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Data Center Jobs: Data Center Design

Posted by Rich Miller on August 31, 2007

At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Intel Solution Services, Intel's worldwide consulting group, which is seeking a Data Center Design Consultant who will be based in the Eastern region of the U.S. The company is seeking an experienced professional with a deep background in the design and operations of data centers, including cooling, power, fire prevention, security and monitoring.

Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company's job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our RSS feed.

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August 31, 2007

Strong Data Center Activity in New Jersey

Seeking to capitalize on data center demand in the New York area, Russo Development of Hackensack is marketing a 316,000 square foot Mahwah property as a build-to-suit data center opportunity. The company bought the Brookline Corporate Center in 2005, with plans to develop it as an office park. Two years later, the property is still available and Russo is positioning it as a corporate data center. The company's plans for the site were profiled in the Bergen Record last week.

New Jersey has been an active market for data center development, driven by demand from New York financial institutions. "Most New York companies that are building data centers are building them outside Manhattan," Jeff Hipschman, a senior VP in the Technology Practice Group at CB Richard Ellis, said earlier this year. "We’re seeing the majority of our data centers in the region in New Jersey." Hipschman gave a presentation on the New Jersey data center market at the DataCenterDynamics New York event in March.

Hipschman and colleague Jason Shepard noted that data center development in New Jersey is increasingly focused in the center of the state, tracking the fiber routes along major highways and the service area of PSE&G, the state's largest utility. As properties close to New York become harder to find, the data center action is moving south in this corridor.

Posted by Rich Miller August 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Rackspace Alum Targets Social Networking

Richard Yoo is known to many observers of the hosting and data center industries as a co-founder and CEO of Rackspace Managed Hosting and founder of ServerBeach. Yoo has been in stealth mode with a Houston-area company called Hush Labs, whose first venture is a service called Natuba that links and profiles and activities across major social networking sites and aggregates it in a single interface. The service, which has been in beta since the spring, was featured this week in the Houston Chronicle.

There are a number of other efforts at building an effective aggregator for social network activity, including Spokeo, ProfileLinker and a rumored service from Google. Yoo sold his interest in Rackspace in 2005, and is targeting a niche that could be rewarding for the provider that nails the concept and execution properly.

Posted by Rich Miller August 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Amazon's Growth Helping Rackable

The growth of Amazon's utility infrastructure business is boosting results at Rackable (RACK), which supplies data center equipment for the giant retailer, according to a securities analyst. Thomas Curlin of RBC Capital Markets said yesterday that Rackable's rate of orders is improving. "Our checks suggest the flow of orders at Rackable is improving as Amazon laps tough year-over-year comparables and other key customer relationships remain stable," Curlin wrote, adding that his third quarter revenue estimate for Rackable of $90 million "may prove conservative." Investors liked the news, as Rackable shares closed Thursday at $13.60, up from $12.07 at Tuesday's close for a two-day gain of 12.6 percent.

Rackable's revenues are driven by its large customers, with Microsoft and Yahoo accounting for nearly 60% of revenue. Executives at Amazon (AMZN) have described the growth of the company's infrastructure business in only vague terms in their analyst calls, emphasizing that its new line of business (which includes the S3 and EC2 services) is in the early stages of a much bigger long-term game. But the Rackable news confirms that the growth of these new services is prompting some serious infrastructure investments for Amazon.

Posted by Rich Miller August 31, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 30, 2007

$15M in Data Center Gear at Auction

The online auction house R.L. Rasmus is selling a large block of data center equipment that is being valued at $15 million. The equipment was abandoned when the Department of the Interior didn't renew a data center lease, and will be auctioned online on Sept. 12. The inventory is in Ashburn, Va. includes eGenera blade servers, EMC Centera storage servers and ADIC digital tape libraries, which are all still in their crates. "This is cutting edge product purchased brand new in 2006," said Chris Rasmus of Rasmus Asset Advisors. While the equipment is new, it doesn't come with licenses, warranties or support contracts, so caveat emptor. A full list of equipment is available on the Rasmus web site. For those who are interested, Rasmus provides additional detail about the equipment in this video.

Posted by Rich Miller August 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Should the Feds Define Efficiency Metrics?

An IT research firm is calling on the governments of the U.S. and Canada to take a leadership role to stem power usage by data center operators in North America. Info-Tech Research Group cited findings from the recent EPA report on data center power usage trends, and said current momentum on "green data centers" is inadequate.

"Greening of the large enterprise data center is just a pipe dream at the moment because there's no motivation or support for IT departments to change," said Aaron Hay, research consultant at Info-Tech Research Group. "Until we have a standard measure of data center power consumption, it is doubtful that we will see changes on a widespread level. The U.S. and Canadian governments need to work with data center operators, vendors, and industry associations to facilitate setting practical and actionable targets for immediate reductions in data center power consumption."

There appears to be agreement in the industry that metrics on power usage are key ingredients in any broad improvement in data center efficiency. But who will set those standards? Industry groups like the Green Grid and the Uptime Institute are working on metrics, as is the EPA's EnergyStar program. But there's no consensus on what will be measured and rated (servers? UPS systems? entire buildings?) and how best to do it.

Posted by Rich Miller August 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Skype, Scalability and 'Boot Risk'

Why didn't Skype predict or anticipate the problems that emerged during the recent two-day outage for its peer-to-peer IP telephony service, which is used by 220 million users? For some, the outage raised questions about the scalability of peer-to-peer technology. But as Todd Hoff notes at High Scalability, the growth of huge networks can introduce variables that can be difficult to predict and assess. "How could Skype possibly test booting 220 million servers over a random configuration of resources?" Todd asks. "Answer: they can't. Yes, it's Skype's responsibility, but they are in a bit of a pickle on this one." He continues:

The boot scenario is one of the most basic and one of the most difficult scalability scenarios to plan for and test. You can't simulate the viciousness of real-life conditions in a lab because only real-life has the variety of configurations and the massive resources needed to simulate itself. It's like simulating the universe. How do you simulate the universe if the computational matrix you need is the universe itself? You can't. You end up building smaller models and those models sometimes fail.

Todd shares his own experiences with the "big boot scenario," as well as the way these scenarios play out in centralized and peer-to-peer networks.

Posted by Rich Miller August 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

King County Plans $21M Lease in Tukwila

The county executive of King County, Washington has proposed spending $21 million to lease data center space in Tukwila, a Seattle suburb that is home to many existing data centers. The King County Council had previously considered buying and upgrading a building at 1130 Rainier Avenue in downtown Seattle, but ultimately dropped those plans in favor of the Tukwila lease. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a story that reviews the debate about the county's decisions on its data center requirements.

The 1130 Rainier site, which was once the headquarters of digital music company Loudeye, would have housed the county's elections equipment in addition to the data center. The county opted to lease space in Renton for the elections office, and seek separate digs for its data center. Critics say that splitting the data center and elections office requirements will be $15 million more than the estimated cost of buying and retrofitting the Seattle site, but some council members say the estimate for a rehab of 1130 Rainier may be on the low side.

Posted by Rich Miller August 30, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 29, 2007

Savvis' St. Louis HQ Sold to Digital Realty

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) late today confirmed its acquisition of One Savvis Parkway in St. Louis, which is the corporate headquarters for managed hosting provider Savvis Inc. (SVVS). Digital Realty paid $27.7 million to acquire the 156,000 square foot building from landlord Duke Realty Corp.

The announcement had been anticipated since Digital Realty execs said in an analyst call earlier this month that it had bought three St. Louis properties for $80.7 million. The company confirmed this morning that two of the acquisitions were the Bandwidth Exchange buildings at 900 Walnut and 210 North Tucker.

Savvis is Digital Realty's largest tenant, leasing more than 1.38 million square feet of space in Digital's properties. Savvis annual rent of $29.3 million represents 11 percent of revenue. "Savvis continues to be a very important customer for DLR and we are pleased to have its headquarters as part of our operating portfolio," said Michael Foust, CEO of Digital Realty Trust. "The acquisition of this property represents a very attractive risk-adjusted return for DLR."

Posted by Rich Miller August 29, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Level 3 May Raise Stakes in CDN Price War

Yesterday we noted that press releases from Akamai (AKAM) suggest the company is girding for a challenge from Level 3 (LVLT) in the content delivery network (CDN) market. Today Dan Rayburn predicts that Level 3 is about to raise the stakes with a low-cost streaming video solution. When Level 3 launched its CDN offering in May, we spoke with Level 3 execs Bill Wohnoutka and Lisa Guillaume about the company's ambitions in the CDN sector. Level 3 is closely tracking the Web 2.0 sector, but sees enormous opportunity within its existing base of connectivity customers.

"Many of our customers buy CDN today, and buy it from more than one provider," said Wohnoutka, VP of Business Development for Level 3’s Content Markets Group. The group's customers include Internet portals, major broadcasters, sports leagues, movie studios and major advertising agencies, many of whom likely use Akamai or Limelight Networks for their CDN needs.

Level 3 owns its own backbone, which gives it a different cost profile than other CDNs who must buy transit. Rayburn notes this fact in a post today examining Level 3's likely impact on its CDN rivals:

I expect Level 3 will come to the market with an aggressive marketing campaign talking to competitive functionality and performance at a much lower price. And I don't mean slightly lower, I mean less expensive by a wide margin. While that would not be a new tactic by a CDN, (remember iBEAM?) it is unique to Level 3 since they own the network and should be able to have lower costs than anyone else. While other CDNs in the past lowered pricing to essentially buy market share, none of them ever succeeded, as in the end, their costs caught up with them. If Level 3 is this aggressive, we're going to have to wait to see what impact it has on the market and what tactics the other CDNs will deploy to combat Level 3. While we know that customers are not buying on price alone, and Level 3 still has to prove it has a good service, other CDNs will have to decide how to adjust to the shift in the market.

Concerns about a CDN price war have hurt the share prices of Akamai and Limelight (LLNW), the largest public companies in the CDN space.

Posted by Rich Miller August 29, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

Digital Realty Buys Bandwidth Exchange

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) today confirmed that it has bought the Bandwidth Exchange buildings, the leading Internet gateway facilities in St. Louis. Digital Realty paid $53 million to acquire the buildings at 900 Walnut Street and 210 Tucker Boulevard. The company said in a recent analyst call earlier this month that it had bought three St. Louis properties for $80.7 million. It was clear at the time that the Bandwidth Exchange buildings were two of the acquired properties. The third St. Louis property is the headquarters for a major managed hosting provider, with an apparent purchase price of $27 million. Digital Realty hasn't identified the seller yet, but the largest current tenant across its portfolio of properties is Savvis, a managed hosting provider with headquarters in St. Louis.

The Bandwidth Exchange properties have an interesting history. This is the second time that an ownership team led by Bob Guller has sold the buildings at a profit. Guller and partner Jerome Glick bought the two buildings in the mid-1990s and converted them to carrier hotels. In 2000 the buildings were sold for $56 million to Pinnacle Towers, a Florida company that specialized in wireless towers and was looking to expand into the colocation business.

Just two weeks after it bought St. Louis properties, Pinnacle announced that it would exit the colo business. When Pinnacle put 900 Walnut and 210 Tucker up for sale in a partnership headed by Guller bought them for $22 million. Six years later, the properties have now been sold to Digital Realty for $53 million. The buildings' history tracks the boom and bust of the data center industry, and few industry players have timed the peaks and valleys as fortuitously as Guller.

Posted by Rich Miller August 29, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 31, 2007

Strong Data Center Activity in New Jersey

August 30, 2007

$15M in Data Center Gear at Auction

August 29, 2007

Savvis' St. Louis HQ Sold to Digital Realty

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