Tuesday, May 3rd, 2016

Time	Event
12:00p	EdgeConneX Brings the Edge of Amazon’s Cloud to Portland Our theme this month is site selection. From electricity costs and network infrastructure to the available pool of skilled workforce, data center site selection is one of the most complicated and important business decisions a company makes. Data center location affects everything from the cost of doing business and overall company agility to the quality of user experience. And, like every other aspect of the data center business, where companies choose to put their critical IT infrastructure and why is changing because of … you guessed it: the Cloud. This month, we’ll examine these trends more closely. If the edge of the internet is in the data center that’s closest to you where Netflix and YouTube cache their most popular content, the edge of the enterprise cloud is the data center closest to you where your cloud provider’s infrastructure is. EdgeConneX, a company that presents itself as an edge data center provider that specializes in expanding edges of both kinds, recently helped Amazon Web Services move the edge of its cloud closer to users in Portland, Oregon, in what is likely to be a sign of things to come. At least as far as the US is concerned, AWS and other big cloud providers already have infrastructure in all the top markets. However, there are still lots of markets like Portland, which have a high concentration of companies that use or want to use public cloud services, but where the big cloud providers have yet to establish physical presence. As the top wholesale data center providers race to ensure cloud providers have enough capacity in the core markets, EdgeConneX, and other providers, are going to extend the cloud’s edge to markets known as secondary. “The cloud is absolutely taken care of at the core,” Clint Heiden, chief commercial officer at EdgeConneX, said, referring to top data center markets like Northern Virginia, Dallas, or Silicon Valley. “What you’re seeing is the first of many things to come. The cloud is pushing to the edge.” The EdgeConneX data center in Portland, which came online last year, has become the first physical location in the Portland area where customers can connect directly and privately to the AWS infrastructure via a service called AWS Direct Connect. Until now, Amazon’s other Direct Connect locations in the Pacific Northwest were limited to two Equinix data centers in Seattle. Other Direct Connect locations on the West Coast are in Equinix data centers in San Francisco, CoreSite facilities in Los Angeles, and a Switch SuperNAP in Las Vegas. All the West Coast sites connect to the core AWS data center cluster in Oregon, which hosts its US West availability region. Over the past two years, EdgeConneX built out an extensive edge data center empire spreading across 23 secondary US markets that lacked major interconnection hubs like CoreSite’s One Wilshire building in Los Angeles, 60 Hudson in New York City, or some of the Equinix facilities in Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley. The pins on its map include cities like Sacramento and San Diego, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; Denver, Colorado; Minneapolis, Madison, Memphis, and about a dozen more locations around the country. Earlier this year, the company also announced its first non-US data center in Amsterdam. Comcast and Cox Communication are investors in EdgeConneX as well as its customers, which is key to understanding the company’s model. It establishes hubs in underserved data center markets where content and cloud providers bring their infrastructure and from where they connect to network providers like Comcast and Cox, who then connect them to the end users that live in those areas. This reduces data transfer costs for content and cloud companies – who otherwise have to pay to move data from far-away hubs – and improves user experience in the edge markets. Read more: How Edge Data Center Providers are Changing the Internet’s Geography Comcast, in fact, is the reason EdgeConneX has a data center in Portland. The cable company had a high concentration of both consumer and enterprise customers in the market and needed an edge location there, Heiden said. While Comcast was the anchor tenant, it isn’t the only carrier in the data center, which also hosts infrastructure for Charter Communications, Level 3 Communications, Zayo Group, XO Communications, and Electric Lightwave. Portland, with its relatively high number of enterprise, gaming, and IT companies, is an attractive market for service providers like AWS. But connecting to cloud data centers in Seattle or San Francisco may not work for some of those users’ applications, said Phillip Marangella, VP of business development at EdgeConneX. Marangella joined late last year, following more than a decade spent in senior roles at companies like Verizon, Equinix, and CoreSite. It’s important for cloud providers to get as close to their target enterprise customers, so they will continue extending their infrastructure into markets beyond the traditional hubs, such as Portland. “At the end of the day, cloud is still I its infancy, and all the cloud providers are racing to the edge,” he said. (Comment on this)
3:00p	Why You Should Never Overlook Under-Rack Airflow Lars Strong is Senior Engineer for Upsite Technologies. Sealing the many different gaps in data center IT equipment racks is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to protect IT equipment and reduce cooling costs. Many data centers make an effort to secure the gaps in several key areas: open U spaces, between the rails and sides of cabinets, and between equipment racks. These are all important measures to be sure, but often forgotten in this process are the gaps underneath IT racks. You might not think it, but the small space between the bottom of an IT rack or cabinet and the raised floor or slab can play a profound role in airflow management (AFM) and on IT inlet temperatures. Usually ranging in size from half an inch to two inches, this space allows the hot air from the IT equipment exhaust at the rear of a rack to travel underneath the rack and ultimately back into the IT equipment air inlets at the rack’s front. The recirculation of hot air can cause several problems for the data center: increases in IT inlet temperatures, hot spots, and likelihood of IT equipment failure in the long-term if the issue is not addressed. Recent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling conducted by Upsite Technologies has quantified the dramatic difference that sealing the under rack space can have. By eliminating the recirculation of hot exhaust air under the rack through the use of a blanking panel designed specifically for this purpose, the IT inlet temperatures were reduced. The improved AFM produced the additional benefit of creating an environment where the cooling efficiency could be improved by increasing cooling unit temperate set points and reducing fan speeds. The CFD model used in the analysis was based on a 2,260 sq. ft. data center with a total IT load of 217 kW (48 racks carrying an average load of 4.5 kW/rack).* Two models were compared: one with 1.5 inch gaps under each cabinet and one utilizing under rack panels sealing the small gaps between the bottom of the rack and the floor. The two models were identical in every other way and designed to represent conditions commonly found in data centers. The use of under rack blanking panels provided a clear illustration of the dramatic difference that sealing these small gaps can have on a data center. Temperatures for servers in the bottom of the racks were reduced by an average of 10.5° F, with a maximum reduction of 18.9° F. Additionally, at the room level, cooling unit fan speeds were reduced by ten percent without causing any IT equipment intake air temperatures to exceed the ASHRAE®-recommended maximum of 80.6° F. As a result, fan speed reduction resulted in energy savings of $5,318 annually (@$0.10/kWhr). On a larger scale, this equates to nearly $50,000.00 in annual energy savings for a 20,000 square foot data center. ROI of the under rack panels was achieved in about two months. While results may vary depending on the layout of each data center, the CFD results clearly demonstrated the large impact that sealing this small space can have: Fig. 1 – Isometric view of air temperature cross section in model data center without under rack blanking panel Figure 1 clearly shows the effects on IT equipment intake air temperatures without proper under rack sealing. Hot air is flowing from the hot aisle under the racks and into the cold aisle. The hot air coming from under the racks prevents the conditioned air supplied by the tiles in the cold aisle from reaching the equipment in the bottoms of the racks. Fig. 2 – Isometric view of air temperature cross section in model data center employing under rack blanking panel In contrast, sealing the space under the racks with an under rack blanking panel prevents hot air from flowing into the cold aisle. The conditioned air supplied by the tiles in the cold aisle is able to fill the space and cool the IT equipment from the bottom to the top of the rack. Conclusion Under rack gaps may seem like a small issue, but they can dramatically compromise data center cooling if not addressed. Proper airflow management is an essential part of optimizing any data center and sealing gaps in, around and under the racks is a crucial part of this process. While a common approach to remedying hot spots at the bottom of racks is to increase airflow through high flow grates or higher cooling unit fan speeds, simply sealing the under rack space is a much easier and far more cost effective solution. 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)
5:14p	Cloud Companies “Might Feel Good About Themselves” But Good Luck Reaching AWS Heights: Report By The WHIR After the “big four” public cloud providers, the next 20 companies are growing at an average of 41 percent per year – and still losing market share. The overall cloud infrastructure services market (including IaaS, PaaS, private and hybrid) is growing by 50 percent a year, according to the latest quarterly report from Synergy Research Group. Synergy estimates that overall quarterly revenues have “comfortably passed” $7 billion. Amazon Web Services, which just named a new CEO, maintains a dominant position with 31 percent of the global market share for cloud infrastructure services, with 57 percent year-over-year growth. Microsoft, IBM, and Google account for a combined 22 percent, and while IBM had what would normally be considered strong quarterly growth, Microsoft and Google’s infrastructure services revenue grew by over 100 percent on an annualized basis. The next 20 companies (which include Alibaba, Rackspace, HPE and others) make up 27 percent of the total market for cloud infrastructure. Related: Microsoft Ramps Up Cloud Data Center Spend “This is a market that is so big and is growing so rapidly that companies can be growing by 10-30 percent per year and might feel good about themselves and yet they’d still be losing market share,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “The big question for them is whether or not they are building a sustainable and profitable business. This can be done by focusing on specific regions or specific services, but the bulk of the market demands huge scale, a broad footprint, very deep pockets and a long-term corporate focus.” The “next 20” includes Alibaba, Century Link, Fujitsu, Orange, Rackspace, HPE, NTT, Salesforce, and VMware. Other companies with smaller shares than the biggest 24 companies still account for nearly 20 percent of the world market, with 30 percent growth. Synergy found growth rates to be similar across regions, so the US continues to represent roughly half of the world market. Research published last year by Synergy showed that infrastructure services are just one part of a much larger cloud revenue picture, which also includes the cloud infrastructure hardware market, which is led by Cisco and HP. This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/cloud-companies-might-feel-good-about-themselves-but-good-luck-reaching-aws-heights-report (Comment on this)
8:02p	Study: Containers Are Great, but Skilled Admins Are Scarce By The VAR Guy Application containers are more popular than ever before, but many companies still struggle to find skilled workers capable of managing the technology. Shippable released findings of a survey this week, which polled 300 software developers in the US in March and April to gauge trends and challenges surrounding container solutions. While a third of respondents said container solutions have enabled them to accelerate application release cycles, many others are still struggling to find the personnel capable of utilizing the new tech. When asked why some companies don’t use containers, the majority of respondents said they lack skilled employees capable of running said solutions. The lack of skilled employees was a larger factor than perceived container immaturity, potential security risks and lack of a clear ROI, according to the study. “Our research and personal experience shows that companies can experience exponential gains in software development productivity through the use of container technology and related tools,” said Avi Cavale, CEO at Shippable, in a statement. “That said, there are still hurdles to overcome. Companies can help themselves by training internal software teams and partnering with vendors and service providers that have worked with container technology extensively.” Some other fast facts straight from the press release include: Shippable found that 54 percent of respondents use Google Container Registry, with 45 percent utilizing Amazon EC2 Container Registry 31 percent of respondents said they run their containers on public cloud infrastructure, compared to 30 percent who run on private cloud. 52 percent of developers run their containerized applications on Google Compute Engine 58 percent of developers use GitHub with containers But while there is a definite skills gap that needs to be addressed in order for container solutions to become more widely adopted, there is some hope for the future; Shippable found that 89 percent of respondents said they were either very likely or somewhat likely to increase their use of containers sometime within the next year. Channel partners can help narrow this gap by providing more training opportunities surrounding container solutions. Partners can also work with prominent container solution providers like Docker if they want to increase employee education efforts and awareness as to the power of containerization, which will ultimately create new ways to drive recurring revenue. This first ran at http://thevarguy.com/var-guy/study-containers-are-great-skilled-admins-are-difficult-find (Comment on this)

<< Previous Day

2016/05/03 [Calendar]

Next Day >>