Friday, March 17th, 2017

Time	Event
12:00p	Everything You Wanted to Know about Google Data Centers Google is hard at work expanding its global data center empire. Spurred by the company’s increased focus on growing its enterprise cloud business, its data center team is busier than ever. The company’s executives recently shared at a conference that it spent $10 billion per year over the last three years in capital, mostly on data centers. Wondering where and how Google is spending that money? Want to know how many Google data centers there are, how big they are, or what they look like? Care to know how Google thinks about its data center strategy? In our Google data center FAQ, we take our best shot at answering those and many other questions. Here it is, our newly updated Google Data Center FAQ, where you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know (and didn’t) about Google data centers but were afraid to ask: Google Data Center FAQ and Locations Also check out our Facebook data center FAQ. (Comment on this)
3:30p	How Hyperconvergence Can Revolutionize Secondary Storage Mohit Aron is CEO and Founder of Cohesity. As companies’ data grows exponentially, and different ways to use data continue to multiply, businesses are waking up to the urgent need to consolidate their storage.  A hyperconverged approach, which is being used successfully for consolidating primary mission-critical infrastructure, provides a compelling answer to the chaotic state of secondary data storage. While the issue of data sprawl among non-primary data use cases has been obvious to most storage administrators and CIOs, the solution has often been murky. That’s because most vendors have approached secondary storage use cases as a set of separate problems with separate answers, leading to the current fragmented landscape of point solutions. To recognize the value of hyperconvergence for secondary storage, companies and vendors must take a holistic view of these workloads and apply the same principles of hyperconvergence to deliver the same benefits that have been so effective with primary storage. What is Secondary Storage and Why is It Such a Headache? The first step toward consolidation requires defining secondary storage workloads. The idea of secondary storage data as a distinct category is relatively new, but the simplest definition is that it includes all data that isn’t directly being used for mission-critical (or “primary”) business applications. Common secondary use cases for data include backup, file shares, development and testing, object stores and analytics. Unlike mission-critical data, which typically requires the highest performing and most expensive on-premises architecture (often using all-flash arrays), requirements for secondary data storage vary significantly by response time, cost/TB, retention and many other factors. Therefore, secondary data needs to leverage a broader range of storage infrastructure, from SSD and HDD to cloud storage and tape. The varying requirements for different secondary workloads are one of the main reasons vendors have approached the problem with separate point solutions. However, this has led to enormous data sprawl across companies that must juggle dozens of different data management systems. That creates a lot of extra work and headaches for IT departments managing these different architectures (especially as they grow in number and size). It also means that companies waste money on storage resources because data is needlessly duplicated across different architectures, and admins have difficulty understanding what data is being stored where and how it overlaps. The Principles of Hyperconvergence and How They Deliver Value for Users Hyperconvergence is commonly defined as being able to bring together compute, storage and networking on a single system, but the details – and the principle behind it – require more explanation. The term came about to describe a radical new approach I pioneered at Nutanix to tightly integrate compute with storage into scalable infrastructure building blocks. The concept of hyperconvergence garnered greater attention as other vendors emerged with solutions for primary storage consolidation, and legacy providers scrambled to offer solutions of their own. There are three principles that define hyperconvergence, and each is closely connected to the value it delivers across the data center. First, a hyperconverged system must be able to run any data center workload on any portion of its infrastructure. This translates to better performance because compute and storage are tightly coupled and workloads are not held up by network bottlenecks. This also delivers greater data storage efficiency because companies don’t have to provision separate resources (each with separate buffer space) for each individual workload. The second core characteristic of a hyperconverged architecture is that it is fully software-defined. Software-defined architectures separate the control plane from the underlying compute and data plane. This approach allows users to manage data through automated policies rather than manual adjustments to the underlying infrastructure, simplifying system administration for IT personnel. Finally, true hyperconverged architecture consolidates network, compute and storage into scale-out blocks that can be extended infinitely (and removed individually without disrupting the data center). This of course makes it easier and more transparent for companies that need to increase or decrease their data footprint by adding units only as they need them, rather than figuring out whether to build major new datacenters that might not be used to their full capacity for months or even years. This characteristic also enables application provisioning through a single interface, eliminating time wasted on performance tuning across siloed systems. How Hyperconvergence Can Dramatically Improve Secondary Storage Infrastructure The key principles that make hyperconvergence so valuable for primary or mission-critical data can also be applied to secondary data to deliver similar benefits. Hyperconverged secondary storage also offers a few added bonuses that will become more important as the industry moves towards a hybrid-cloud future. First, the single control plane of software-defined infrastructure that covers the entire array of secondary storage workloads delivers enormous efficiencies. The use cases for secondary storage are far more diverse than primary storage, which means that consolidating secondary solutions unlocks even greater value. It dramatically reduces the amount of work admins devote to separately administering each secondary storage point solution (for tasks like disaster recovery, file shares, development, etc.) for much simpler data management. A single control plane also provides much clearer insight into data that was previously stored across different systems, allowing for more intelligent resource allocation. Hyperconverged secondary storage also eliminates redundant data copies across the organization by consolidating all workloads on a single architecture, thereby maximizing storage resources. Different non-critical use cases, like disaster recovery and analytics, have traditionally been spread across separate, siloed architecture, each of which require their own copy of the same data. By taking a hyperconverged approach, the same data stored for disaster recovery can also be used for analytics or any other secondary application. Secondary uses cases typically account for about 80 percent of most organizations’ data, so the benefits a typical enterprise can realize through consolidation are substantial. Finally, hyperconverged secondary storage architecture provides a foundation for the hybrid cloud model that most companies are looking towards for the future. Keeping secondary data spread across a collection of point solutions makes it much more complicated to move data between on-premises and cloud infrastructure. This forces companies to choose between storing different data sets on-premises or in the cloud and makes a dynamic combination of both infrastructures practically impossible. However, the single, software-defined architecture of hyperconverged secondary storage enables automatic, policy-based movement of data to and from cloud and on-premises. The seamless movement of data across cloud and on-premises infrastructure is crucial for companies to be able to take advantage of the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of cloud infrastructure when it’s appropriate, and the performance and accessibility of on-premises infrastructure when that’s required. It simply doesn’t make sense for most businesses to move their entire storage infrastructure to the cloud (Even those that tried it, like Dropbox, are moving back to a hybrid model). However, organizations cannot afford to ignore the benefits of cloud storage that hyperconvergence will unlock. The move to consolidate secondary storage solutions and workloads is inevitable given the way that data – and how it’s used – continues to expand in volume and complexity. Applying the principles of hyperconvergence, companies can counter the problem of data sprawl that has become a major focus for many IT organizations. In fact, the benefits of consolidating secondary storage on a hyperconverged platform extend beyond the obvious resource and management efficiencies. A unified platform empowers companies to create a seamless connection between cloud and on-premises infrastructure that will be even more important as we move toward a hybrid cloud future. The question is not whether enterprises will decide to consolidate secondary storage workloads but how and when they will do it. Opinions expressed in the article above do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Data Center Knowledge and Penton. 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)
5:44p	Chinese Investors Sharpen Focus on Data Centers, Submarine Cables The basic physical building blocks of the Internet, data centers and submarine cables, are getting more and more attention from Chinese investors, who are seeking new opportunities as the traditional real estate market in China is getting tougher. Chinese money fueled several recent data center deals, including one on a global scale, and, as the Wall Street Journal reported this week, one of the biggest ongoing submarine cable construction projects. Pacific Light Cable Network, the cable that will link Los Angeles to Hong Kong and carry traffic for Google and Facebook, will be majority-owned by Pacific Light Data Communication, a company belonging to Wei Junkang, a prominent Chinese real estate developer who made his first fortune in the country’s steel industry. See also: Here are the Submarine Cables Funded by Cloud Giants His son, Eric Wei, is spearheading the $500 million cable build. The Weis’ company will own 60 percent of the cable system, expected to come online next year, while Google and Facebook will own 20 percent each, Eric Wei, who grew up in California, told the Journal. Last December, a consortium of companies from China and Singapore bought a 49 percent stake in London-based Global Switch, the world’s second-largest wholesale data center provider, from the UK’s famous billionaires David and Simon Reuben for £2.4 billion. See also: Here are the 10 Largest Data Center Providers in the World The consortium, called Elegant Jubilee, was put together by Li Qiang, a Chinese telecommunications and internet entrepreneur who holds a stake in the Chinese data center provider Daily-Tech Beijing. Investors in the consortium include China’s largest privately owned steel company, Jiangsu Sha Steel Group, Singapore-based asset manager AVIC Trust, as well as institutional investors Essence Financial and Ping An Group. Earlier this year, Bank of China got involved in Global Switch, joining a group of European banks in providing the data center company with a £425 million credit facility. In a more recent deal, this time inside China’s borders, a group of Chinese investors acquired the data center business of CDN provider ChinaCache, for about US$32.1 million. See also: How the Chinese Data Center Market is Evolving (Comment on this)
5:57p	Execs: Companies Too Slow to Adopt Emerging Tech Brought to You by Talkin’ Cloud Most IT executives say that their company is in the middle of the pack when it comes to adopting technology, and that they wait for other companies to take the plunge before making an investment. According to a new study by Toronto-based staffing services firm Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group, released on Thursday, IT’s counterparts on the creative side of the business (marketing and ad execs) perceive their business to be even more risk-averse. Forty-seven percent of creative executives described their company’s approach to adopting new technology to be slow and steady, compared to 14 percent of IT executives that said the same. The responses highlight the divide between IT and creative execs, the latter group typically being one of the drivers behind shadow IT. Creative executives who think IT isn’t moving fast enough to implement new technologies may find their own solutions through unapproved SaaS apps. IT executives and creative executives were also in disagreement on how important they feel it is for leaders in their respective departments to be early adopters of emerging technologies.  According to the study, 30 percent of creative executives said it is very important, while 13 percent of IT executives said the same. The majority of IT executives surveyed (84 percent) said that it is somewhat important, versus 45 percent of creative executives who shared that same view. “Companies are often drawn to new technology to help find efficiencies and improve business processes,” Deborah Bottineau, senior regional manager of Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group said in a statement. “But deciding which tools to invest in can be overwhelming given the wide variety of ever-evolving options.” “While organizations must keep up with emerging technology trends to stay competitive, they must also have the right people in place to capitalize on them,” Bottineau said. “Hiring professionals who can help select and implement new systems, oversee employee training and ensure productivity stays on track is crucial in today’s digitally-focused world.” As companies move forward in the digital transformation, how innovative their customers – and their employees – view them will be important. The study includes responses from more than 270 Canadian CIOs and 400 U.S. marketing and advertising executives. The survey was conducted by an independent research firm on behalf of Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group. This article originally appeared on Talkin’ Cloud. (Comment on this)

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