike, the owner usually has an advantage when it comes to specifying not only terms and conditions, but also exclusions that the IT organization might overlook. This is why IT organizations need to pay extra attention to the wording surrounding each and every term and condition. It’s also important that IT organizations make sure they have the right team in place to not only negotiate the contract, but also make the IT organization aware of any incentives there might be in any given locality when it comes to deploying applications, he said. After all, some of the benefits a data center operator might be accruing from public funds should be passed on to the customer that agrees to use that data center facility. All too often IT organizations learn the hard way that SLAs they wind up signing have few if any actual teeth in them. Good legal counsel, Orwick said, is the difference between making sure those agreements have remedies such as credits that actually provide some meaningful compensation to the IT organization in the event the data center operator doesn’t live up to its commitments. For more information, sign up for Data Center World National Harbor, which will convene in National Harbor, Maryland, on September 20-23, 2015, and attend David’s session titled “Leasing Strategies: Current Trends in Data Center Lease Negotiations.” |
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