The Chip Wars and The Data Center

CIO magazine looks at the “chip wars” between AMD and Intel through the prism of the data center, interviewing five industry executives about their take on the competing chips and how they are used in their facilities. Contributors include IDC’s Shane Rau, Todd Abrams of dedicated hosting specialist Layered Technologies, Peter Jarvis of online gaming company NCSoft (Lineage, City of Heroes), Bruce Taylor of the Uptime Institute and Donald Becker of Penguin Computing (the co-inventor of the Beowulf Linux cluster). The consensus: we’ll see plenty of both chips in data centers for some time to come.

High-Density, But Low (or No) Tracking

A surprising number of data center operators are using blade servers in high-density installations, but not tracking the power density in their racks, according to a new study from Aperture. Roughly 21% of data center operators said they did not know the maximum power density of their racks, according to the survey of 100 Aperture customers and prospects, which found that 8% of high-density users weren’t certain how much power their racks were using, a serious weakness in data center management.

“It was startling to us how many people are using high density blade servers but aren’t tracking them,” said Steve Yellen, Vice President of Marketing for Aperture. “Effectively, a lot of people are operating without a net. When 20 percent of the companies don’t know what they’re running, they can’t really know if they’ll have enough capacity for the next 12 to 20 months - which is how long it takes to build a new data center.”

The companies that participated in the study operate between 600 and 1,000 data centers, and about two-thirds of them have at least $1 billion in annual revenue, according to Yellen. As a provider of data center management software, Aperture has a business interest in increased use of tracking and monitoring in these facilities. But Yellen said the survey results also highlight lingering problems from a cultural divide in many American corporations.

Automation Provider BladeLogic Plans IPO

Waltham, Mass. automation software provider BladeLogic Inc. says it is planning an initial public offering after five years of strong growth, driven by underlying trends in the data center industry. Chief Executive Dev Ittycheria told Mass Hi-Tech that BladeLogic has experienced compound annual growth rate of 250 percent since being founded in 2001, with a customer list that includes Time Warner Inc. and Walmart.com.

Ittycheria says that growth is driven by trends in data center management, as enterprises are using more servers and updating them more frequently. BladeLogic’s data center management software makes it easier to deploy patches across large networks of servers, and detect misconfigured machines that could present operational or security problems.

Data Centers Managing Rising Power Costs

Computerworld takes a look at trends in the cost of power, noting that rising energy prices “could be bad news for data centers.” Despite that gloomy lead, Patrick Thibodeau’s story reveals that data center operators aren’t panicking and there’s unlikely to be a wave of date center relocations driven by power prices. Chasing power costs is a short-term cost management strategy, and data centers are long-term investments. If you relocate because prices are cheaper in the next county over, what happens if that changes? Do you move again to someplace cheaper?

Several data center operators note that the price of power is usually less critical than the reliability of the local power grid. If you’re building a mission-critical facility, you’re placing a premium on uptime, and usually willing to pay extra for enhanced reliability -  and the same is usually true of your customers. Having said that, the current environment places a premium on power management strategies. Read the full story for more.