Avoid Obsolescence in Your Power Distribution

Many data centers, including most of those built before 2001, are at risk of outstripping their capacity to power and cool their IT systems. Already, data centers consume 10–30 times more energy per square foot than the typical office building—a figure that has doubled in the last five years. Energy costs represent the single largest component of operating expense, and a potential barrier to future expansion. Does IT really have a handle on this trend?

More regularly and frequently, organizations are hitting fixed limits in their power systems—even systems that were designed and deployed fairly recently. With the volatile rate of change in IT technologies, power demands can quickly exceed established barriers in a legacy distribution system, such as the performance potential of existing amperage/voltage ratings, UPSs, cabling and connectors. The cost of upgrading, augmenting or replacing the power architecture can be astronomical. The costs often could have been minimized or avoided if the power planning process had simply been more forward-looking and holistic in the first place. This white paper describes an approach that considers the major milestones and thresholds in data center power requirements—and how planners should adjust their strategies and recommendations for data centers as they pass through different evolutionary stages. Click here to get this Eaton White Paper

Regulatory Risk and the Data Center

The regulatory environment for the data center industry will be a key focus of today’s DatacenterDynamics event in San Francisco. For those who can’t make the show, Digital Realty Trust CTO Jim Smith provides a video overview explaining why data center operators need to focus on regulation.

“There is definitely some regulatory risk on the horizon,” says Smith, noting the U.K. Carbon Reduction Commitment (see PDF overview) that takes effect in 2010. Smith notes that the measure includes criminal penalties for executives of companies that fail to comply, which illustrates the need to treat carbon regulation as a serious near-term business issue.

The impact of the Obama administration’s move to pass “cap and trade” carbon regulation is less clear, but Smith believes it will “change the face of power economics” in the U.S.

Report: Microsoft Plans Data Center in Brazil

Microsoft (MSFT) plans to add a new data center in Brazil to support its online services business in Latin America, company officials have told Business News Americas, which said the facility will be operational in the fourth quarter of this year, and will host Microsoft’s online services for the business market.

Although the report quoted several executives from Microsoft’s Latin America business unit, the company is not confirming any plans for a data center in Brazil.

“We don’t have anything to announce about new facilities at this time,” said a spokesperson for Microsoft Global Foundation Services, which builds and operates the company’s data centers.

Roundup: Internap, ADC, DataPipe

A number of data center service providers had significant personnel news this week. Here’s a roundup:

• Internap Network Services (INAP) has eliminated the position of Chief Technology Officer, and current CTO Timothy Sullivan will leave the company, Internap said in an SEC filing this week. Rob Powell at Telecom Ramblings has more.
• Sacramento data center operator Advanced Data Centers (ADC) has hired industry veteran Chris Sumter as vice president of sales, the company said Thursday. Sumter, formerly director of sales for Digital Realty Trust, brings over 15 years of experience in data center sales to ADC. As Vice President of Sales, Sumter will initially oversee leasing activities for ADC’s McClellan Park Data Center. “I am delighted to welcome Chris to ADC,” said Michael Cohen, president of ADC. “His unique and diverse background, coupled with his deep data center roots and telecommunications understanding, will be an invaluable asset as ADC continues to grow.”
• Managed hosting provider DataPipe has appointed Mack Treece as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Treece brings more than 20 years experience in global operations, finance, direct and indirect sales at companies including Bell Atlantic and Ortange Business Services. “Mack comes to DataPipe with exactly the right blend of experience, expertise, and proven leadership results,” said Robb Allen, Founder and CEO of DataPipe. “We are confident that he will be a tremendous asset as DataPipe continues to expand to meet the growing demand for enterprise managed services.”

McCarthy Capital Buys Stake in Peak 10

McCarthy Capital Corporation has recently purchased Frontier Capital’s interest in Peak 10, Inc., a leading regional provider of data center infrastructure and managed services. Seaport Capital remains the majority shareholder in Peak 10. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We are pleased to partner with the management of Peak 10 and Seaport Capital in this growing and well-positioned business,” said Patrick Duffy, a partner at McCarthy Capital. “We believe Peak 10’s people and breadth of service offerings provide substantial opportunities for growth.”

BMC Now Manages Assets on Amazon

BMC Software (BMC) said this week that its Business Service Management (BSM) platform can now manage assets on the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. The announcement by BMC is part of a broader effort to position its BSM product as a key tool for managing “hybrid” IT infrastructure that combines private data centers and public clouds.

BMC says its customers will now be able to extend their internal data centers to Amazon EC2 via BSM’s “integrated self-service portal” that can manage both local and cloud assets. It becomes the latest major data center player seeking to position their products in the hybrid “sweet spot” between private and public clouds.

““The need for a strong management focus is increasingly important as enterprise organizations leverage external cloud resources to augment their existing infrastructures,” said Kia Behnia, chief technology officer for BMC’s Enterprise Service Management business unit. “Our BSM platform is designed to enable organizations to request, orchestrate and provision capacity across their existing internal IT resources and clouds in minutes.”

DatacenterDynamics San Francisco

DatacenterDynamics will hold its 7th annual San Francisco conference tomorrow (July 17th) at the San Francisco Hilton at 333 O’Farrell Street. The event will bring together industry and government leaders explore what existing and looming environmental legislation will mean for the data center sector at a time of incessantly growing demand, tight energy supply and frozen capital markets.

One of the featured panels will discuss how containers, modularity, high-density zones and mixed-use infrastructure are changing the way data centers are built. Facebook’s Director of Site Operations Tom Furlong, Digital Realty Trust SVP of Technical Services Michael Manos and Jon Haas, Eco-Technologies Initiative Manager at Intel and Director of The Green Grid, will discuss how the industry’s changing realities are impacting the way mission-critical facilities have to be designed.

Google’s Chiller-less Data Center

The equipment yard at the Google data center in Belgium features no chillers. (Photo from Google)

Google (GOOG) has begun operating a data center in Belgium that has no chillers to support its cooling systems, a strategy that will improve its energy efficiency while making local weather forecasting a larger factor in its data center management.

Chillers, which are used to refrigerate water, are widely used in data center cooling systems but require a large amount of electricity to operate. With the growing focus on power costs, many data centers are reducing their reliance on chillers to improve the energy efficiency of their facilities.

This has boosted adoption of “free cooling,” the use of fresh air from outside the data center to support the cooling systems. This approach allows data centers to use outside air when the temperature is cool, while falling back on chillers on warmer days.

Google has taken the strategy to the next level. Rather than using chillers part-time, the company has eliminated them entirely in its data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, which began operating in late 2008 and also features an on-site water purification facility that allows it to use water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility.

Year-Round Free Cooling
The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average. The average temperature in Brussels during summer reaches 66 to 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees.

So what happens if the weather gets hot? On those days, Google says it will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers. This approach is made possible by the scope of the company’s global network of data centers, which provide the ability to shift an entire data center’s workload to other facilities.