Thursday, January 14th, 2016

Time	Event
11:00a	Switch Building SuperNap Mega Data Center in Thailand Continuing its push into international markets, Las Vegas-based Switch has teamed up with Thailand’s government and the country’s biggest banks to build what the company said will be the largest data center in Thailand. Asia Pacific has been one of the biggest emerging markets for data center services. Within the region, the leading data center markets are China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. While Thailand isn’t one of the top markets in the area, at least some of Switch’s partners in the project will also be taking space in the future facility, which reduces the business risk of going into the new market. The company’s announcement cites executives from partners Kasikorn Bank and Siam Commercial Bank saying they will use the data center to improve their ability to serve their customers. In fact, a senior exec at one of the banks will also be chairman of SuperNap Thailand, the Switch subsidiary set up to build and operate the data center. “This unique data center design will not only bring innovative technology to the Kingdom, but will also attract international investors,” Deepak Sarup, executive VP of Siam Commercial Bank and SuperNap Thailand chairman, said in a statement. “The facility will play an important role to support the country’s business development by showcasing Thailand as a regional hub for data centers.” Read more: Singapore is a $1B Data Center Market and Growing Fast Another partner is CPB Equity, a subsidiary of the Crown Property Bureau, which Wikipedia describes as a “quasi-government agency responsible for managing the property of the crown of the Kingdom of Thailand.” Switch didn’t say whether CPB will also be taking space in the future data center. Also part of the partnership is Thai data center service provider True IDC. Besides local customers, Switch is likely to bring some of its major US companies to the Thailand data center. It lists the likes of eBay, Google, Amazon, Intel, HP, Intuit, and Boeing as customers in its US data centers. Many of its existing customers serve Asian markets and are likely to expand data center capacity in Asia in the future. The facility in Thailand, expected to come online in the first quarter of 2017, will be able to support about 6,000 IT racks. According to Switch, it is being built outside the flood zone, 110 meters above sea level. This is important, since Thailand is prone to flooding. Floods caused by monsoon weather in 2011 crippled its manufacturing industry, causing global shortages of hard drives, most of which are manufactured there. Read more: What Thailand Floods Taught AWS Hardware Team about Supply Chain Management Switch said the Thai facility will be the first data center in Asia Pacific to be certified as a Tier IV facility by the Uptime Institute. A lot of the company’s massive Las Vegas campus is Tier IV certified. This is the second international expansion for Switch. Last year it expanded into Europe, announcing a data center project near Milan. As it expands internationally, Switch is also adding to its portfolio in the US. The company is building a massive data center campus in Reno, Nevada, and preparing to build one in Michigan. (Comment on this)
4:00p	Who Leased the Most Data Center Space in 2015? A lot of wholesale data center capacity was gobbled up last year and the bulk of it was leased by cloud providers and companies providing other popular web services. Jim Kerrigan, managing principal at North American Data Centers, a data center-focused commercial real estate firm, said wholesale data center providers did a lot more business with cloud companies than they did in 2014. Cloud, he said, was one of the things responsible for 2015 being one of the best data center leasing years ever. “I was surprised how much cloud has done last year,” he said. “Forty percent of those deals are cloud-based companies.” Read more: Digital Realty Leans on IBM, AT&T to Hook Enterprises on Hybrid Cloud Microsoft alone signed leases for nearly 30MW of capacity across three sites, according to Kerrigan’s latest annual report on the state of the North American data center real estate market. CenturyLink may be thinking of divesting some or all of the data center assets it owns, but the company took down 17MW of capacity across two sites last year. Amazon Web Services contracted with CoreSite for a massive 130,000-square-foot Silicon Valley data center, according to the report. The report lifted mystery about who was the single tenant CoreSite said it was building the big dedicated data center in Santa Clara for. AWS also reportedly signed a smaller, 2MW deal in Montreal with Colo-D, likely to be one of the sites supporting its upcoming cloud region in Canada announced this week. Read more: CoreSite Building Huge Silicon Valley Data Center for Single Client Apple leased a total of 12MW with DuPont Fabros Technology across two sites. A new big data center user has emerged in 2015. Ride-sharing pioneer Uber leased 14MW of data center capacity total in Dallas, Santa Clara, and Ashburn, Virginia, according to the report. Uber’s massive data center expansion speaks to the demand the company is seeing and its ambitions to add services beyond the core ride-hailing one. Read more: Uber Buys Microsoft Data Center, Map Imaging Operation Here are the 10 biggest wholesale data center deals of 2015, according to North American Data Centers (not counting Amazon’s CoreSite deal, since we don’t know the power capacity): Juniper took 12MW with Sabey Dat Centers in Quincy, Washington Microsoft’s 10.4MW deal with DuPont Fabros Technology, in Ashburn, Virginia Microsoft’s 10MW deal with Vantage Data Centers in Santa Clara, California LinkedIn took 10MW with InfoMart Data Centers in Portland, Oregon CenturyLink took 9MW with IO Data Centers in Phoenix, Arizona CenturyLink leased 8MW from Server Farm Realty in Moses Lake, Oregon Microsoft leased 7.2MW from Digital Realty Trust in Franklin Park, Illinois Apple took 6MW from DuPont Fabros Technology in Elk Grove Village, Illinois Apple leased 6MW from DuPont fabros Technology in Ashburn, Virginia Uber took 6MW with Digital Realty Trust in Dallas, Texas More 2015 deals in the North American Data Centers report itself. (Comment on this)
5:51p	H5 Buys into Phoenix, Silicon Valley’s Data Center Backup H5 Data Centers has expanded into the Phoenix market, the most popular disaster recovery location for companies that keep their primary data center capacity in California, acquiring NextFort, which operates a data center in Chandler. Phoenix is a strong enterprise data center market and a favorite disaster recovery location for California data centers, David Dunn, chief operating officer at H5, said in an interview. There are also several major web company data centers in the area, such as eBay and PayPal. Apple is converting a 1.3-million-square-foot former manufacturing plant in nearby Mesa into a data center. “You don’t have to sell people on the idea of Phoenix,” he said, explaining the Denver-based data center provider’s reasoning for buying the data center company in the Phoenix suburbs. “It’ already an established data center market.” In addition to the demand, the market has relatively low energy rates – Dunn expects H5 to pay less than 7 cents per kWh – and low risk of natural disaster. The State of Arizona also offers tax incentives for data center operators. The NextFort facility in Chandler currently has close to 30,000 square feet of data center space and access to about 12 MW of power. The capacity can be expanded to about 180,000 square feet and 30 MW, Dunn said. The data center’s existing customer base is comprised of a variety of enterprises and providers of web services, as well as some bitcoin mining companies. Dunn declined to mention any specific customer names. NextFort has shared at least one customer’s name publicly. In 2014, it announced that Gray Matter Industries, a provider of hosting services for bitcoin mining, had taken some space in the facility. It’s unclear whether Gray Matter is still a customer. (Comment on this)
8:38p	DCIM Software and Automated Infrastructure Management Pat Thompson is Director of Global Product Management for CommScope. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) systems are a growing category of management products for data centers. While different DCIM products offer different views of the data center infrastructure, all DCIMs consume information from network servers and other components such as power and cooling systems. Additionally, all DCIM solutions have some level of physical layer information (which is very often manually and inaccurately documented). Automated Infrastructure Management (AIM) systems provide information about the current state of the physical network, indicating which cables are plugged into which ports, and so they function as key providers of information to DCIM products. There’s a lot of confusion in the market about the relative roles of DCIM and AIM solutions. Let’s take a quick look at how AIM solutions work to make DCIM solutions more effective. Why DCIM? The time span between new generations of technology is growing shorter, and this phenomenon is especially apparent within the data center. Most data centers started as connectivity technology housed in wiring closets, then quickly started requiring entire floors. Today, many data centers are in their own buildings comprised of hundreds of thousands of square feet, housing hundreds of millions of dollars in IT and facilities investments. As data centers grow exponentially in scope and complexity, DCIM is one of the technologies to emerge. DCIM solutions bring management control to the data center. In a data center, there are three different teams to manage operations: infrastructure, networking, and facilities. Typically these teams operate in their own silos with their own naming conventions. A DCIM pulls this information together through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to complete a physical representation of the whole data center. This provides a single, overall view of the data center for such key functions as command and control, asset management, resource management, and forecasting. For example, a data center manager can use a DCIM tool to determine whether there are servers or space that might be underutilized. This information can help the manager to see if other applications can be virtualized onto these machines to free up servers, or perhaps allow the manager to decommission unused equipment for cost savings. DCIM can also help identify equipment that is consuming too much energy, which, in turn, can help managers determine a better strategy to reduce energy consumption and costs. These are just a couple of examples of what a DCIM solution can do. But DCIM solutions alone don’t provide complete visibility into the data center infrastructure. What’s missing is documentation about the physical layer – the cables and patch panels that tie the network together. In many data centers, physical layer information (what is connected to what, where) is maintained in spreadsheets or other manual tools that quickly become out of date. Such manual systems are error-prone and labor-intensive – some studies suggest that more than half of a cable technician’s time is spent looking for the location of a problem and documenting that location rather than fixing it. AIM Defined An AIM system collects information about physical layer infrastructure. Using intelligent cables and patch panels, the AIM system collects specific data about what cables are plugged into which patch panel ports. Many AIM systems also include work order management systems that can cause port LEDs to blink to indicate the location of a problem, thereby saving lots of time for cable technicians. Moreover, the physical layer infrastructure data is always up to date because changes are automatically recorded in the AIM solution’s software. AIM systems integrate to bring connectivity information into the DCIM solution. In an integrated system, for example, if the DCIM wants server port A connected to switch Port B on patch panel C, the AIM system shows proof that this switch port went to this patch panel. To integrate an AIM solution into a DCIM solution, APIs are used to exchange data between the two solutions. Data center managers often deploy things uniquely, so there is some customization that has to occur, but the process involves mapping an API to an API. In selecting DCIM and AIM solutions, it’s best to choose DCIM and AIM solutions that are open rather than proprietary to simplify integration. Currently the International Standards Organization (ISO) is writing a standard for AIM APIs, and those are going to be adopted in standard-compliant products. If all the AIM systems share a common API structure, it will be easier to integrate them. The ISO standard (ISO 18598) should be ratified in 2016. With DCIM and AIM solutions, data center managers have a complete view of the data center infrastructure that is up to date and easy to read. Using these solutions together, data center managers can be much more effective at planning, control, and resource allocation. 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)
9:01p	Online Continuing Professional Education for Hosting, Cloud, Data Center In response to customer and partner demand, Penton Technology recently launched a new e-learning program for MSPs, VARs, service providers and other channel professionals for continuing education. To further our mission of meeting the needs of our audience, we are now adding education for cloud, hosting and data center professionals. In addition to our premier live events such as HostingCon for the cloud and hosting ecosystem and Data Center World for data center professionals, you can continue your professional development year-round! Our first class to support this initiative begins Feb. 24 at 1pm Eastern with “How to Increase Datacenter Sales, Make Clients Happy and Keep Them Coming Back for More” taught by Rob DeVita, Chief Sales Officer for 1547realty.com. This class was designed especially for channel professionals making the transition into the data center space. DeVita will focus on relaying the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in this ever-changing field by sharing tools to help understand the latest trends, how data centers work and ways to avoid common contract pitfalls. Register now to receive skills that will help your business grow. Devita leads the sales and marketing strategy for 1547 Critical Systems Realty. He has an extensive background in management, direct and indirect sales, and development for datacenter technology. He has presented at many industry conferences, currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Metroplex TechnologyBusiness Council and is a previous Dallas-Fort Worth AFCOM Chapter president. Your input is valuable to the team producing continuing professional education at Penton Technology. Please feel free to reach out with your ideas about industry trends, what’s important to your continuing education and ideas for classes you’d like to take or teach. My email address is cheryl.kemp@penton.com. We’d love to hear from you! Another opportunity to learn and share business strategies is set for this fall with our second annual Channel Directions LIVE event, a three-day experience where leaders from across the channel will come together to tackle the tough challenges of today and map out the future direction of the industry. Industry response to this innovative event last year was amazing and we’re looking forward to an even better event in 2016! Check out this video for the event wrap-up. This year the gathering will be held at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Scottsdale September 12-15, 2016. Look for updated information and registration coming to the site soon. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/blog/online-continuing-professional-education-comes-to-the-hosting-cloud-and-data-center-markets (Comment on this)
9:59p	Verizon Data Center Outage Delays JetBlue Flights A Verizon data center outage Thursday morning brought down JetBlue’s electronic systems, causing flight delays and shutting down the airline’s website, along with its online booking and check-in systems. Neither company has explained what caused the power outage. It’s unclear why the facility didn’t switch to backup power. It’s also unclear whether JetBlue has a backup data center, but the system failed to switch to the backup site, or it relies on the single Verizon site. Power to the facility has since been restored and flights have resumed. Online systems have been restored partially. The airline announced it was experiencing “network issues due to a Verizon data center power outage” in a blog post at 1 pm ET. Less than one hour later, an update said power had been restored to the facility. The latest update available, posted at 2:30 pm, said JetBlue’s system was still having issues, but at least the online booking system on the site had been restored. JetBlue and Verizon have not offered details besides a joint statement that read: “On Thursday morning at 11:37 am ET, a Verizon data center experienced a power outage that impacted JetBlue’s operations. JetBlue’s systems are now being restored. Our engineering team has been working to restore service quickly, and power has been restored to the data center. Those traveling on JetBlue can visit blog.jetblue.com for updates.” Read more: Who May Buy Verizon’s Data Centers? More than 200 JetBlue flights were delayed as of 4:40 pm ET, according to FlightAware.com. That’s second only to China Southern Airlines, which experienced more than 230 flight delays within the same time period. Airlines that experienced more than 100 but fewer than 200 flight delays within the same time period were Southwest, Jetstar, China Eastern, SkyWest, American Airlines, and ExpressJet. There was at least one IT-related incident that disrupted air travel last year, when United Airlines grounded US flights for more than an hour citing network connectivity issues. (Comment on this)

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