Friday, February 19th, 2016

Time	Event
5:17p	Weekly DCIM Software News Update: February 19th A new DCIM software release, more partnerships, a new DCIM survey by Intel, and a look at openDCIM, the open source DCIM software tool. Details below: FNT Software expands DCIM capabilities. FNT Software announced a new version of FNT Monitoring. FNT notes that the new product adds important usage scenarios and significantly expands the range of capabilities, which were previously offered through integrations with third-party applications. Device42 expands partner operations. Device42 announced that it has appointed Ashis Guha to lead the company’s strategic channel partner program as Senior Vice President – APAC and EMEA. Based in Delhi, India, Guha is responsible for the development of new strategic partner relationships and the support of ongoing partner operations throughout the Western Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. Intel and Dell survey DCIM and Power Management. A survey by Intel and Dell on DCIM and Power Management found that 75 percent of data center managers installed DCIM in order to cut costs. Other findings showed that power and cooling issues are a top challenge, with 44 percent experiencing power issues at least weekly and 37 percent reporting cooling issues at least weekly. openDCIM combats spreadsheet-based data center management. The open source project openDCIM was born at one of the data centers supporting the US Department of Energy’s national labs. The project’s number-one goal is to take away “the excuse for anybody to ever track their data center inventory using a spreadsheet or word processing document again,” according to its website. Now on version 4.1, which came out last month, openDCIM has been deployed in production at “hundreds of data enters,” said Scott Milliken, the original creator of openDCIM. (Comment on this)
5:33p	Where Do Presidential Candidates Stand on Encryption? By WindowsITPro As a showdown looms between Apple and the FBI over encryption and backdoors, the debate has made its way onto the campaign trail as a surprisingly bipartisan issue. Almost universally, the candidates agree on at least one thing: The US government needs backdoors. In fact, only one candidate, Marco Rubio, seemed to allow for any nuance on the issue. It’s a surprising imbalance, given that many of the biggest names in tech generally agree backdoors ultimately weaken security for everyone. In fact, Jeb Bush argues that the National Security Agency should be put in charge of allcivilian encryption, an idea that many in the technology and security industries would likely find a little unsettling. In a recent, very unscientific IT Pro poll, 85% of respondents backed Apple’s stance on not backdooring their own hardware. Read below for each of the candidates’ public statements on the issue, and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Jeb Bush From a talk sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security: If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst. From the sixth Republican debate: Bush: If you can encrypt messages, ISIS can, over these platforms, and we have no ability to have a cooperative relationship — Moderator: Do you ask or do you order? Bush: Well, if the law would change, yeah. But I think there has to be recognition that if we — if we are too punitive, then you’ll go to other — other technology companies outside the United States. And what we want to do is to control this. We also want to dominate this from a commercial side. So there’s a lot of balanced interests. But the president leads in this regard. That’s what we need. We need leadership, someone who has a backbone and sticks with things, rather than just talks about them as though anything matters when you’re talking about amendments that don’t even actually are part of a bill that ever passed. Ben Carson From the South Carolina town hall: Moderator: Do you think Apple should be forced to do that, because Apple says that’s going to violate not only privacy rights, but it’s going to make everybody’s cell phone vulnerable, potentially, to hackers. CARSON: Sure. Well, you know, the interesting thing is I think that Apple and probably a lot of other people don’t the privacy rights but it’s going to make everybody’s cell-phone vulnerable potentially to hackers. Well you know, the interesting thing is I think that Apple and probably a lot of other people don’t necessarily trust the government these days. There is probably a very good reason for people not to trust the government but we’re going to have to get over that because right now we’re faced with tremendous threats and individual radical jihadist who want destroy us. And we’re going to have to weigh these things one against the other. I believe what we need is a public private partnership when it comes to all of these technical things and cyber-security because we’re all at risk in a very significant way. So it’s going to be a matter of people learning to trust each other which means, Apple needs to sit down with those trustworthy in the government. And that may have wait until the next election, I don’t know but we’ll see. They need to sit down with people they can trust and hammer out the relationship. Hillary Clinton From the third Democratic debate: I would not want to go to that point. I would hope that, given the extraordinary capacities that the tech community has and the legitimate needs and questions from law enforcement, that there could be a Manhattan-like project, something that would bring the government and the tech communities together to see they’re not adversaries, they’ve got to be partners. It doesn’t do anybody any good if terrorists can move toward encrypted communication that no law enforcement agency can break into before or after. There must be some way. I don’t know enough about the technology, Martha, to be able to say what it is, but I have a lot of confidence in our tech experts. Ted Cruz From the South Carolina town hall: Well, listen. I think Apple has a serious argument that they should not be forced to put a backdoor in every cell phone everyone has. That creates a real security exposure for hackers, cyber criminals to break into our cell phones. So, I think Apple has the right side on the global don’t make us do this to every iPhone on the market. But, I think law enforcement has the better argument. This concerns the phone of one of the San Bernardino hackers, and for law enforcement to get a judicial search order, that’s consistent with the Fourth Amendment. That’s how the bill of rights operates. To say, Apple, open this phone. Not Anderson’s phone…… law enforcement has the better argument. This concerns the phone of one of the San Bernardino hackers. And for law enforcement to get a judicial search order, that’s consistent with the Fourth Amendment. That how the Bill of Rights operates. John Kasich From the second Republican debate: “There is a big problem, it’s called encryption. The people in San Bernardino were communicating with people who the FBI had been watching, but because their phone was encrypted, because intelligence officials could not see who they were talking to, it was lost. … We need to be able to penetrate these people when they’re involved in these plots and these plans, and we have to give the local authorities the ability to penetrate in this route. Encryption is a major problem and Congress has got to deal with this, and so does the president, to keep us safe.” Marco Rubio From the South Carolina town hall: It’s a very very complicated issue and I’ll you why, it’s about encryption. Today, there’s encryption out, I think it’s standard on the new Apple and what it does is it protects your privacy. If you lose your Ipad, if you lose your phone; no one can hack into and get your information. So that’s why it’s there. Here’s the thing though, if you require by law – if we passed a law that required Apple and these companies to create a backdoor, number one, criminals could figure that out and use it against you. And number two, there’s already encrypted software that exists, not only now but in the future created in other countries. We would not be able to stop that. So there would still be encryption capabilities, it just wouldn’t be American encryption capabilities but people in this country could have it. So that’s why this is such a difficult issue because on the flip-side of it, there might be valuable information on that phone from the San Bernardino killers that could lead us to preventing future crimes or future attacks – future terrorist attacks. So I think we’re either going to have a figure a way forward by working with Silicon Valley and the tech industry on this. There has to be a way to deal with this issue that continues to protect the privacy of Americans or creates some process by which, law enforcement and intelligence agencies could access encrypted information. I don’t have a magic solution for it today. It’s complicated, it’s a new issue that’s emerged just in the last couple of years. But I do know this, it will take a partnership between the technology industry and the government to confront and solve this. … If you create a backdoor, there is a very reasonable possibility that a criminal gang could figure out what the backdoor is. That possibility is – if you create a backdoor, you’re creating a vulnerability. And what you’re not going to chance is the fact that other companies around the world who are not subject to U.S. laws – they could create encryption technology that we’ll never be able to get access to. So it’s not as simple as people think it is. Now Apple is under court order and I’m sure they’re going to appeal it. They need to follow whatever the court order is ultimately. But moving forward, we are going to have to work with Silicon Valley. We’re going to have to with the tech Industry to figure out a way forward on encryption that allows us some capability to access information especially in an emergency circumstances where there might be information on there that could prevent a terrorist attack. Bernie Sanders From the fourth Democratic debate: Sanders: You would all be amazed, or maybe not, about the amount of information private companies and the government has in terms of the Web sites that you access, the products that you buy, where you are this very moment. Sanders: And it is very clear to me that public policy has not caught up with the explosion of technology. So yes, we have to work with Silicon Valley to make sure that we do not allow ISIS to transmit information… Moderator: But in terms of lone wolves, the threat, how would you do it? Sanders: Right. What we have got to do there is, among other things, as I was just saying, have Silicon Valley help us to make sure that information being transmitted through the Internet or in other ways by ISIS is, in fact, discovered. But I do believe we can do that without violating the constitutional and privacy rights of the American people. Donald Trump From the South Carolina town hall: I think it’s disgraceful that Apple is not helping on that. I think security first and I feel — I always felt security first. Apple should absolutely — we should force them to do it. We should do whatever we have to do and I guess he wants to be a good liberal and he doesn’t want to give the information. But we — on that — as an example, those two people killed 14 people. There were other people that saw the bombs laying all over the flu system (ph) like a normal apartment. You had bombs laying all over the floor. You had all sorts of ammunition. You had all sorts of everything in that apartment. People knew that. I’d like to know who else knew it because they’re almost as guilty and maybe just as guilty. I think you have to be able to correct that and I think Apple is absolutely in the wrong. This first ran at http://windowsitpro.com/security/where-do-presidential-candidates-stand-encryption (Comment on this)
8:19p	Equinix Says Cloud Will Help It Reach Customers It Hasn’t Reached Before As the big cloud providers continue to expand their global reach through Equinix data centers – Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and Cisco are now in its data centers across 17 markets around the world on average – the colocation provider and its partners are knocking on the doors of enterprise IT execs it hasn’t gone after in the past. There is more than a dozen industry verticals outside of Equinix’s traditional five core ones the company hopes will find its data centers more attractive now, as they look for ways to leverage cloud services. On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday, CEO Stephen Smith said the opportunity’s size was “hundreds of thousands” of new prospects. “We are knocking on their door now via the channel or via the direct sales engine to talk to them about helping them … get to the multi-cloud and get to the hybrid cloud environment.” Many other major data center service providers have been positioning themselves this way too, including CoreSite, Digital Realty, and Interxion, all hoping to capitalize on the anticipated great migration of enterprise applications out of on-premise data centers and into the cloud. Read more: How the Colo Industry is Changing Equinix’s five core verticals are networks and mobile, content and digital media, financial services, cloud and IT services, and enterprise. The prospects in those untapped verticals are enterprise users the company hasn’t reeled in yet. Today, enterprises contribute 12 percent to Equinix’s total revenue mix. The biggest chunk of its revenue comes from cloud and IT services companies, which contribute 27 percent, followed by network operators (26 percent). More details here, courtesy of Equinix: Equinix has seen deals with cloud providers and enterprise customers accelerate substantially over the last two years or so, Charles Meyers, the company’s chief operating officer, said on the earnings call. The company is positioning its data centers as places where enterprises can have private access to public clouds and expects this cloud enablement angle to grow its total addressable market. Read more: Equinix CEO Unveils Aggressive Plan to Court Enterprises More new enterprise customers took space with Equinix in the fourth and third quarter of last year than customers in any other category, Smith said. The company saw particularly strong traction in manufacturing and professional services. New customer wins last quarter were the clothing brand Polo Ralph Laurent, S&P 500 civil construction giant Granite Construction, and Swedish cosmetics maker Oriflame Cosmetics. Read more: Public Cloud Drives Enterprise Data Center Consolidation (Comment on this)
9:07p	Reducing Data Center Risk Through Strategic Infrastructure and Maintenance Decisions To increase efficiency and extend the lifetime of the data center, meticulous care of the arrangement and enclosure of servers and other network infrastructures in the data center is critical to its continuous performance. It’s also important to assure that appropriate cleaning, maintenance and airflow management standards are met in order to keep equipment running reliably and efficiently. Learn about the processes that govern best practices for cleaning, airflow, flooring and asset tracking to assist in the security and longevity of IT physical assets from Data Center World speaker Randy Bishop in his upcoming session, “Reducing Data Center Risk Through Strategic Infrastructure and Maintenance Decisions.” Some of the best practices Bishop will address, include: Manufacturer standards Proper personnel Rack level containment Computational fluid dynamics Floor tuning and leveling Zinc whisker remediation Theft Prevention Three takeaways you can expect as an attendee are: There is only a very small percentage of data centers anywhere near the ‘perfect mark’. For everyone else, downtime due to environmental issues (contamination, overheating of equipment) are very real concerns. You will learn ways to both discover where the issues are and how to remedy the problems as efficiently as possible. There are several types of containment options and numerous ways of addressing containment footprints in the data center. Every data center has different dynamics that can dictate the type of containment that is most useful and appropriate. There is no cookie-cutter or one-size/type/design-fits-all scenario. Computational Fluid Dynamics is one way of performing a thorough proof of concept prior to deciding on a containment solution. Not all floors are created equal. There are many legacy data center floors that are too shallow for proper airflow, have zinc whiskers, or are just old and beginning to fail. Replacing these floors can be done with the equipment live, with no downtime, and without disrupting normal business procedures. Learn about two more upcoming sessions: A Good Time to Consider Microgrids for Data Centers, and Opensource DCIM Software Project Combats Spreadsheet-based Data Center Management. Register today for Data Center World, March 14-18, in Las Vegas. This first ran at http://www.afcom.com/news/reducing-data-center-risk-strategic-infrastructure-maintenance-decisions/ (Comment on this)
11:58p	Report: Yahoo to Cut Staff at New York State Data Center Teams working at Yahoo data centers will not go through the ailing web giant’s massive job cuts unscathed. Yahoo is planning to lay off some of the staff at its Lockport, New York, data center campus, famous for being the first site where the company used its data center design formerly known as the Yahoo Chicken Coop. More than 200 people work at the facility, which includes data centers and office space. The staff were notified of the upcoming layoffs Friday, but exactly how many people will be let go has not been announced, WGRZ reported. A local official confirmed the company’s plans to the news service. Yahoo management announced on the company’s earnings call earlier this month that its restructuring plan would include a 15-percent workforce reduction. Layoffs at the Yahoo data center in Lockport may potentially put the company in an awkward position, since its decision to locate and expand a data center campus there was tied to tax breaks in return for a commitment to create a minimum amount of jobs. While the current round of layoffs doesn’t affect the agreement – the campus currently employs close to the required 190 people and has three more years to reach that requirement – there’s no guarantee the management will not cut more staff in the future. The Yahoo data center’s unique design maximizes the use of outside air for cooling. Unlike most other data centers, it does not use mechanical chillers, relying exclusively on Niagara County’s cool climate. The design was initially called the Yahoo Chicken Coop (because its shape resembles a chicken coop) but later renamed as the Yahoo Computing Coop. Read more: Yahoo Launches Second Computing Coop Data Center in New York State Yahoo also owns data centers in La Vista, Nebraska; Quincy, Washington; and Singapore. Additionally, the company leases data center space in numerous domestic and international locations. (Comment on this)

<< Previous Day

2016/02/19 [Calendar]

Next Day >>