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Rackspace Adds New Customer, New CFO

Posted by Rich Miller on March 31, 2008

Marc Andreessen's Ning has proven that there's dynamic growth in providing white-label social networking tools for web sites. In a recent blog post, Andreessen said Ning now hosts more than 200,000 social networks, and is growing rapidly. Is there room for more than one provider to benefit from white-label community offerings? If so, it could benefit Rackspace, which today announced that it had signed Ning competitor Pringo Networks as an infrastructure customer. Rackspace also announced the hiring of a new CFO, which will likely increase the buzz about a possible IPO for the San Antonio company.

Ning and Pringo offer turnkey social networks that can be branded for use alongside a company web site, allowing users to share video and photos. "Rackspace provides our customers with a solid and reliable infrastructure on which to grow their business," said Majid Abai, CEO of Pringo Networks.

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March 31, 2008

The Oprah Effect: Equal to Slashdot or Digg?

The popularity of Oprah Winfrey tested the limits of Internet streaming video in March, when the debut of Oprah's webcast attracted 500,000 simultaneous users, causing capacity-related performance problems. It turns out Oprah is also wreaking havoc with web sites for companies mentioned on her syndicated talk show.

Phil Wainewright reports that being "Oprah'd" is a web traffic event on the equivalent of the Slashdot Effect or a TechCrunch-led blogstorm or front-page Digging. Phil says he's heard several independent accounts of consumer web sites getting slowed or knocked offline after being mentioned on Oprah. Shaklee reports that one mention generated up to "ten months' worth of average daily volume in one day."

Posted by Rich Miller March 31, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

Fire Destroys Wisconsin Data Center

Here's a cautionary tale about data center fire protection. A small data center in Green Bay, Wisconsin was wiped out by a fire earlier this month, leaving a number of local business web sites offline. The March 19 fire destroyed 75 servers, routers and switches in the data center at Camera Corner/Connecting Point, a Green Bay business offering IT services and web site hosting.

Local media coverage has focused on the recovery effort. CEO Rick Chernick has emphasized the fact that the company had fire insurance, and said that alarms helped mitigate the potential damage. "If the equipment we had in place to warn us didn't register fast enough, notifying the fire department, getting our people down here, we wouldn't have a business today probably," Chernick said.

But it took 10 days to get customer web sites back online, indicating the company had no live backup plan. That was a problem for one customer, the Green Bay Blizzard arena football team, which was counting on selling tickets online for yesterday's home opener.

Posted by Rich Miller March 31, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

Is Google Prepping A Cloud Computing Platform?

There was fresh chatter over the weekend that Google may be preparing to launch a cloud computing platform similar to Amazon's EC2 and S3 - and that it might be free. This rumor is being stoked by an oblique post Saturday by Dave Winer, in which a talking pig asks him if he'd like to run Amazon-style services "in Google's cloud." Dave's post suggested the services would be free for bloggers and users "with modest needs," but perhaps not for everyone. Is the talking pig a reference to Pig, the open source architecture from Yahoo for working with large data sets? UPDATE: Dave has more today, looking at why a Google service offering might be free.

As always, such rumors need to be taken with a grain of salt. Microsoft infrastructure architect James Hamilton writes that although this report has made the rounds before, a Google third-party service platform is "a matter of when rather than if." An excerpt:

Why? Mostly because it makes too much sense. The Google infrastructure investment combined with phenomenal scale yields some of the lowest cost compute and storage in the industry. They can sell compute and storage at considerably above their costs and yet still be offering substantial cost reductions to smaller services. That’s if they chose to charge for it.

Microsoft is clearly staying busy on the architecture front as well, as Hamilton and new Microsoft colleague Greg Linden have been contributing some informative blog posts on the topic in recent weeks.

Posted by Rich Miller March 31, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

March 28, 2008

Cogent, Telia Resolve Peering Dispute

Cogent (CCOI) and Telia have resolved their peering dispute, and are once again accepting one another's traffic. Renesys, which track Internet routing, reports that connections between the two providers were restored about just before 6 pm UTC (1 pm Eastern time).

The dispute caused Internet users in nearly 4,000 network prefixes at either Telia or Cogent to be unable to access web sites on the other network. It also caused problems for gamers whose ISPs rely solely on Cogent for connectivity, who were unable to access World of Warcraft. Cogent blamed Telia for the dispute, saying the European ISP had not lived up to agreements to increase capacity at some peering centers.

Posted by Rich Miller March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

ServerBeach Hits 10,000 Servers

ServerBeach, the dedicated hosting unit of Peer 1 (PIX), now hosts 10,000 servers, the company said this week. "This milestone also reflects the company's continuous growth in the very competitive self-managed hosting arena," said Fabio Banducci, president and CEO of Peer 1. "We strongly believe this has been accomplished in part because ServerBeach has maintained its commitment to go above and beyond what other self-managed hosting companies provide, with much needed resources and support that help our customers succeed."

ServerBeach is based in San Antonio, Texas and has locations in California and Virginia. The company uses the Peer 1 network, with 15 data centers and 20 network points-of-presence across North America and Europe.

Posted by Rich Miller March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

Parallels Acquires ModernBill

Parallels said this week that it has acquired ModernGigabyte, LLC, maker of ModernBill automated billing system. The deal further strengthens Parallels market leadership in the hosting automation market, allowing it to bundle control panel and billing software in a single offering.

ModernGigabyte is based in Louisville, Kentucky and provides software to nearly 15,000 hosting resellers with over 2 million customers worldwide.

"Parallels' acquisition of ModernGigabyte gives service providers a competitive edge by providing a complete hosting solution that integrates back-office software with Parallels control panels," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels (formerly SWsoft). "The acquisition also opens up new sales channels for software vendors that develop applications based on the APS Standard, which will drive greater adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions."

Posted by Rich Miller March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

Stripped-Down, Streamlined Servers

Like most operators of online MMO games, CDC Games runs a lot of servers. Unlike World of Warcraft and other major MMORPGs, CDC doesn't charge a fee for its games, and makes its money on the sale of in-game products and services. That model has worked well in the Chinese gaming market, and CDC has expanded into North America, hosting its equipment with Terremark (TMRK) at the company's NAP of the Americas in Miami.

In a Network World profile, CDC general manager Ron Williams says server vendors would do well to consider the needs of gaming companies and other emerging providers focused on scalability, which have different priorities than the traditional enterprise customer. An excerpt:

"All of us are taking these generic, commoditized servers and trying to do the best we can, when what we really want is a stripped-down box that's of high quality," Williams says. "IBM can't afford to keep all kinds of models around, but I think as we move more into cloud computing, someone is going to have to create (more stripped-down servers) for us, whether we're gamers or software-as-a-service."

Williams talks about the data center economics for gaming companies, and how they may differ from other customers. Check out the full story at Network World.

Posted by Rich Miller March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

IBM Completes Major Data Center in Egypt

IBM has completed construction of a major data center for Telecom Egypt featuring its "Big Green" energy-efficient technologies, the companies said today. Telecom Egypt (TE) is the largest provider of fixed-line telecom services in the Middle East, with more than 10.4 million customers, and chose IBM to design and build the most energy-efficient data center in Egypt.

With strong growth in Egypt's economy, Telecom Egypt needed to expand beyond its existing office space to manage the increased demand on its telecommunications network and mission-critical operations. IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) site and facilities division designed the data center environment, and will support TE in managing the operation of the facility.

Posted by Rich Miller March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

March 27, 2008

Google Data Center FAQ

Google's data centers are the object of great fascination, and the intrigue about these facilities is only deepened by Google's secrecy about its operations. We've written a lot about Google's facilities, and thought it would be useful to summarize key information in a series of Frequently Asked Questions: The Google Data Center FAQ.

Why is Google so secretive about its data centers?
Google believes its data center operations give it a competitive advantage, and says as little as possible about these facilities. The company believes that details such as the size and power usage of its data centers could be valuable to competitors. To help maintain secrecy, Google typically seeks permits for its data center projects using Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) that don't mention Google, such as Lapis LLC (North Carolina) or Tetra LLC (Iowa).

How many data centers does Google have?
Nobody knows for sure, and the company isn’t saying. The conventional wisdom is that Google has dozens of data centers. We’re aware of at least 12 significant Google data center installations in the United States, with another three under construction. In Europe, Google is known to have equipment in at least five locations, with new data centers being built in two other venues.

Where are Google’s data centers located?
Google has disclosed the sites of four new facilities announced in 2007, but many of its older data center locations remain under wraps. Much of Google’s data center equipment is housed in the company’s own facilities, but it also continues to lease space in a number of third-party facilities. Much of its third-party data center space is focused around peering centers in major connectivity hubs. Here's our best information about where Google is operating data centers, building new ones, or maintaining equipment for network peering. Facilities we believe to be major data centers are bold-faced.

UNITED STATES

Mountain View, Calif.
Pleasanton, Calif.
San Jose, Calif.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Palo Alto, Calif.
Seattle
Portland, Oregon
The Dalles, Oregon
Chicago
Atlanta, Ga. (two sites)
Reston, Virginia
Ashburn, Va.
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Houston, Texas
Miami, Fla.
Lenoir, North Carolina
Goose Creek, South Carolina (Under construction)
Pryor, Oklahoma (Under construction)
Council Bluffs, Iowa (Under construction)

International sites after the jump ...

Posted by Rich Miller March 27, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

Comcast, BitTorrent Declare A Truce

Comcast Corporation and BitTorrent, Inc. say they have resolved their differences, and will work together to make Comcast a testbed for P2P-sensitive approaches to network management, with BitTorrent focusing on optimizing its software while Comcast fine tunes its network. The two companies are promising to expand the dialogue to include other ISPs and peer-to-peer services, and publish the results of their efforts.

"Rather than slow traffic by certain types of applications — such as file-sharing software or companies like BitTorrent — Comcast will slow traffic for those users who consume the most bandwidth," Comcast Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner told TorrentFreak.

Comcast called the new approach "more appropriate for today's emerging Internet trends. We have been discussing this migration and its effects with leaders in the Internet community for the last several months, and we will refine, adjust, and publish the technique based upon feedback and initial trial results." Comcast is upgrading its network to DOCSIS 3.0, which can help speed cable modem infrastructure and has been deployed in some international markets.

Posted by Rich Miller March 27, 2008 | Permalink | Newsletter

March 31, 2008

The Oprah Effect: Equal to Slashdot or Digg?

March 28, 2008

Cogent, Telia Resolve Peering Dispute

March 27, 2008

Google Data Center FAQ

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