Roundup: Telco rumors, Ingram Micro, CBTS

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• Telecom acquisition rumors. Separate reports recently show Deutsche Telecom thinking about purchasing Sprint Nextel and Seeking Alpha revisits the rumor about Google buying Level3.  Marketwatch reports that German telecommunications giant and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telecom might bid for Sprint Nextel within the next few weeks.   The Telecom Ramblings blog sums up the Google/Level3 rumor nicely as “baseless yet immortal rumor”.  Both Google and Level3 stocks were up Monday.
• Cincinnati Bell opens new Ohio data center. Wholly owned subsidiary of Cincinnati Bell CBTS announced Monday that they have opened a new facility in Lebanon, Ohio.  The 50,000 square foot data center will offer colocation, disaster recovery and managed services.  The Lebanon facility will be connected to the CBTS DWDM network and five other facilities in the Cincinnati area.  CBTS is providing premier data center services to Fortune 1000 companies in 25,000 square foot of space and an additional 25,000 square foot is ready to receive additional customers.
• Ingram Micro unveils Australian data center. Distribution giant Ingram Micro announced Monday that it opened an AUS$6 million data center in Sydney.  The facility, branded as the Partner Technology Centre will help Ingram demonstrate partner solutions and is backed by 12 suppliers.  Equipment on show at the site will come from Avocent, APC, Brocade, Cisco, EMC, Fortinet, HP, HP ProCurve, IBM, Microsoft, Symantec and VMware.  The Sydney facility is based on green datacentre practices and will undergo certification through Carbon Planet.

Roundup: DataPipe, Peak 10, Equinix, APC

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• DataPipe rolls out 3PAR services. Utility storage provider 3PAR announced Monday that Cloud-Agile partner DataPipe now offers differentiated virtual private array (VPA) and disaster recovery (DR) services as a part of their Stratosphere cloud services, which are powered by 3PAR Utility Storage.  DataPipe’s cloud platform leverages VMware and 3PAR to offer a managed, secure virtualized service. “We now have the opportunity to expand our cloud service offerings in the areas of security and compliance to increase the value we offer our customers,” said Michael Parks, Chief Technology Officer for DataPipe.  The 3PAR ASSURED product allows DataPipe to use remote copy, data replication, DR and automatic data backup to end users.  The 3PAR SECURED product offers isolated, secure virtual private array servies.
• Peak 10 deploys VMware vSphere 4.  Data center operator Peak 10 announced the delivery of Private Cloud Infrastructure Solutions, via VMware’s vSphere 4 platform.  The platform offers customers pools of virtualized resources that federate between on and off-premise environments on-demand and with ease.  By using vSphere 4 Peak 10 customers can maintain the integrity of their data and applications, while migrating to the cloud platform.  Peak 10’s leadership team are in San Francisco this week attending the VMworld 2009 conference.  Enhancements allowed from Peak 10’s vSphere 4 platform include twice as many virtual processors per virtual machine, four times the memory, three-times increase in network throughput, and additional SAN tiers available for high-end databases.

APC Gets Containerized With Datapod

APC by Schneider was one of the early players in the data center container market with its InfraStruXure Express, a fully mobile data center trailer. While taking a more low-key approach as other vendors rolled out container offerings, last May San Francisco General Hospital purchased one of APC’s data center on wheels.

Last week APC and Australian data center engineering specialist Datapod Pty Ltd announced that they are partnering to launch the Datapod system of containerized data center infrastructure solutions. Datapod containers are designed and manufactured in Australia, and feature container “building blocks” in a variety of sizes, which can include either IT equipment or power and cooling gear such as modular generators and chillers.

Demo: APC Symmetra PX 250/500kW UPS

APC’s Mark Tarantelli provides a demo and overview of the Symmetra PX 250/500kW UPS, which was on display this week at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas. This video runs about 8 minutes, 30 seconds.

For more news from APC, visit our APC Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Vendors Expand, Seeking One-Stop Shops

In the past several years we’ve seen a number of major deals among data center equipment vendors and service providers seeking to create a “one-stop shop,” hoping to build deeper relationships with their data center customers.

One of the biggest of these deals was Schneider Electric’s $6.1 billion acquisition of American Power Conversion (APC), which closed in early 2007. Schneider says it is beginning to leverage the company’s full array of data center offerings as it works with major data center operators.

“The thing that’s interesting now is the level of integration and breadth of offering we can bring to this,” said John de Pippo, a solutions VP at Schneider who also is a Senior VP for Software and Services at APC. “We can offer a lot of ways a customer can get energy efficiency throughout its operations. Schneider really has the ability to do that with all the resources it has.”

An example is the company’s relationship with Switch Communications, which is building the 407,000 square foot SuperNAP in Las Vegas. Switch is buying up to 60 APC 1.4 megawatt UPS units and potentially thousands of server racks, as well as Square D circuit breakers and controllers and Pelco security products.

APC to Provide More Energy Efficiency Info

APC has begun publishing detailed information about the electrical efficiency of its power and cooling products, the company said this week. Offering product efficiency data, including graphs on its products in a consistent format, will allow data center designers to combine the component efficiencies to predict the performance of an overall system.

APC has begun publishing data for its three-phase and single-phase uninterruptible power supplies, power distribution units and InRow cooling solutions on its Web site. An examples can be seen on this product page (scroll down to find “Energy Use/Efficiency), showing the equipment’s efficiency at a variety of loads.

APC Launches Data Center Planning Tools

APC today introduced TradeOff Tools, a group of web-based applications that allow data center professionals to experiment with numerous “what if” scenarios for virtualization, efficiency, power sizing, and other key design issues. The Flash-based tools let managers model different approaches and configurations to their data centers, allowing them to calculate Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCIE), potential gains from virtualization, and compare AC and DC power distribution.

APC unveiled the new tools today at a media presentation in West Kingston, Rhode Island. “The demand for higher densities, for higher efficiencies to defray rising energy costs, and for 7 x 24 x 365 uptime are taxing existing data centers with an unprecedented level of complexity,” APC said. “APC TradeOff Tools are designed to reduce complexity by helping data center professionals quickly identify their data center preferences and weigh those preferences against their budgetary and physical environment constraints.”

Seven different tools are now available on the web at tools.apc.com. They include:

• Data Center Energy Efficiency Calculator: This tool profiles a data center to calculate efficiency and electrical cost. As the user inputs details of the power and cooling configuration, and results are calculated based on a tested and validated three-parameter efficiency model.
• Data Center Capital Cost Calculator: This tool identifies calculates capital costs based on parameters including load, redundancy, density, and power/cooling characteristics, the tool can project the number of racks required and the floor space required.
• Power Sizing Calculator: This tool defines basic characteristics of the IT load and calculates how much utility input power would be required to support that load, allowing users to experiment with “what if” scenarios by modifying the load characteristics of servers, mainframes, and storage. Total load is then calculated and the tool generates a corresponding utility power requirement.

SanFran Hospital Buys APC Mobile Data Center

Amid the building buzz around containers, one of the earliest entrants in the mobile data center sector has sold its first unit. San Francisco General Hospital has purchased APC’s first InfraStruXure Express, a fully mobile data center in a 53-foot long trailer. APC introduced the “data center on wheels” in October 2004, a full two years before Sun Microsystems unveiled Project Blackbox.

The hospital will use the portable data center as expansion space while San Francisco General builds a new data center as part of a major rebuilding project. The new hospital facilities may not be completed until at least 2012, and perhaps 2015 – hence the need for InfraStruXure Express. The unit includes a network operations center (NOC), two Symmetra UPS systems, in-row cooling, and 11 NetShelter enclosures providing up to 500U of space.

“They are completely maxed out (of data center space)” said Dan Whelan of APC, part of the team that helped the hospital purchase and install the unit. The Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation provided a grant to support San Francisco General’s purchase of the InfraStruXure Express.

Schneider Opens Data Center Testbed Facility

The value of the new Schneider Electric Technology Center can be seen in the changing displays on the PowerLogic monitoring system mounted on the wall of the new facility in O’Fallon, Missouri. Engineers from APC-MGE first turn on a set of computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units to cool a module of racks. They then activate in-row cooling systems to cool a similar setup, allowing an instant comparison of perimeter cooling and in-row cooling technologies in a controlled environment. The gauges show that in this scenario, the in-row units used a fraction of the power.

Providing instant feedback on dueling approaches to power problems is one goal of the 100,000 square foot facility, which is designed as a testbed for Schneider and its customers and industry partners to design efficient approaches to power and cooling. The data center is equipped with the latest power efficiency technology and sturdy infrastructure to run high-density installations that have been problematic in legacy data centers.

“This will be a facility dedicated to practical solutions, not hype,” said Aaron Davis, chief marketing officer of APC-MGE, the U.S. unit of European power conglomerate Schneider Electric, which acquired APC for $6.1 billion last year. “We’re not making this investment saying APC has all the answers and solutions. We’re welcoming the community to come in and benefit from this investment.”

The Green Grid is one of the groups taking Schneider up on its invitation. Members of the group’s board were on hand Tuesday at a grand opening tour of the facility, which is designed to accommodate traditional customer testing but can also simulate extreme heat and cold environments.

“The data center market is very risk-averse,” said Don Lipton, the founder of SprayCool and one of the Green Grid board members in attendance. “You’ve got to have test centers and pilot projects so people can calculate the effectiveness and cost of new approaches.”