Archive for datacenter
May 13, 2008 at 11:48 pm · Filed under datacenter
http://business.scotsman.com/business/RBSowned-data-centre-eyes-move.4075318.jp
A DATA centre business set up by Royal Bank of Scotland at the height of the dotcom boom is eyeing a push into the west of the country as it looks to double turnover over the next four years.Scolocate, which runs one of Scotland’s largest so-called “internet hotels”, providing corporates and smaller businesses with remotely-hosted computer services, was set up in 1999.
I highlighted this article to illustrate the demand for data center space for large and small enterprises continues. It’s an interesting read, do check it out.
May 13, 2008 at 4:19 am · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.bjhcim.co.uk/news/2008/n804036.htm
A poll of senior decision makers in European datacentre companies has found that environmental issues will grow in importance over the next two years, but that there needs to be clear industry standards to maintain the momentum.
Digital Realty Trust, an owner and manager of corporate and Internet gateway datacentres, has published a report entitled, “How Green is Green?” focused on determining the depth of the Green movement in the European datacentre market.
The release of the survey report follows the publication of a parallel study of the North American datacentre market. This European study is based on a recent poll of senior decision makers who are leaders in datacentres or influence significant decisions related to datacentre operations at large European companies. The surveyed companies come from a wide range of industries, a quarter of which are from financial related services.
Check out this article which is talking about the significance of environmental issues within the data center space. As the availability of data center space, and power/cooling continues to be an issue, the costs of purchase and operations rise, deploying more efficient technologies, or changing to a more efficient way of doing business becomes not only a corporate social responsbility thing, but a return on investment, an enabler to your business and a vehicle to reduce your operational costs, technical or non-technical.
May 13, 2008 at 3:40 am · Filed under datacenter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/12/hp_bt_tieup/
HP is expected to take BT’s UK datacentres off its hands in a £1.5bn deal.
The arrangement will see BT offloading 400 staff and 24 data centres to the Silicon Valley giant in return for £1.5bn in cash, according to the Sunday Times. BT will continue to access the centres under a ten year deal. At the same time, the telcos current deal to manage HP’s voice and data networks in Europe will be extended worldwide.
Interesting news, it’s always good to see different companies approach to the way they provision and manage their data center. This could be a real enabler for BT, allowing it to focus on it’s core business and have HP provide the IT services as a more fixed service cost, we’ll have to see, I’ll need to read up more.
May 12, 2008 at 6:22 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=38449&hilite=
Europe’s second largest webhost, STRATO, today announced its membership in The Green Grid at the Sustain IT Conference in London. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems. In co-operation with leading IT companies such as AMD, Sun Microsystems and Cisco, STRATO strives to measure and improve energy usage in data centres. As one of the first European webhost companies to employ The Green Grid’s metrics in its data centre operations, STRATO has taken on a leading role in the industry.
”The Green Grid is pleased to welcome STRATO as a Contributor Member of the organization,” said Tom Brey, a director of The Green Grid. “STRATO’s knowledge and expertise in webhosting will be a great addition to the technical expertise within the organization and will further the mission of The Green Grid.”
STRATO has raised the energy efficiency per customer by 30% in only 18 months. Since January, its high-performance data centres have been powered by energy from renewable sources. “We have joined The Green Grid because we want to create a standardized label for energy efficiency in data centres,” said Damian Schmidt, CEO of STRATO. “We enable the customer to consciously choose an IT service provider. Green action counts, not green washing.”
Very cool, the more joining The Green Grid, the more we can continue the focus on communicating the energy efficient message and improve best practices and standards.
April 23, 2008 at 11:28 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/reviews_third.cfm?NewsID=55903
IT managers are in a pickle these days: according to a recent report by the Uptime Institute, nearly half of data center managers expect to hit their maximum energy capacity in the next two years, even while IT demand keeps growing. At the same time, energy costs are making high-level computing an ever more costly core need for companies.
The result is a booming interest in energy-efficient data center solutions that won’t break the bank. Ken Brill, the executive director of the Uptime Institute, spoke with GreenBiz Radio recently about some of the surprisingly easy ways to boost performance and drop IT costs at the same time, and what the Institute will unveil at its 2008 Symposium later this month.
Do check out this great interview which is talking about energy efficiency in the data center, it’s always good to see/hear what people are talking about in the energy efficient space, what issues/resolutions and best practices they are talking about.
April 23, 2008 at 11:11 pm · Filed under datacenter
http://www.smallcapnews.co.uk/article/Xploite_wins_27m_contract_to_supply_stateoftheart_/4908.aspx
IT services group Xploite has picked up a £2.7 million contract through its Anix business to supply IBM technology as part of a £30 million roll out of a new data storage facility in Southampton.
As part of the agreement, Xploite will supply the centre with innovative ‘pod’ storage technology from IBM. Each pod is a self-contained data centre with up to 40 racks. The overall facility has the capacity for 1,800 racks and will be built out on an as-required basis. It is estimated by the company to be complete within three years.
Demand for data center capacity continues, this article talks about this solution based in Southampton, very cool, do check it out.
April 21, 2008 at 9:30 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/04/17/230329/data-centre-energy-consumption-not-an-it-priority.htm
A survey of firms by the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum shows that despite showing concern for making data centre operations more environmentally sound, few firms have any specific plans in place.
The survey shows that most IT managers give their operations failing grades in reducing energy consumption.
An interesting article and it highlights some interesting concepts. I wonder if this is a mixture of things, environmentally sound could suggest a number of things to different user communities, and specific plans for an environmentally sound data center could also mean different things to different people. At one end of the scale it could be the data center that’s wind and solar powered, with no kvm’s, operating using lights out functionality running virtualization technologies to provide the infrastructure. Is it not that data center energy consumption is a priority because it’s a limited resource? Am I adopting environmental processes/technologies to be more environmentally friendly or to stretch the life span of the data center, to keep deploying servers/instances or service for as long as possible before I have to move data centers or upgrade my existing one? We’ll have to see, do check it out.
April 17, 2008 at 9:36 pm · Filed under datacenter
http://www.techworld.com/green-it/news/index.cfm?newsid=11998
Nearly half of IT professionals admit that they had run out of space, power or cooling capacity at their datacentres, according to a recent survey.
That was among the startling findings of a new study called Lean & Green - Reducing IT Energy Drain for Business
Gain, conducted by the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum.
Sponsored by network storage vendor BlueArc, the study surveyed 150 IT professionals (70 percent of respondents were
VP level or above, with nearly 30 percent C-level and 10 percent CEOs) to discover the issues surrounding the use of green technologies within datacentres.
Check out this interesting article talking about data center power and cooling, it’s an interesting read. Is this where we talk about fresh air cooling? Changing the temperature of the data center, using SAN technologies and virtualization more? We’ll have to see, ultimately whatever technical and non-technical resolutions work for you is all that matters, everything else is noise.
April 15, 2008 at 4:54 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment, virtualization
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article.php/3740516
MENLO PARK, CALIF. – It’s time to raise the raised floors and get serious about energy savings in the datacenter. That was one of the messages Subodh Bapat, a distinguished engineer and vice president of eco-responsibility at Sun, gave here Thursday during an open house for its Sun Labs group.
With growing energy costs, space constraints and growing computer processing and storage needs, large companies are under more pressure than ever to save money and keep IT operations efficient. Bapat noted, for example, that the social network Facebook’s datacenter is growing at a rate of about three percent per week.
While most companies may not have the happy problem of Facebook’s runaway growth, they still have to deal with energy constraints and costs. Bapat detailed a number of suggestions Sun has itself implemented as well as its customers and partners.
Check out this article, it raises some relevant comments about energy efficiency in the data center. It’s not just about the green message, of being energy efficient, it’s about protecting your business interests, avoiding the watt in/watt out scenario. It need not be disruptive to your business, analyzing what you can do within your business/operational or data center constraints, contacting the stakeholders - your customer, ‘the business’ and saying, “this is where we are”, this is what we could achieve with little investment, for example by deploying 8 midrange servers we can virtualize and replace 64 1u rack servers, saving so much in power/cooling etc. Pre-emptively managing demand/supply, and keeping everyone on the same track. We can’t do it overnight, but with simple inventory reports, analysis the small steps, you’d be surprised how much you can achieve - do all the development servers really need their second power supply connected and powered?
April 15, 2008 at 4:41 pm · Filed under datacenter
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid80_gci1309394,00.html
Colocation company Equinix Inc. has more than 2 million square feet of data center space in the U.S. That’s about 35 football fields’ worth of IT equipment to keep cool. But by using economizers, the company says it saves up to 80% in annual cooling costs in the eight of 19 U.S. facilities it has them in.
Check out this article talking about how this colocation company managed to reduce it’s cooling costs using economizers, very cool. The more we share ideas within the way we manage our data centers, the more can illustrate the benefits of the green message from a business/return on investment angle as well as the corporate social responsibility, the green angle. Do check it out.
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