Monday, October 19th, 2015

Time	Event
12:00p	Modular Cooling System Enables On-Demand Data Center Capacity The main reason Amazon Web Services is so successful is it has taken the expense of building a data center or leasing data center space out of the equation for tech startups and today, increasingly, for more traditional established enterprises. The online retailer’s cloud infrastructure business now rakes in more than $7 billion in annual revenue. Managing data center capacity, making sure there’s always enough of it to support business growth, is a complicated and costly exercise. By giving users the ability to spin up additional virtual servers on the fly as they need them and to spin them down when they don’t, paying only for what they actually use, AWS has changed IT capacity management forever. But at least today, whether because of regulations, security concerns, or performance issues, public Infrastructure-as-a-Service doesn’t work as an infrastructure option for all companies and all applications – although AWS and its rivals like Microsoft are working hard to make sure that it does – which is why the physical data center provider industry continues to thrive. Companies like the control and performance of dedicated infrastructure they get when they deploy servers at colocation data centers. But colocation doesn’t offer the type of elasticity companies get through IaaS, and since there’s clearly demand for both full control and elasticity, some service providers attempt to devise solutions that offer a compromise between the two. It’s difficult to make the numbers work if a company adds capacity incrementally. Building at scale can yield much higher profit margins if you can find customers to utilize that capacity. If you don’t, however, you end up with stranded capital. Enter Modularity This is why modularity, as a concept, is huge in data center design. Modularity implies quick expansion in small increments. The concept is employed in everything, from mechanical chillers or uninterruptible power supply units to computer rooms or even shipping-container-like modules that are basically entire self-sufficient data centers. One part of the equation required to make modularity work is quick installation of the modules once onsite, and the other is a well-oiled supply chain that is prepared to churn out modules quickly enough when they are needed. On-Demand Data Center Capacity A data center service provider formed just seven months ago is using modular cooling systems designed by a sister company to introduce a higher degree of elasticity to the colocation model. When it finishes construction of its first data center in Plano, Texas, Aligned Data Centers is promising its future customers the ability to pay only for the power capacity they use, including the ability to scale up and, importantly, down. It is the scaling down part that’s a lot harder to address with physical infrastructure than it is with VMs in a public cloud. For Aligned, the flexibility comes from the cooling system, designed by its sister company Inertech. The system – in use at eBay, Lenovo, and Telus data centers, among others – can add or reduce capacity 300 kW at a time, Thomas Doherty, COO at Aligned, said. “It’s really a variable infrastructure that can scale up [or] scale down,” he said. Although not exactly instantaneous like IaaS – that 300 kW of additional capacity can be deployed in about eight weeks – it is a compromise. To make sure the model works, the company has established a “deep” and tightly controlled supply chain, Doherty said. Aligned and Inertech are parts of a holding company called Aligned Energy. Backed by the hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management, it includes two other affiliates: Energy Metrics, which sells data center infrastructure management software, and Karbon Engineering, a data center consulting, design, and commissioning services organization. Aligned is nearing completion of the first phase of its first 300,000-square-foot data center in Plano, which will have power capacity of 30 MW. The company has also started construction of a 550,000-square-foot, 65 MW facility in Phoenix and says it is going through the site-selection process for its next build, exploring locations in California, Illinois, Virginia, and New Jersey. Inertech’s Modular Cooling System A key component of Inertech’s cooling system design is the Thermal Hub, which replaces the traditional power-guzzling mechanical chillers. These Hubs suck in the heat from the data center floor and push it out. A 100-ton Hub needs 500 watts, compared with the 90,000 watts required to deliver the same cooling capacity using a traditional chiller and chiller pumps, according to Inertech’s website. The calculation assumes that free cooling is used and that outside air temperature is the same in both scenarios. The Hub is the central modular component of the system. More can be deployed quickly as needed, or removed. If a customer has overshot in their capacity calculations and needs to scale down, a hub can be moved to serve another customer in the facility. In Aligned data center in Plano, the Hubs will be part of a “spline” in the center section of the facility, Doherty explained. Heat travels from IT racks to the Hubs from heat sinks that sit above fully contained aisles, carried by pumped refrigerant. They use fans to take heat away from the servers. Once the heat is at one of the Hubs, it is taken out of by a Thermal Bus. A “super-highway for heat transfer,” in Inertech’s words, it is a more energy efficient alternative to forced air systems. The Bus is another quick-connect, modular component that can be added or removed as needed. On the final leg of its journey, heat travels via a heat rejection loop from the Bus to whatever heat rejection solution the user has, be it a fluid cooler, a cooling tower, a dry cooler, and so on. Addressing Common Disconnect Aligned will bill customers monthly, based on the power capacity their equipment used as opposed to the amount of capacity deployed to support them, Doherty said. He declined to disclose cost per kW, but said it would be competitive with market rates. He is confident the need for a colocation product that better aligns the amount of infrastructure deployed for a customer with their actual use is there. In conversations with big banks, for example, there is a common complaint about disconnect between their data center lease agreements and their energy bills, Doherty said. Customers realize they pay for infrastructure they never use, and that’s the problem Aligned is out to solve. (Comment on this)
4:30p	The Shift to Intelligent Data Centers James Young is the Director of CommScope’s Data Center Practice in Asia Pacific. One question that keeps surfacing when discussing the evolution of the data center is, “How do we make the data center more eco-friendly?” I feel this is one area that we can all agree on. Reducing waste saves money. Designing to minimize or eliminate waste is the key objective of both IT equipment manufacturers and data center facilities. This synergy, combining modular data center technology with DCIM analytics can enable the eco-friendly data center of the future. Making the Right Choices Moving into the cloud means increased flexibility and reliability, but it also means trusting the network capability and capacity. The link between you and the cloud is vital for delivering the value of cloud computing. If that link isn’t reliable or fast enough, the benefits of the cloud are negated. So a strong, reliable network with the agility and capacity to support more data is vital – and also a fundamental building block on the road to the Internet of Things. A strong network infrastructure is vital to positioning data centers for the IoT and global machine-to-machine communications. This is a profound evolution of data communications. IoT will bring together mobile devices and applications within buildings, smart cities, the connected car and more by adding sensors that generate more data than ever. This data will then be analyzed and converted into information that positively affects people’s daily lives. Examples include: energy efficiency through smart home monitoring and fewer traffic jams thanks to sensors on cars, traffic lights and buildings. Businesses will look to IoT for leaps in efficiency and competitive positioning. All these sensors will produce a massive amount of data. The sheer volume will have to be stored and processed somewhere, inevitably in a data center. In a recent report, Gartner mentioned that the influx of IoT data will bring new challenges in terms of security and storage management. Moving massive amounts of data over the wide area network is expensive and introduces latency. Cost and latency must be controlled to unlock the value of IoT applications. Changing Times, Changing Need A shifting landscape has moved the data center development focus from “tried and true” to connected and efficient. Businesses naturally need to react to the behavior of their competitors, but their own competitiveness also hinges upon the ability to change on a continuous basis. Government legislation informs this need to change, and you can expect that CEOs and CIOs will take their cues from government policy to ensure their business priorities remain compliant with regulations. When a government is proactive in taking the lead and setting standards, change naturally follows. The Influence of the Big Players It’s worth noting the ways in which IT equipment developed by giants like Google and Facebook are now influencing how data centers are designed and built. There has been a shift in the data center from one large machine doing everything to thousands of small machines doing the same thing. This helps maximize resources and ensures that not all eggs are put into one basket, while simultaneously reducing computing costs. This represents a change in business model and strategy that some believe will disrupt the balance of the IT industry. Ensuring the Last Mile Recently we have observed many multiple system operators and carriers that are now experiencing an evolution in their processes and operations that seems similar to enterprise organizations. Sometimes they consolidate their data centers to save money and improve operational scale. Other times, they build geographically dispersed facilities to better service the customers they serve. The last mile comes into its own because one thing they all have in common is a dependence on the last mile to bridge people and information together. Network connectivity and latency of information builds application bridges that deliver business value. The mix of different operating models will likely always remain with some organizations being less dependent on the IT equipment they use choosing instead to outsource all their IT or software needs to an expert third-party supplier. Since the data center is the core of their business, others may choose the alternative path. Ultimately, the network remains vital for any of these strategies to succeed. It is a good time to start planning accordingly and leverage the solutions available for a successful, effective future for your data center. 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)
5:34p	Windstream to Sell Data Center Business for $575M In what may be a sign of things to come, Little Rock, Arkansas-based telecommunications company WindStream Communications has agreed to sell its data center services business to TierPoint, a rollup that’s been focused on buying companies that provide data center services in under-served regional markets. Telcos buying data center and cloud service providers was a regular occurrence in recent years, as telcos sought to compensate for shrinking revenues from traditional telco services by leveraging their network infrastructure to expand broader into the enterprise IT services market. Some of them, however, are now getting out of the data center business, and Windstream’s TierPoint deal is an example. Windstream has more than 20 data centers, most of them on the East Coast, with some in the Midwest, South, and on the West Coast. It expanded its data center portfolio greatly with acquisition of Hosted Solutions for $310 million in 2010. Windstream leases at least some of its data centers from wholesale providers, including Compass Datacenters and Sabey Data Centers. Following the transaction, valued at $575 million, TierPoint and Windstream will cross-sell each other’s services, meaning Windstream will still be able to offer data center services to enterprise customers, but it will not have the expense of operating the facilities. “Data center services will remain an integral component of our enterprise service offering,” Tony Thomas, Windstream president and CEO, said in a statement. Earlier this month, investment banking firm Cowen and Company initiated coverage of CenturyLink – a telco with a massive data center services business it gained largely through acquisition – but called on the company to spin off its cloud and hosting services business after a broad examination of CenturyLink’s revenue streams. Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said that segment of CenturyLink had been performing poorly and that it was indicative of the state of affairs at other telcos that provide data center services. Example of a major telco that wants to sell $2 billion worth of data center assets is AT&T, according to an anonymously sourced report by Reuters earlier this year. Another example is Tata Communications, which is reportedly shopping around its more than 1 million square feet of data center space around the world. The biggest examples of telcos buying data center service providers were Verizon’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Terremark, CenturyLink’s $2.5 billion acquisition of Savvis, and the $1.2 billion acquisition of ViaWest by Shaw Communications. A smaller example would be the $230 million NaviSite acquisition by Time Warner Cable in 2011. (Comment on this)
5:58p	VMworld Europe 2015 News Roundup This post originally appeared at The Var Guy By Michael Cusanelli With VMworld Europe happening in Barcelona last week, we decided to gather up some of the most important news and announcements from this year’s show for your reading pleasure. Without further ado, here are the top stories from VMware’s annual European extravaganza. Here are some of the biggest things to know from VMworld Europe: Google Cloud DNS: The upcoming general availability of Google Cloud DNS will allow VMware customers to combine vCloud Air with the Google Cloud Platform to create a single hybrid cloud service. Low latency DNS will be available via Google’s Anycast DNS server network. The service is expected to be available in early 2016. vCloud Director 8: The recent launch of vCloud Director 8 includes support for vSphere 6 and VMware NSX 6.1.4 as well as the addition of organization Virtual Data Center templates, vSphere vApp enhancements and OAuth Support for Identity Sources. vCloud Air Monitoring Insight and Enhanced VMware Identity Access Management: A new feature called vCloud Air Monitoring Insight will allow users to obtain analytics into cloud service operations through interactive metrics, event logs and alarms. The service is also designed to provide information on the infrastructure, application health and platform performance of a system, according to the announcement. VMware Identity Access Management allows vCloud Air customers to access their accounts via single identity, single sign-on management. Both solutions are expected to be available later this year. vSphere Integrated Containers: VMware announced plans to expand support for its Photon OS on the VMware vCloud Air platform with the addition of vSphere Integrated Containers. Container support is expected to allow IT teams to utilize existing investments in VMware infrastructure, people, processes and management tools, while providing developers with container orchestration solutions from ecosystem partners. Expanded support for containers is expected to be available in 2016. VMware Unveils Project Michigan: Project Michigan, which was shown as a technology preview, will allow users to extend the capabilities of Advanced Networking Services and Hybrid Cloud Manager to all vCloud Air services. It will also enable access to elastic Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand so customers can spin up virtual machines as needed. (Comment on this)
7:12p	Huawei to Pump $1B into Cloud Services Business Chinese IT giant Huawei announced plans to invest $1 billion to grow its cloud services business, according to reports. It is one of several major Chinese technology companies to announce a big investment program to expand cloud services. Tencent said in February it would spend $1.57 billion to grow its cloud business, and Alibaba announced a $1 billion cloud investment in July. Such investment programs usually mean additional services but also expansion of data center infrastructure in both capacity and geographic reach to deliver cloud services to more customers. One place where Chinese giants’ cloud ambitions have been felt is Silicon Valley, where data center providers have seen increased demand for capacity these giants generate. Alibaba’s cloud services arm Aliyun launched its first Silicon Valley data center earlier this year and announced plans to launch a second one just this month. Tencent and Baidu have also been shopping for data center space in the region. Wholesale and retail data center provider CoreSite announced in July that it leased data center capacity in Silicon Valley to China Telecom, which would in turn provide that capacity to an unnamed tech company from China. In June, Chinese data center provider 21Vianet – whose data centers in China support cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Office 365 and, more recently, IBM SoftLayer – took data center space in Santa Clara, California, with Server Farm Realty to serve Chinese customers. Huawei said Monday it will spend the $1 billion over five years to make its cloud services more attractive to developers, Reuters reported. (Comment on this)

<< Previous Day

2015/10/19 [Calendar]

Next Day >>