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Sterling Network Upgrades Cooling Capacity
Increased cooling requirements for high-density computing are prompting some data center operators to make major upgrades of their infrastructure. Sterling Network Services recently installed two new high-capacity chilled water lines for its Phoenix data center facility. The company says the project is the largest cooling installation in a commercial building in Arizona, and one of the largest in the United States, and gives Sterling a cooling capacity of more than 10,000 tons.
"To put this in perspective, the same capacity could cool more than 3,000 average homes," said Tony Wanger, Managing Director of Sterling Network Services. "The addition of these chilled water lines ensures an endlessly scalable solution for enterprises who demand the most secure, redundant and climate controlled environments for their servers and data. Sterling can meet and exceed any data center or colocation cooling requirement at virtually any level of redundancy."
March 31, 2006
Five Predictions: Relocations and Outsourcing
We continue with our recap of the Five Bold Predictions session from AFCOM's recent Data Center World conference:
2. By 2010, more than half of all data centers will have to relocate to new facilities or outsource some applications. An AFCOM member survey found that 71 percent of respondents see changes to their data center capacity in the next 10 years. Fifty three percent expect to expand their data centers, 5 percent expect to outsource some applications, and 13 percent expect to both expand and outsource.
For those who plan expansions, the reason cited most often was business growth (41%), followed by an aging facility. "Many data centers just can't handle new technologies coming out," said presenter Tom Roberts, Director of Data Center Services for Trinity Information Services.
Posted by Rich Miller 
March 31, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 30, 2006
United Guaranty Plans New NC Data Center
Mortgage insurance provider United Guaranty is planning to build a new 25,000 square foot data center in Forsyth County, North Carolina, which will eventually house 40 workers slated to relocate from the company's Greensboro headquarters. Details are still being worked out, according to Tom Routh, vice president of administration, who said growth in the downtown facility required the expansion. "Ultimately, we decided we needed to find a site and build our own data center," Routh told the Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area.
The company decided to build from scratch after it was unable to find an existing site that could be effectively upgraded. "We couldn't find something there that met these requirements," said Routh, citing the need for fiber connectivity and power supply from two different substations.
Posted by Rich Miller March 30, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 29, 2006
Vendors: Fluid-based Cooling Is Inevitable
A show of hands at yesterday's Datacenter Dynamics conference in New York found that about 10 percent of attendees had implemented liquid cooling for high-density blade server installations. How many are considering it? That's when easily half the audience members put their hands up.
That's why cooling has been the hot topic at industry conferences the past two weeks, with vendors positioning water and/or refrigerant systems as the only viable solution to ever-increasing heat loads in data centers. That's not always an easy sell to data center managers who are wary of bringing fluids into the data center - much less into the rack with the equipment.
"Do you have hydrophobia? If you've got hydrophobia, get over it," Richard Sawyer, Director of Data Center Technology for American Power Conversion (APC), said in a presentation last week at Data Center World in Atlanta. "Plan for fluids in your data center. It may be a fluid refrigerant, or it may be water. But get used to it."
"It's something that is inevitable," Herb Villa, Field Technical Manager of Rittal Corp, said Tuesday at the DataCenter Dynamics conference in New York. "We understand the reluctance. But ultimately, customers will have no choice."
The pace and timing of that transition will vary widely from company to company. While some facility managers are dealing with short-term cooling challenges, those with substantial space available in their data centers have more time to study their options and learn from the early adopters.
Posted by Rich Miller March 29, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 28, 2006
DataCenterDynamics NYC Event Today
DatacenterDynamics New York 2006 is taking place today at The Hilton New York - Avenue of the Americas. This is the fourth annual DatacenterDynamics event in New York, with a program covering all the big questions and hot topics in the data center world. Data Center Knowledge is a media sponsor for this event, and I'll be on hand to take in some sessions, soak up some knowledge and hopefully meet some readers. News tips are always welcome.
Posted by Rich Miller March 28, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 27, 2006
Five Predictions: Fewer Staffers for Data Centers
Over the next few days, I'll be doing a series of blog items capsulizing the "Five Bold Predictions" from the recent AFCOM Data Center World Conference. Here's the first:
1. By 2015, the talent pool of qualified senior level technical and management data center professionals will shrink by 45%. A 2002 survey found that 55 percent of data center workers with mainframe experience were at least 50 years old. A January 2006 survey of AFCOM's membership filled out the bleak picture. Among the findings:
38 percent of respondents currently have unfilled positions in their data center.
32 percent said it takes 3 to 6 months to fill a skilled technical or management position in their data center. 12 percent said it takes six months to a year, and 3 percent said it takes a year or more.
40 percent expect it to be "somewhat more difficult" to recuit staff over the next five years, while seven percent expected it to be "significantly more difficult."
Posted by Rich Miller March 27, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 26, 2006
Air Flow Key to Coping With Cooling Challenges
Many of the speakers at last week's Data Center World (AFCOM) conference discussed the data center of the future, a facility fully engineered for cooling high-density blade server installations. But most companies can't build that state-of-the-art facility just yet, and only a modest number of data center operators are actually making the transition to cooling their "hot spots" with water or fluid refrigerants.
As a result, there was also plenty of discussion about how best to soup up the data center of the present. In the short term, many companies will focus on making the most of air cooling as they prepare for a future transition to a new facility or new cooling systems.
How many data centers are using water or refrigerants for cooling? The best clue came from IBM, which provided details on its next-generation of blade server technology. "Ninety five percent of IBM's blade customers are using air cooling," said Steve Simon, director of IBM's eServer BladeCenter strategy. "Sometimes you have a spot problem that requires water cooling." "Right now, what the market will bear is air cooling," said Bret Lehman, senior engineer with IBM’s xSeries Thermal Engineering team. "We plan on working with air."
Posted by Rich Miller March 26, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 21, 2006
Study: Half of Data Centers May Relocate
"By 2010, more than half of all data centers will have to relocate to new facilities or outsource some applications." This was one of the "five bold predictions" presented Tuesday at the Spring Data Center World conference in Atlanta. The predictions by the Data Center Institute were based upon an extensive survey of members of AFCOM, a leading association for data center professionals and the sponsor of Data Center World.
The planned relocations will come as no surprise to data center landlords, builders and service providers, who say they've been seeing strong demand for facilities that can accommodate high-density blade server installations. Blade servers offer potential cost savings to corporations seeking to consolidate sprawling data center infrastructures. But many comopanies are finding their existing facilities are unable to manage "hot spots" created by high-density racks and cabinets.
The Data Center Institute research found that 53 percent of respondents expect to expand or relocate their data center operations by 2010, and 13 percent expect to both expand and outsource. The findings were presented in the keynote of Tuesday's session at the Georgia World Congress Center. Watch Data Center Knowledge in coming days for additional coverage of the DCI findings and a full roundup of Data Center World.
Posted by Rich Miller March 21, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
IBM to Consolidate Medicare Data Centers
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) signed IBM and two partners to a contract to consolidate 17 data-processing centers into three highly efficient ones over the next five years. CMS expects to save nearly $45 million annually under the new arrangement. The total contract could be worth as much as $1.9 billion over the next 10 years, according to The Washington Post.
IBM's portion of the CMS services contract is valued at approximately $200 million, making it one of the largest federal outsourcing deals ever. One of the world's largest claims-processing organizations, CMS is attempting to fulfill requirements of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, which mandates that CMS use competitive bidding to streamline the agency's operations and cost. Claims-processing costs now hover around the 18 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) threshold Congress set in 2003 for health-care related spending.
Posted by Rich Miller March 21, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
Akamai Traffic Tops 200 Gigabits Per Second
Total traffic on the Akamai network last week peaked for the first time at a rate of more than 200 gigabits per second, boosted by webcasts of NCAA tournament games via CBS Sportsline. On Thursday, Akamai served Web content for more than 102 billion Internet requests, with a peak rate of 2,311,821 requests per second - a rate roughly equivalent to serving content to the entire population of Chicago simultaneously. Last Thursday Akamai served more than 400,000 simultaneous video streams in Microsoft's Windows Media Format. Akamai served similar demand again on Friday.
"This is incredibly significant because it means we are witnessing the maturity of the Internet as the premiere medium for the consumption of time-sensitive content, including sports, news and music programming, delivered to broadband-connected users worldwide," said Paul Sagan, Akamai's President and CEO. "Akamai's broadly distributed on-demand capabilities are enabling the emergence of entire new online business models for information, entertainment, advertising and commerce."
Posted by Rich Miller March 21, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
March 19, 2006
Honeywell Plans Delaware Data Center
Honeywell has unveiled plans to build a 60,800 square foot data center near New Castle, Delaware. The company, which makes Prestone anti-freeze and many other industrial products, will invest $26 million in the center, which will employ about 100 workers. Honeywell is consolidating its IT operations from 400 locations down to two, and chose Delaware for its East Coast facility because it isn't usually vulnerable to hurricanes, tornados or earthquakes.
Those factors, plus Delaware's business-friendly environment, have helped the state become a growing force in the data center economy. Delaware is now home to 37 corporate data centers employing more than 2,000 workers, according to the Delaware Economic Development Office.
Posted by Rich Miller March 19, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter
MORE STORIES FROM THIS MONTH:
- Sterling Network Upgrades Cooling Capacity
- Five Predictions: Relocations and Outsourcing
- United Guaranty Plans New NC Data Center
- Vendors: Fluid-based Cooling Is Inevitable
- DataCenterDynamics NYC Event Today
- Five Predictions: Fewer Staffers for Data Centers
- Air Flow Key to Coping With Cooling Challenges
- Study: Half of Data Centers May Relocate
- IBM to Consolidate Medicare Data Centers
- Akamai Traffic Tops 200 Gigabits Per Second
- Honeywell Plans Delaware Data Center
- Will High-Density Blades 'Break' Moore's Law?
- Syska Offers New Facility Classification System
- Hurricane Electric Opens Huge Colo Center
- HP Foresees 'Lights Out' Data Centers